fea tel pre hee oe pele reali ect Bere oH Bat SEES: Cornell Mniversity Library BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henry W. Sage 1891 LITE FB ence RA SLIT 5474 SITY LIBRARY Cornell University The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu319240884341 74 The Wictoria thistory of the Counties of England EDITED BY H. ARTHUR DOUBLEDAY AND WILLIAM PAGE F.S.A. A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE VOLUME I . a A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE IN THREE VOLUMES EDITED BY H. ARTHUR DOUBLEDAY AND WILLIAM PAGE E.S.A. THE VICTORIA HISTORY OF THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND BEDFORDSHIRE WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED cy “M This History is issued to Subscribers only By Archibald Constable §% Company Limited and printed by Butler && Tanner of Frome and London INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF HER LATE MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA WHO GRACIOUSLY GAVE THE TITLE TO AND ACCEPTED THE DEDICATION OF THIS HISTORY THE ADVISORY COUNCIL OF THE VICTORIA HISTORY His Grace Tue Duke or Beprorp, K.G, President of the Zoological Society His Grace Tue Duke or Devon- sHIRE, K.G. Chancellor of the University of Cam- bridge His Grace Tur Duke oF Ruttanp, K.G. His Grace Tue Duke or Porrianp, K.G. His Grace Tue Dukes or Arcyii, K.T. Tue Rr. Hon. Tue Eart or Rosgpery, K.G., K.T. Tue Rr. Hon. Tue Eart orf Coventry President of the Royal Agricultural Society Tue Rr. Hon. Tue Viscounr Ditton President of the Society of Antiquaries Tur Rr. Hon. Tue Lorp Lisrer Late President of the Royal Society Tue Rr. Hon. Tue Lorp Atverstongz, G.C.M.G. Lord Chief Fustice Tue Hon. Water Roruscuizp, M.P. General Editors of the Series { Sir Frepericx Pottockx, Barr., LL.D., F.S.A., erc. Six Joun Evans, K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D. Sir Epwarp Maunpz Tuompson, K.C.B.,D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A., ETC. Director of the British Museum Sir Crements R. Marxuam, K.C.B., F.R.S., F.S.A. President of the Royal Geographical Society Sir Henry C. Maxwert-Lyre, K.C.B., M.A., F.S.A., Erc. Keeper of the Public Records Cor, Sir J. Farquuarson, K.C.B. Sir Jos. Hooker, G.C.S.I., M.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., ere. Sir Arcuipatp Gerxiz, LL.D., F.R.S., Etc. Rev. J. Cuarztes Cox, LL.D., F.S.A., ETc. Lionzt Cust, Esq., M.V.O.,M.A., F.S.A., ETc. Director of the National Portrait Gallery Auzzrt C. L. G. Gunruzr, M.A., F.R.S., M.D., Pu.D. Late President of the Linnean Society F. Haverrizyp, Esq., M.A., F.S.A. Cor. Duncan A. Jounsron Director General of the Ordnance Survey Pror. E. Ray Lanxester, M.A, F.R.S., etc. Director of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington Recinatp L, Poors, Ese., M.A. University Lecturer in Diplomatic, Oxford F. York Power, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., Etc. Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford J. Horace Rounp, Eso., M.A. Watter Ryez, Eso. W. H. Sr. Joun Hope, Eso., M.A. Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries Among the original members of the Council were Tue trate Marquess oF SALISBURY Tue vate Dr. ManpveLt CreicuH- Ton, Bishop or Lonpon Tue tate Dr. Srusss, Bishop oF OxrorpD Tue Late Lorp Acton and Tue Late Sir Wituiam Flower H. Arruur Dousiepay Wittiam Pacg, F.S.A. GENERAL ADVERTISEMENT The Victoria History of the Counties of England is a National Historic Survey, which, under the direction of a large staff comprising the foremost students in science, history, and archeology, is designed to record the history of every county of England in detail. This work was, by gracious permission, dedicated to Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, who gave it her own name. a worthy and permanent monument to her memory. Rich as every county of England is in materials for local history, there has hitherto been no attempt made to bring all these materials together into a coherent form. Although from the seventeenth century down to quite recent times numerous county histories have been issued, they are very unequal in merit ; the best of them are very rare and costly; most of them are imperfect and all are now out of date. It is the endeavour of all who are associated with the undertaking to make it Moreover they were the work of one or two isolated scholars, who, however able, could not possibly deal adequately with all the varied subjects which go to the making of a county history. vu In the VicrortA Hisrory each county is not the labour of one or two men, but of several hundred, for the work is treated scientifically, and in order to embody in it all that modern scholarship can contribute, a system of co-operation between experts and local students is applied, whereby the history acquires a completeness and definite authority hitherto lacking in similar undertakings. THE SCOPE OF THE WORK The history of each county will be complete in itself, and its story will be told from the earliest times, commencing with the natural features and the flora and fauna. Thereafter, will follow the antiquities, pre-Roman, Roman and post-Roman ; a new translation and critical study of the Domesday Survey ; articles on political, ecclesiastical, social and economic history ; architecture, arts, industries, biography, folk-lore and sport. The greater part of each history will be devoted to a detailed description and history of each parish, containing an account of the land and its owners from the Conquest to the present day. ‘These manorial histories will be compiled from original documents in the national collections and from private papers. A special feature will be the wealth of illustrations afforded, for not only will all buildings of interest be pictured, but the coats of arms of past and present landowners will be given. HISTORICAL RESEARCH It has always been, and still is, a reproach to us that England, with a collection of public records greatly exceeding in extent and interest those of any other country in Europe, is yet far behind her neighbours in the study of the genesis and growth of her national and local institutions. Few Englishmen are probably aware that the national and local archives contain for a period of 800 years in an almost unbroken chain of evidence, ‘ not only the political, ecclesiastical, and constitutional history of the kingdom, but every detail of its financial and social progress and the history of the land and its successive owners from generation to generation.” The neglect of our public and local records is no doubt largely due to the fact that their interest and value is known to but a small number of people. But this again is directly attributable to the absence in this country of any endowment for historical research such as is to be found among other cultured nations. The government of this country has always left to private enterprise work which our continental neighbours entrust toa government department. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that although an immense amount of work has been done by individual effort, the entire absence of organization among the workers and the lack of intelligent direction has robbed the results of much of their value. In the Vicrorra History, for the first time, a serious attempt is made to utilize our national and local muniments to the best advantage by carefully organizing and supervising the researches required. Under the direction of the Records Committee a large staff of experts is engaged at the Public Record Office in calendaring those classes of records which are most fruitful in material for local history, and by a system of interchange of communication among local editors each county gains a mass of information which otherwise would be lost. THE RECORDS COMMITTEE Sir Epwarp Maunpe Tuompson, K.C.B. C. T. Martin, B.A., F.S.A. Smr Henry Maxwett-Lyte, K.C.B. J. Horace Rounp, M.A. W. Jj. Harpy, F.S.A. S. R. Scarciiy-Birp, F.S.A. F. Manan, M.A. W. H. Srevenson, M.A. F. Marrianp, M.A., F.S.A. G. F. Warner, M.A., F.S.A. Many archeological, historical and other societies are assisting in the compilation of this work ; and local supervision and aid are secured by the formation in each county, of a County Committee, the president of which is in nearly all cases the Lord Lieutenant. The names of the distinguished men who have joined the Advisory Council are a guarantee that the work will represent the results of the latest discoveries in every department of research. It will be observed that among them are representatives of science; for the whole trend of modern thought, as influenced by the theory of evolution, favours the intelli- gent study of the past and of the social, institutional and political developments of national life. As these histories are the first in which this object has been kept in view, and modern principles applied, it is hoped that they will form a work of reference no less indispensable to the student than welcome to the man of culture. viii Family History will, both in the Histories and in the supplemental volumes of chart pedigrees, be dealt with by genealogical experts and in the modern spirit. Every effort will be made to secure accuracy of statement, and to avoid the insertion of those legendary pedigrees which have in the past brought discredit on the whole subject. It has been pointed out by the late Bishop of Oxford, a great master of historical research, that ‘the expansion and extension of genealogical study is a very remarkable feature of our own times,’ that ‘it is an increasing pursuit both in America and England,’ and that it can render the historian useful service. Heraldry will also in this Series occupy a prominent position, and the splendours of the coat-armour borne in the Middle Ages will be illustrated in colours on a scale that has never been attempted before. The general plan of Contents, and the names of the Sectional Editors (who will co-operate with local workers in every case) are as follows :— Natural History. Geology. By Cremenr Rep, F.R.S., Horace B. Woopwarp, F.R.S., and others Paleontology. Edited by R. Lypexxer, F.RS., etc. Contributions by G. A. Bourzncer, F.R.S., F. O. Pickarp-Camaripcs, M.A., H. N. Dixon, F.L.S., Flora G. C. Druce, M.A., F.L.S.. Warrer Garstanc, M.A., F.L.S., Hersert Goss, F.L.S., F.E.S., Fauna R. I. Pocock, Rev. T.R. R. Stzssine, M.A., F.R.S., etc., B. B. Woopwarp, F.G.S., F.R.M.S., etc., and other Specialists Prehistoric Remains. Edited by W. Bovp Dawkins, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A. Roman Remains. Edited by F. Haverrizrp, M.A,, F.S.A. Anglo-Saxon Remains. Edited by C. Hzrcures Reap, F.S.A., and Recinarp A. Situ, B.A., F.S.A. Ethnography. Edited by G. Laurence Gomme, F.S.A. Dialect. Edited by Joszrx Wricnt, M.A. Ph.D. Place Names Folklore Contributed by Various Authorities Physical Types Domesday Book and other kindred Records. Edited by J. Horace Rounp, M.A. Architecture. By Various Authorities. The Sections on the Cathedrals and Monastic Remains Edited by W. H. Sr. Joun Horz, M.A. Ecclesiastical History. Edited by R. L. Poorz, M.A. Political History. Edited by W. H. Strvensow, M.A., J. Horace Rovnp, M.A., Pror. T. F. Tour, M.A. James Tart, M.A., and C. H. Firtx, M.A. History of Schools. Edited by A. F. Lracu, M.A. F.S.A. Maritime History of Coast Counties. Edited by J. K. Lavcurox, M.A., and M, Orrannem Topographical Accounts of Parishes and Manors. By Various Authorities History of the Feudal Baronage. Edited by J. Horace Rounp, M.A., and Oswarp Barron, F.S.A. Family History and Heraldry. Edited by Oswarp Barron, FS.A. Agriculture. Edited by Sir Ernest Crarke, M.A., Sec. to the Royal Agricultural Society Forestry. Edited by Jonny Niszer, D.Orc. Industries, Arts and Manufactures Social and Economic History By Various Authorities Persons Eminent in Art, Literature, Science Ancient and Modern Sport. Edited by the Duxe or Braurort and E. D, Cumine N Hunting Shooting By Various Authorities Fishing, etc. Cricket. Edited by Home Gorpon Football. Edited by C. W. Atrcock Bibliographies Indexes Names of the Subscribers ILLUSTRATIONS Among the many thousands of subjects illustrated will be castles, cathedrals and churches, mansions and manor houses, moot halls and market halls, family portraits, etc. Particular attention will be given to the beautiful and quaint examples of architecture which, through other causes, are in danger of disappearing. The best examples of church and monumental effigies will be depicted. The Series will also contain showing the characteristic scenery of the counties. 1X decay or from brasses, coloured glass, 160 pictures in photogravure, I 4 CARTOGRAPHY _ Each History will contain Archeological, Domesday, and Geological maps ; maps show- ing the Orography, and the Parliamentary and Ecclesiastical divisions ; and the map done by Speed in 1610. ‘The Series will contain about four hundred maps in all. FAMILY HISTORY AND HERALDRY The Histories will contain, in the Topographical Section, manorial pedigrees, and accounts of the noble and gentle families connected with the local history ; and it is proposed to trace, wherever possible, their descendants in the Colonies and the United States of America. The Editors will be glad to receive information which may be of service to them in this branch of the work. The chart family pedigrees and the arms of the families mentioned in the Heralds’ Visitations will be issued in a supplemental volume for each county. The Rolls of Arms are being completely collated for this work, and all the feudal coats will be given in colours. The arms of the local families will also be represented in connection with the Topographical Section. In order to secure the greatest possible accuracy in the descriptions of the Architecture, ecclesiastic, military and domestic, a committee has been formed of the following students of architectural history, who will supervise this department of the work :— ARCHITECTURAL COMMITTEE J. Buson, F.S.A., F.R.LB.A. W. H. Sr. Joun Horgz, M.A. R. BLoMFIELD W. H. Kwnowtss, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A. Haroitp BrakspEaR, A.R.I.B.A. J. T. Mickretuwaire, F.S.A. Pror. Batpwin Brown, M.A. Rotanp Pau Artuur §. Frower, F.S.A., A.R.I.B.A. J. Horace Rounp, M.A. GrorcrE E. Fox, M.A., F.S.A. Percy G. Stonz, F.S.A., F.R.LB.A. J. A. Gorcn, F.S.A., F.R.LB.A. ‘THACKERAY TURNER A special feature in connection with the Architecture will be a series of coloured ground plans showing the architectural history of castles, cathedrals and other monastic foundations. Plans of the most important country mansions will also be included. The issue of this work ts limited to subscribers only, whose names will be printed at the end of each History. op Fe Trainee fa THE VICTORIA HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF BEDFORD VOLUME ONE WESTMINSTER 2 WHITHALL GARDENS 1904 County Committee for Bedfordshire THE RT. HON. THE EARL COWPER, K.G., P.C. Lord Lieutenant, Chairman His Grace Tue Duke oF Beprorp, K.G. Tue Rr. Hon. Tue Viscount PEEL THe Rr. Hon. Compton, M.P. THe Rr. Hon. THe Lorp St. Joun oF BLeEtTso Sir Ropert Pearce EpGCUMBE His Honour Jupce $1r THomas W. SnaccE, D.L. Tue Ven. ARCHDEACON OF BEDFORD Tue WorsHipFut THe Mayor or Beprorp Mayor Joun H. Brooks Francis Craw ey, Esq., J.P. Cot. C. Vittiers Downes, J.P. Cox. A. FyLer C. R. Wape-Gery, Esa., J.P. L. Srireman-GrpparD, Esq., J.P. A. R. Gopparp, Esa. Tue Lorp ALWYNE xili J. Hamson, Esa. WitiiaM Mars Harvey, Esa. H. Lonever Hiccins, Eso. J. E. Kine, Eso., HEADMASTER OF BEDFoRD Grammar SCHOOL W. W. Marks, Esa. J. E. Morais, Esa. R. R. B. Orzepar, Esa. Guy Pym, Eso., M.P., D.L., J.P. ArTHuR Ransom, Esa. James SaunpeErs, Esq., A.L.S. Cot, F. SHUTTLEWoRTH WokrTHINGTON G. SMITH, Esq., F.L.S., F.A.I. May.-Gen. A. C. Toker, C.B. F. A. Pacz-Turner, Esq., J.P. W. Crarence Watson, Eso. Antuony H. WincFIELD, Esq., J.P. Tue Rev. V. Wyatr CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE PAGE Dedication . : : ‘ ; : i : ‘ ‘ . é ‘ ‘ . v The Advisory Council of the Victoria History . ‘ ‘ oe eae . vil General Advertisement . : ; ; ‘ ‘ ‘ : ‘ : ‘ ‘ . Vii The Bedfordshire County Committee ‘i ‘ F : : 7 : ‘ . . xiii Contents : : 5 ‘ ‘ ‘ Fi ‘i . . ‘ ‘ : . . XV List of Illustrations . ‘ - s c 7 ; ‘ : . . . . xvii Preface . ‘ F 3 F 7 7 i ‘ 7 . . r 5 . xix Table of Abbreviations . é 7 é ‘ : , . ‘ ‘ i ‘ . XX Natural History Geology . 5 . . - By Joun Hopxinson, F.L.S., F.G.S., and James Saunpers, A.L.S. . . é 2 ‘ i 1 Paleontology . : , . By R. Lypexxer, F.R.S., F.G.S., F.L.S. : - 33 Botany ; . i . By Joun Hamson and G. Crarincz Druce, M.A, F.L.S. ; assisted by James Saunpers, A.L.S, and E. M. Howmgs, F.L.S. . . Fi ‘ - 37 Zoology Mollusca (Snails, ezc.) . . By B. B. Woopwarp, F.G.S., F.R.M.S. ‘ - 69 Insecta (Jnsects) Coleoptera (Beetles) A -. By the Rev. Canon Fowzer, M.A., F.L.S. . - 71 Lepidoptera (Butterflies). - By Cuarres G. Barrett, F.E.S, . : : - 78 Arachnida (Spiders) 4 - By F. O. Pickarp-Camsrincz, M.A. . i - 88 Crustacea (Crabs, etc.) . - By the Rev. T. R. R. Sressinc, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S. gt Pisces (Fishes) . : é - By Arruur R. Tuompson . ¢ F , - 98 Reptilia (Repsiles) and Batrachia (Batrachians) . By J. Lacey Fisuwickx. a . ‘ : + 102 Aves (Birds) . : . . By J. Sreexz-Enuiorr . 5 . ‘ : + 104 Mammalia (Mammals) . ‘ A 2 ‘ 3 ‘ ‘ F - 138 Early Man. ‘ : : - By Worruincron G. Situ, F.L.S., FAI . + 145 Anglo-Saxon Remains. 3 . By Recrnarp A. Smiru, B.A, F.S.A. . - « 175 Introduction to the Bedfordshire Domesday : ; ; . By J. Horace Rounp, M.A. , : . - 191 Text of the Bedfordshire Domesday. By the Rev. F. W. Racc, M.A. . - F + 221 Ancient Earthworks. . 5 . By A. R. Gopparp, B.A... ‘ : : - 267 Ecclesiastical History = , . By the Sister Exsperu of the Community of All Saints 309 xv CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE Religious Houses. . - . By the Sisrer Exsperu of the Community of All Saints Introduction Priory of Beaulieu Abbey of Elstow . Priory of Markyate Abbey of Warden 7 Woburn Priory of Dunstable 53 Newnham 55 Caldwell 59 Bushmead a Harrold oe Chicksand Preceptory of Melchbourne . Franciscans of Bedford . Dominicans of Dunstable Hospital of St. John, Bedford 53 St. Leonard, Bedford . 3 St. Mary Magdalene, Luton *5 St. John Baptist, Luton es Farley near Luton - St. Mary Magdalene, Dunstable 3 St. John Baptist, Hockliffe . a St. John Baptist, Toddington College of Northill . : : : . Priory of La Grave or Grovebury Index to the Bedfordshire Domesday. By the Rev. F. W. Racc, M.A. xvi PAGE 349 351 353 358 361 366 371 377 382 385 387 390 394 395 395 396 398 399 400 400 400 401 402 403 493 405 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Dunstable Priory. Etching by W. Monk : . i ‘ ; . . . frontispiece Prehistoric Remains. Figures 1 to 64 . 4 : i ‘ : : , . I45-171 Pottery Vases from Graves at Kempston . ; : : . ‘ : ‘ ; . 178 Cinerary Urns from Cemetery at Kempston Bronze Brooch, Kempston 179 Engraved Bronze Brooch, Kempston . Anglo-Saxon Objects . : 0 . coloured plate, facing 180 Bronze Workbox, Kempston. ; : : . - . : : : ; . 181 Tin-plate Badge, a fish, Kempston Vase with glass disc, Kempston \. 18 Cinerary Urn, Sandy. ‘ ‘ : 5 e eo 4 , . ‘ é » 184 Merovingian Urn, Toddington i ‘ 5 i , ; : , ‘ . . 185 Bone Combs, Bedford . : ‘ ‘ ; A , 2 ‘ ‘ ‘ . 186 Bronze-gilt Brooch, Leighton oe 4 F : . ; . . ‘ ‘ . 187 Bronze Brooch, Farndish : : : ‘ ‘ : ; : : : : . 190 Ancient Earthworks— Waulud’s Bank . : ‘ . . : . : ‘ . : : 2 . 268 Maiden Bower . ; : . i $ . ; ‘ ‘ ‘ a ‘ . 270 Quince Hill : . . : i - : : ‘ . ‘ . : . 271 Cesar’s Camp, Sandy . : . ‘ : : . . : : . . » 272 Galley Hill, Sandy. : ; : . : ‘ : . . . . 274 Bolnhurst . ‘ , é e ‘i . , - 7 ; ‘i i a 2S Church Panel, Shillington Higham Gobion . \. Etonbury . : ‘ ; ; * - ‘ : : . s ; . » 279 . ‘ . . 277 Plan showing the course of the Ouse . . . ; : ; ‘ ’ ; . 280 Tempsford . ; F ‘ : . . ‘ 5 ‘ : ‘ . ‘ . 281 Willington . é . . , F ‘i ‘ : ‘ ; : : : . 282 Renhold . ‘ : i = . é : : ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ . 284 The Mount, Flitwick . . ‘ i ; ‘ : ‘ : és : . 286 Conger Hill, Toddington . - . . ‘ ‘ ‘ 7 ‘ : ‘ . 287 Thurleigh . ; A ‘ ‘ . . , i ‘ : ' : . 288 Yelden : ¥ : ‘ ‘ ‘ : ‘ : . < : . ‘ . 290 Cainhoe_ . : ‘ ‘ ‘ : : 3 . ‘ F ; . . 292 Totternhoe . ; ¥ ‘ ; ‘ ‘ : ; ‘ : : ‘ . 293 The Hills, Meppershall ; ‘i 3 : : : : : : : , - 295 Eaton Socon , . : 2 : ‘ ; ‘ : ; - 298 John of Gaunt’s Hill, cone Park ‘ , : ; : ; ; ; . - 300 Bletsoe Castle . ; : é ‘ ; : ‘ : ; : ‘ : - 301 XV11 ¢ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Ancient Earthworks (continued)— PAGE The Creakers 302 Newnham Priory . . : + 304 Keysoe Park . : . + 305 Mossbury or Mowsbury 306 The Camps, Bushmead : . . . - 307 John Bunyan . . full-page plate, facing 340 Seals of Religious Houses ; ‘ : . : ‘ : . ” ” ” 358 ” » r i » » 376 382 ” ” ” 392 LIST OF MAPS Geological Map between xxii, I Orographical Map . - é ‘ : ‘ - : A $ 3 24, 25 Botanical Map . : : . : 3 : : d : ; $9 36, 37 Pre-Historical Map . ; ‘ : 5 2 ; i - “ ‘ 55 144, 145 Anglo-Saxon Map . : i Z ‘ ‘ ‘ a ‘ 5 . 35 174, 175 Domesday Map ‘ : : : : : : . ; : ‘ Pr 190, 191 Earthworks Map. F 4 : . : d : 3 : F 5 266, 267 Ecclesiastical Map. : 4 ‘ ‘ : ‘ . ‘ ‘ . facing 346 CORRIGENDA Page 209, line 18, for ‘ Wellow’ read ‘ Willey,’ Page 235, last line but one, for ‘ Beauchamp barony of Bedford’ read ‘ Beauchamp barony of Eaton.’ xviii PREFACE HE present work is the first attempt to compile a history of the | county of Bedford from original sources. Although Bedfordshire, like most English counties, possesses a wealth of materials for local history, no systematic collection and arrangement of these materials has been undertaken hitherto. The work of some of the contributors has consequently been done under great difficulties. The editors regret that it has been impossible to follow a strict chronological sequence in the present volume. The chapter on the Romano-British period will appear in a later volume. It may be desirable to point out that in the chapter on the religious houses, descriptions and illustrations of the buildings have been purposely omitted. They more properly belong to the parish in which the houses were situate and will be dealt with there under the section on Topo- graphy. For the use of some of the illustrations in this volume the editors have to thank Mr. Worthington G. Smith and the Council of the Society of Antiquaries. xix Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.) Acts of P.C, Add. . . Add. Chart. . Admir. . . Agarde . Anct. Corresp.. . Anct. D. (P.R.O.) Arch. Cant. Archd. Rec. Archit. . Assize R. Aud. Off. Aug. Off. Aylofte . Brev. Reg. . Brit. Buck. Bucks Cal. . Camb. . Cambr. . Cant. Cap. Cark. - 4:6 Cart. Antig. R. C.C.C. Camb. . Certiorari Bdles. (Rolls Chap.) Chan. Enr. Decree R. Chan. Proc. Chant. Cert. . Chap. Ho. . Charity Ing. . . Chart. R. 20 Hen. III. pt. i. No. 10 Chartul. . . . TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviatio Placitorum (Re- cord Commission) Acts of Privy Council Additional Additional Charters Admiralty Agarde’s Indices Ancient Correspondence Ancient Deeds (Public Record Office) A 2420 Antiquarian or Antiquaries Appendix Archzologia or Archeological Archeologia Cantiana Archdeacon’s Records Architectural Assize Rolls Audit Office Augmentation Office Ayloffe’s Calendars Bedford Bedfordshire Berkshire Bundle British Museum Bodley’s Library Borough Brevia Regia Britain, British, Britannia, etc. Buckingham Buckinghamshire Calendar Cambridgeshire or Cambridge Cambria, Cambrian, Cam- brensis, etc. Canterbury Chapter Carlisle Carte Antique Rolls Corpus Christi College, Cam- bridge Certiorari Chapel) Chancery Enrolled Decree Rolls Chancery Proceedings Chantry Certificates (or Cer- tificates of Colleges and Chantries) Chapter House Charity Inquisitions Charter Roll, 20 Henry III. part i. Number 10 Chartulary Bundles (Rolls ‘(Exch. Com. . Com. Pleas. Conf. R. Co. Plac. Cornw. . Corp. Cott. CER a). Ct. of Wards Cumb. . Cur. Reg. D. and C. . De Banc. R. . Dec. and Ord. Dep. Keeper’s mi Derb. : Devon Doc... Dods. Mss. Dom. Bk. Dors. . . Duchy of Care, Dur. East. Eccl 2. Eccl. Com. ‘ Edw. . 2. . Eliz. . Engl. . . Engl. Hist. Rev. Epis. Reg. . . . Esch. Enr. Accts. . Excerpta e Rot. Fin. (Rec. Com.) Exch. Dep... Exch. K.B. . Exch. KR... Exch. L.T.R. Exch. of Pleas, Plea R. Exch, of Receipt . XX Charles Cheshire Chester Church Goods (Exchequer King’s Remembrancer) Chichester Chronicle, Chronica, etc. Close Roll County Colchester Collections Commission Common Pleas Confirmation Rolls County Placita Cornwall Corporation Cotton or Cottonian Court Rolls Court of Wards Cumberland Curia Regis Dean and Chapter De Banco Rolls Decrees and Orders Deputy Keeper’s Reports Derbyshire or Derby Devonshire Documents Dodsworth MSS. Domesday Book Dorsetshire Duchy of Lancaster Durham Easter Term Ecclesiastical Ecclesiastical Commission Edward Elizabeth England or English English Historical Review Episcopal Registers Escheators Enrolled Accounts Excerpta e Rotulis Finium (Record Commission) Exchequer Depositions Exchequer King’s Bench Exchequer King’s Remem- brancer Exchequer Lord 'Treasurer’s Remembrancer Exchequer of Pleas, Plea Roll Exchequer of Receipt Exch. Spec. Com. Feetof F. . . . Feod. Accts. (Ct. of Wards) Feod. Surv. (Ct. of Wards) Feud. Aids . fol; «a s Foreign R. . Forest Proc. Gen. Geo. Glou.. . . . . Guild Certif. (Chan.) Ric. II. Hants Harl. Hen. Heref. Hert. Herts Hil. . Hist. Hist. MSS. Com. Hosp. . Hund. R. Hunt. Hunts Ing. a.q.d. . Ing. p.m. . Inst. . Invent. . Ips. . Itin. . Jas. Journ. .. Lamb. Lib. Lance: «% * « « L. and P. Hen. VIII. Lansd. . . . Ld. Rev. Rec. . Leic. . 2. Le Neve’s Ind. Lib. . Lich. Linc. Lond. m . Mem. .. Memo. R. . Mich. Midd . . Mins. Accts, TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS Exchequer Special Commis- sions Feet of Fines Feodaries Accounts (Court of Wards) Feodaries Surveys (Court of Wards) Feudal Aids Folio Foreign Rolls Forest Proceedings Genealogical, Genealogica, etc. George Gloucestershire or Gloucester Guild Certificates (Chancery) Richard II. Hampshire Harley or Harleian Henry Herefordshire or Hereford Hertford Hertfordshire Hilary Term History, Historical, Historian, Historia, etc. Historical MSS. Commission Hospital Hundred Rolls Huntingdon Huntingdonshire Inquisitions ad quod dam- num Inquisitions post mortem Institute or Institution Inventory or Inventories Ipswich Itinerary James Journal Lambeth Library Lancashire or Lancaster Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII. Lansdowne Land Revenue Records Leicestershire or Leicester Le Neve’s Indices Library Lichfield Lincolnshire or Lincoln London Membrane Memorials Memoranda Rolls Michaelmas Term Middlesex Ministers’ Accounts Misc. Bks. (Exch. Exch. Aug. K.R., T.R. or Off.) Mon. ..., Monm. . Mun. Mus. N. and Q. . Norf. .. Northampt. Northants Northumb. . Norw. Nott. NS... Of... Orig. R. Oxf. . Pe < Cornbrash : Rojg vapjnog River Ouse Turvey <— Cornbrash Astwood foyg sepsnog Cranfield (\ Ridgmont o. Eversholt Tebworth Whipsn S| Studham Dol 0 Xi San ee ees MW\.OL HE LYUON <— Abmpt'l Clay \<- Kimerg Clay \<— Up. Greensand Eocene Outlier v ade a 1Sv3.0l HLNOS oO THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND County Boundary shown thus — JG Bartholomew GEOLOGY HE strata which form the groundwork of Bedfordshire, under- lying the surface-soil and other superficial accumulations, con- sist of rocks of Jurassic and Cretaceous age. With the ex- ception of the oldest bed that comes to the surface in the county, which is an estuarine deposit, they are entirely of marine origin. The freshwater or lacustrine beds which were deposited in the south of England at the commencement of the Cretaceous period are absent, and so also are the estuarine which were laid down in that area before the close of the Jurassic period. With this break in the succession of the strata there appears to be a slight unconformability, the Cretaceous rocks not lying quite evenly upon the Jurassic. A few small outliers of beds of Eocene age rest upon the Cretaceous rocks, indicating the former extension of the Eocenes of the London Basin far to the north of the main mass. The strata dip more or less towards the south-east, so that, proceeding in a north-westerly direction, they are seen to crop out successively in descending order. Bedfordshire is almost entirely within the catchment-basin of the Great Ouse. Its surface slopes on the whole from south-west to north- east, towards the great marshy tract of the Bedford Level through which the Ouse flows on its way to its embouchure in the Wash. It presents a series of shallow valleys and gently rising hills which follow in the main the same direction as the general inclination of the surface and coincide with the strike or trend of the strata. A rather prominent and very picturesque ridge crosses the county from Leighton Buzzard to Sandy, defining the limits of the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks and form- ing the water-parting between the valley of the Ouse and that of its tributary the Ivel. Each of these valleys, when viewed from the hills on its southern margin, owing to its shallowness presents the appearance of a plain, that on the north consisting of Jurassic rocks with hills of but slight elevation, and that on the south of Cretaceous rocks rising along its south-eastern margin into hills which attain a considerable altitude. The most prominent of these are known as the Barton Hills and the Dunstable Downs. They form the north-eastern termination of the Chilterns, a range of hills situated entirely on the Chalk and gradu- ally approaching its escarpment in its passage through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and the west and north-west of Hertfordshire. In crossing the south-east of Bedfordshire this range forms the water- parting between the catchment-basin of the Ouse and that of the I 1 I A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Thames, and attains an elevation of about 800 feet at the highest part of the Dunstable Downs between Kensworth and the Five Knolls. Al- though the most striking feature of the county, these hills do not present abrupt or rugged outlines, their contour being rounded and gently un- dulating, the result of very gradual and long-continued sub-aerial denu- dation. THE CONCEALED PALZOZOIC LAND-SURFACE Owing to the absence of deep borings in Bedfordshire we are without any actual knowledge of the disposition of the Paleozoic rocks which underlie the Mesozoic strata, but we may form some idea of it from the facts which borings made beyond the limits of the county have revealed. A few miles to the south-east a ridge of Silurian rocks underlies Hertfordshire at a depth of about 800 feet, the strata dipping to the south at a high angle, and upon the southern flanks of this old ridge repose Devonian rocks dipping a little west of south at a much less inclination. A few miles to the west or north-west, in Northamp- tonshire, the Carboniferous Limestone has been met with at a depth of 980 feet. The Coal Measures occur at a great depth in Oxfordshire and come to the surface in Warwickshire. From this evidence, and that afforded by other borings at a greater distance, we may infer that the old Silurian ridge of Hertfordshire is the southern fold of an anticline which probably passes under Luton and is flanked on its northern fold by Devonian rocks which extend at least so far to the north as Bedford. ‘This ancient land-surface sinks as it trends from east to west, in which direction the Devonian rocks are succeeded or overlaid by Carboniferous, but it is scarcely likely that any more recent division of that series than the Carboniferous Limestone comes on within the county. There may however be, in the north, a syncline or the southern margin of one in which the Mill- stone Grit may lie, possibly succeeded by the Coal Measures. During Permian and Triassic times this area, with the whole of the south-east of England from Norfolk to Kent and Sussex, was prob- ably a land-surface over which rivers flowed ; in the earlier period to- wards the north, depositing their sediment in the lakes or inland seas which existed just before the close of the Paleozoic epoch; and in the later period, after a further upheaval of the land, in a westerly direction towards the more extensive sea which, at the commencement of the Mesozoic or Secondary epoch, divided the east of England from Wales and western Devon. ‘The shore-line of this Triassic sea, which we know from its deposit of rock-salt to have been land-locked, was some distance to the north of Bedfordshire but not far from its western border. In the succeeding Liassic period, with which Jurassic times commenced, owing to the gradual sinking of the land, the sea became oceanic, en- croaching upon the area which now comprises the county and laying down sediment within it. It is at this point therefore that our certain knowledge of the geology of this district commences. 2 GEOLOGY Period Formation Character of Strata ap protimate thickness in feet Alluvium . . River-mud, etc. I-10 Een Valley Gravels . Gravels of existing rivers 5-20 River Drift . Older river-gravel and sand 5-10 Clay-with-flints Reddish clay (on Chalk only) . I-20 Piciaoeene Brickearth Loam and sandy clay 5-30 Gravel and sand . 10-20 Glacial Drift . Boulder-clay with chalk and erratics . a 3-100 Eocene Reading Beds . Plastic clay, loam, and sand ? 10 shown Upper Chalk Soft white chalk with vi Sasiges of flints . . 100 shown Chalk Rock—very hard, cream- coloured chalk. : 2-15 Middle Chalk . . Hard white chalk with few flints 200-210 Melbourn Rock—hard, nodular chalk . . ‘ 8-10 Grey and white chalk . 2-6 White blocky and hard grey Upper chalk Rie, 60-80 Cretaceous Lower Chalk ee Stone—hard, si sandy - Chalk Marl—grey, marly chalk 70-80 Chloritic Marl or Cambridge Greensand—glauconitic marl ?10 Upper Greensand . Micaceous and glauconitic sand 0-20 Upper Gault Variously-coloured clay, part sandy, and clayey sand . 25-30 Lower Gault Light and dark grey sas and sandy clay . <3 150-280 Woburn Sands and Potton Beds Lower ‘3 G d —brown ferruginous sand- Cretaceous eer eae stone, dark clay, and light- coloured sands, rarely green. 230-280 Kimeridge Clay Dark-coloured clay and shale . 10 Ampthill Clay . Black clay with bands of lime- stone : 40-60 Upper Jurassic Oxford Clay . Greenish grey and brown clay 300-400 Kellaways Rock Calcareous grit, shale, and sand- stone 10-50 Cornbrash . . Tough grey limestone and clay 2-15 Great Oolite Clay. Variegated clays, partly calca- reous . ae 5-10 : | Great Oolite Limestone . | Limestone, marl, ‘and clay . 25-30 Middle Jurassic Upper Estuarine Series Variegated sandy claysand lime- stones 15-30 Inferior Oolite . . . Northampton Sands — brown sandstone and ironstone ?12 Lower Jurassic | Upper Lias . Blue clay and shale 66 seen 3 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The geological formations represented in Bedfordshire, with their chief lithological characters and approximate thickness, are given 1n the table on the preceding page, in descending order, the names of the for- mations which do not come to the surface in the county being printed in italics. “In the following account of the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks, at the head of each division are given the geographical names adopted for the formations or their subdivisions by continental and by some English geologists, the lithological names in general use in this country, and the life-zones represented in the county. LOWER JURASSIC Toarcian . . Upper Lias . . Zone of Ammonites communis The oldest formation of the occurrence of which within the county we have actual evidence is the highest division of the Lower Jurassic series, the Upper Lias, and that does not come to the surface, having only been met with in well-borings at Sharnbrook and Felmersham, where it appears as a blue clay. The greatest thickness passed into being 66 feet, it is not likely that the lower zone of the Upper Lias, that of Ammonites serpentinus, has been reached. The strata rise towards the north-west, and both zones crop out in Northamptonshire. The mud of which the Liassic clays are composed was probably derived from the erosion of Carboniferous shales, the sediment having been deposited in the sea whilst its bed was sinking, a process which had been going on throughout Permian and Triassic times. MIDDLE JURASSIC Cornbrahh . . . . Zone of Ammonites discus Bathonian{ Great Oolite . . . 5 A. gracilis Upper Estuarine Series Ss Modiola imbricata Bajocian Inferior Oolite . vs Ammonites opalinus The Inrertor Ooutrs is represented only by the Northampton Sand, a passage-bed between the Lias and the Oolites, and by some geologists considered to belong to the older formation. It has been sunk into at Wymington, yielding a supply of water. It comes to the surface in the adjoining county of Northampton, where it consists of sandy ironstones with a thin bed of coarse oolitic limestone on the top. It represents the Midford Sand of Dorset and Somerset and the lower part of the Inferior Oolite of Cheltenham, and indicates a change of conditions to a more shallow sea than that of the Liassic period. The Upper Estuarine Seriss is the oldest formation which comes to the surface in the county. At Bedford it is 70 feet beneath the surface, and its outcrop, which is not a continuous one, is some miles to the north-west. It consists of sand and sandy clay of various colours, with irregular layers of limestone here and there, and is of fluvio-marine origin, showing alternations of marine and freshwater conditions, and 4 GEOLOGY yielding, besides aquatic forms of life, remains of land plants and animals. It varies much in thickness within short distances, and in fact is not a persistent bed, sometimes occurring only in ‘ pockets’ or ‘pipes’ let down into the underlying strata. The Series is a richly fossiliferous one in some places, but not here, and it represents in time the Stonesfield Slate of the south of England, from which have been obtained many fine fossils that adorn the walls of our museums. While estuarine and freshwater conditions continued in the north, marine conditions set in from Lincolnshire southwards, commencing with the deposition of oolitic limestone. This does not indicate a deep sea, for the limestone was in all probability the detritus of coral reefs, which are built up in shallow water on a slowly-sinking sea-bed. The influx of the sea must have been from the south, and the warm currents thus brought in would be favourable to the growth of corals. The Great Oolite here consists of two divisions which are not very dis- tinct from each other—the Great Oolite Limestone and the Great Oolite Clay. The former is by far the most persistent, extending through the midland and southern counties, while the latter is repre- sented in the south of England by the Forest Marble, a shallow-water and perhaps partly estuarine deposit which gradually takes its place. The Great Oo.tte Limestone is quarried for lime-burning and for use as a building-stone at several places near Bedford, where its thick- ness varies from 25 to 32 feet. It extends from Kempston south of Bedford westwards to Cold Brayfield, Carlton, and Harrold, and north- wards to Puddington and Farndish. It usually consists of pale grey, dark blue, and bluish-grey limestone, either earthy, oolitic, or flaggy, in beds of varying thickness (from 1 foot to 10 feet) separated by thinner beds of pale grey, dark blue, or mottled clay or clayey marl, both lime- stone and clay frequently being crowded with specimens of Ostrea sowerbyi, The limestone is occasionally false-bedded or current-bedded, which indicates shallow-water deposition, this inference being confirmed by the great variations in the thickness and character of the beds which take place within short distances. After O. sowerbyi the next most fre- quent fossil is O. subrugulosa. Myade are abundant, and remains of saurians and fishes also frequently occur. The water-supply of Bedford is derived from this formation. The water has been analysed, with that from the River Ouse adjacent to the pumping-station, by Professor. Attfield, F.R.S." Both waters are hard, but the well-water is about twice as hard as the river-water. The Great Oouire Cray is very variable in colour, calcareous in places, contains selenite, and has at or near its base a nodular ironstone band about which the clay is sometimes dark and carbonaceous. It occurs near Bedford but is not persistent ; the Cornbrash, at West End, Stevington, resting directly on bluish oolitic limestone. It is only a few feet in thickness. 1 See Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc. iv. xxviii.—xxix (1888). 5 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The Cornzrasu consists of tough pale-grey rubbly limestone, usually shelly and sometimes sandy, and occurring in irregular layers parted by bands of softer limestone and occasional seams of marly and sandy clay. In most of its exposures it is seen to be crowded with fossils, chiefly Lamellibranchiata, the prevailing genera being Avicula, Ostrea, Pecten, and Lima. It is by some geologists considered to be distinct from the Great Oolite, and by others to be a member of it, being everywhere its highest subdivision. It appears to have been laid down at a considerable distance from land in a rather shallow sea varying in depth from time to time. Rarely exceeding ro feet in thickness, and being a persistent and well-marked formation, it is of value in the determination of the general dip of the strata. The river Ouse, in its devious windings through Bucks and Beds, has cut through it into the Great Oolite Limestone, the in- clination of the river-bed being a little less than the dip of the Corn- brash. Thus at Bradwell near Stony Stratford the river-bed is 200 feet above mean sea-level, and the Cornbrash just comes up to the 300 feet contour-line ; at Harrold the height of the river is 130 feet, and that of the Cornbrash 210; and at Bedford the river is 80 and the Cornbrash 120 feet above sea-level. ‘There appears to be a local upheaval at Brad- well in Bucks, but in its range through Beds the dip of the Cornbrash seems to be very slight and fairly uniform, its direction being considerably to the east of south-east. It follows that this is the direction of the dip of the Jurassic strata above and below which are conformable with it, while the Cretaceous rocks dip in a more southerly direction. The Cornbrash is quarried for building, road-making, and lime- burning. Its presence near Bedford was known in the early days of geology (so far back as 1818), when it was called the ‘ Bedford Lime- stone.” To the rubble on its surface the name ‘Cornbrash soil’ was given, this being an old agricultural term for certain stony or brashy soils which are well suited to the growth of corn.’ The average width of its exposure in the county is about a quarter of a mile and does not vary greatly, UPPER JURASSIC afk Teh ti Kimeridge Clay . . Zone of Ammonites biplex Reunerdgan t eae Clay a he plleasill (= Corallian) 5 A. perarmatus Oxfordian | Oxford Clay and 9 A. cordatus Kellaways Rock { A. jason The Kerraways Rock is usually considered to be a subordinate division of the Oxford Clay, coming in above the lower portion of the clay, the great mass of which is always above it. Although it is so mapped by the Geological Survey, it would perhaps be better either to call the lower bed of clay the Kellaways Clay, as suggested by Mr. H. B. Woodward, or to group the clay and ‘rock’ together under the name of Kellaways Beds. While the clay indicates a rather deep sea, the rock 1 H. B. Woodward, Furassic Rocks of Britain, iv. 380, 451. 6 GEOLOGY gives indications of shallow-water conditions, for its sandy nature and the presence in it of lignite, as at Oakley north of Bedford, point to the proximity of land, while its ammonites indicate that a fairly deep sea was not far distant. ‘The best sections are to be seen in the vicinity of Bedford, where it generally occurs as a calcareous sandstone with a thick bed of sand at its base and a thin layer of shelly limestone at its summit, from 7 to 10 feet of clay separating it from the underlying Cornbrash. The sandstone often takes the form of irregular concretions or ‘ doggers’ of varying size up to 10 feet in diameter imbedded in sand and some- times united in pairs like the figure 8. Many of these nodular concre- tions may be seen projecting from the sides of the cutting on the Midland Railway at Oakley. The clay contains selenite and ‘race’; the sand is destitute of fossils ; but the sandstone is very fossiliferous, having numerous Mollusca, including Myacites recurvus in abundance, and species of Ammonites, Ancyloceras, Pleuromya, etc. Gryphea bilobata and Belem- nites owent occur in shelly layers. Although the Oxrorp Cray is usually a greenish-grey and brown clay, it is by no means entirely clay. The following strata were pierced in a boring at Northill, three miles north-west of Biggleswade :— Boulder Clay, 104 feet. Oxford Clay : green clay, 12 ft. ; blue clay, 10 ft. ; blue clay and shells, 9 ft. ; dark green clay, 13 ft. 6in.; black stone, 4 ft. 6 in. ; greenish clay and shells, 20 ft. ; live sand, g ft.; sandy blue clay, 9 ft.; sand-rock, 7 ft. 4 in.; blue clay and shells, 2 ft. 6 in.; rock and blue clay, 1 ft. 9 in. ; limestone, 2 ft. 8 in. ; sandy blue clay, 3 ft.; blue stone, 3 ft. 6 in.; sandy clay, 4 ft. 10 in. ; limestone, 4 ft. ; sandy clay and stone, 3 ft. Total depth, 223 ft. 7 in. This section is of interest not only for the great variation which it shows in the strata which here constitute the higher portion of the Oxford Clay, but also in bringing to light such an enormous thickness of boulder clay. In giving it Mr. H. B. Woodward” says that ‘ portions of the upper beds grouped with the Oxford Clay may represent the Ampthill Clay.’ Elsewhere there are bands of limestone near the top of the Oxford Clay, as at Sandy, 2 miles north-east of Northill, where there is stiff grey clay with ferruginous concretions, selenite, and a band of earthy limestone from 6 to 8 inches thick ; at Ampthill Park where the railway-cutting exposes dark blue clay with symmetrical crystals of selenite and seams of hard grey limestone varying from a foot to 18 inches in thickness ; and at Ridgmont and Aspley Guise near Woburn. The great mass of the formation, which attains a thickness of nearly 400 feet, is more homogeneous in character, indicating a prolonged period of deep-sea conditions over an extensive area, although near its base lignite and saurian bones have been found. It would appear that the sea-bed was sinking during its formation more rapidly than the sediment accumulated, and yet very slowly if the vast period of time which this accumulation must have occupied be considered. Its fossils are mostly pelagic forms, ammonites preponderating and Ammonites cordatus being 1 Furassic Rocks of Britain, v. 51. 7 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE abundant. Right across Bedfordshire, from Leighton to Potton, the Lower Greensand covers much of the upper portion of the Oxford Clay as well as the succeeding Ampthill and Kimeridge Clays, overlapping these formations, and more to the north the lower portion is overlaid by boulder clay. This makes its precise limits difficult to ascertain in some districts, but it is known to extend over the greater part of North Beds. There are many brickfields in it, and where boulder clay overlies it an admixture of the two clays is found to be advantageous in brick-making. Boulder clay over Oxford Clay makes a very tenacious soil, retentive of moisture and well suited to the growth of corn. The AmpTuiLt CLay was formed under much the same conditions as the Oxford Clay below it, and the Kimeridge Clay above, and consti- tutes a passage-bed between them, having an admixture of their fossils. Being a comparatively deep-sea representative of the Corallian beds, which owe their origin to the destructive action of the sea on coral-reefs, it is frequently called Corallian, but the term is scarcely applicable. The two life-zones of the Corallian stone-beds are very distinct, but although both are probably present in the Ampthill Clay, they cannot be dis- tinguished in either Beds or Cambs owing to the Oxfordian and Kime- rigian fossils being mixed. The Ampthill resembles the Oxford Clay in not being a bed of clay only. In the cutting north of Ampthill railway station it consists of a thin septarian band with Ostrea discoidea in and beneath it ; 50 feet of marly shale and stiff clay, with selenite, a layer of calcareous nodules with Ischyodus, and a rusty band with Ammonites cordatus and other fossils ; a thin band of pale earthy limestone ; 6 feet of grey and yellow marly shale; anda rubbly rock-bed at the base, 4 ft. 6 in. thick, and containing numerous fossils ; the whole (given in de- scending order) resting upon Oxford Clay and being surmounted by Kimeridge Clay.’ The outcrop of the Ampthill Clay is concealed for the most part by the overlapping of the Lower Greensand. In this section at Ampthill there appears above the Ampthill Clay a bed of clay and dark-blue shale, 10 feet thick, with Ammonites biplex, Ostrea deltoidea, and other fossils, which is of KimeripGr CLay age, and has boulder clay resting unconformably upon it. The Kimeridge Clay must here have suffered very considerable denudation. Elsewhere it usually varies from 400 to 1,000 feet in thiekness, but near Aylesbury it is not more than 100 feet thick. Here only its base is seen, the higher beds having been washed away, together probably with the succeeding Portland Beds, of which the only trace in the county consists of fossils in the Lower Greensand which have been derived from Portlandian strata. It was probably the presence of these fossils which led Professor A. C. Ramsay to say that outliers of the Portland Stone occur in Bedfordshire rightly adding that ‘the whole has evidently been exposed to denudation before the deposition of the Cretaceous rocks.’? + Jurassic Rocks of Britain, v. 135. * Physical Geolgy and Geography of Great Britain, ed. 5, p. 191. 8 GEOLOGY THE BREAK IN THE SEQUENCE OF THE JURASSIC AND CRETACEOUS STRATA It will be seen from the foregoing that although the Kimeridge Clay in this district is in immediate contact with the Lower Greensand, the two formations are in point of time widely separated; but the slight unconformability between them gives very little indication of the great changes which occurred in the distribution of land and sea, and of the vast amount of sediment which was elsewhere deposited between the close of the Jurassic period in this district and the commencement of the Cretaceous. With the increasing depth of the Jurassic sea, the western margin of the land of the south-east of England was gradually encroached upon ; but it was not until Cretaceous times that the whole of this area was completely submerged, and it is doubtful how far until then the sea covered that portion of it which is now known as Bedfordshire. To- wards the close of the Jurassic period the sea became shallower; but the Portland Beds, consisting mainly of sands and limestone, appear to have been laid down on the whole in clear water at some distance from the estuaries of rivers. The Portland sea probably extended over part of the county, and on the upheaval of the sea-bed its sediment would form the surface of the land, constituting a plain flanking the Paleozoic hills of Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and South Bedfordshire. That this plain was subjected to denudation we know, for not only have the Portland Beds been washed away on the north of these hills, leaving a few of their fossils as witnesses of their former presence, but a great part of the underlying Kimeridge Clay has also been removed. About this period considerable earth-movements took place here and elsewhere, the result in Bedfordshire being an elevation of the strata towards the west or a depression towards the east, and in Hertfordshire a depression by which the Paleozoic range of hills was ultimately sub- merged some 1,000 or 2,000 feet. This was probably between the close of the Portland and the commencement of the Purbeck period, or mainly in this interval, for not a single species is known to pass from the one formation to the other, which indicates a great lapse of time. It is true that some forms, such as Ammonites and Belemnites amongst the Mol- lusca, and Ichthyosaurus and Plestosaurus amongst the Vertebrata, main- tained their existence as genera and are well represented in the local strata of both the Jurassic and the Cretaceous period, but no species ap- pears to have survived the changes which took place between the depo- sition of the Kimeridge Clay and that of the Lower Greensand. The Portland Beds are marine; the Purbecks are partly marine and partly freshwater, and they seem to have been deposited chiefly in an extensive lagoon on the eroded surface of the Portlands. In the south of England they are succeeded by the freshwater Wealden strata, 2,000 feet in thickness, of which no trace is known to exist beyond the Vale of Wardour ; unless the silicified wood found at Brickhill near Woburn, I 9 2 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE and the plant, Exdogenites erosa, and remains of Iguanodon from Potton, have been derived from the Wealden as suggested by Mr. Walter Keeping.’ In all probability however the deposition of the Wealden strata over the south-east of England, which must have occupied a great length of time, took place whilst the whole of Bedfordshire was above sea-level, and therefore whilst the Kimeridge Clay was subjected to sub-aerial denu- dation, by which its higher beds, with the overlying Portlandian, were removed. During the long period occupied in the accumulation of the Creta- ceous strata there was a nearly continuous and usually gradual change from comparatively shallow seas to those which were much deeper if not truly oceanic, occasionally interrupted by temporary elevations of the sea-bed. These alterations in the depths of the marine areas were accompanied by important changes in the character of the fauna. Many of the earlier Cretaceous forms became extinct and were superseded by others of newer types, noteworthy amongst which are the echinoderms Holaster, Galerites, and Maicraster ; the lamellibranch Hippurites; the cephalopods Hamutes and Scaphites ; the fishes Lamna, Otodus, and Pty- chodus; and the reptile Po/yptychodon; species of all of these genera having been recorded for the county. LOWER CRETACEOUS Vectian or Aptian. Lower Greensand. Zone of Terebratula sella Owing to the absence of beds of Wealden age the Lower Creta- ceous rocks are in this district represented only by the Lower Green- SAND, which is the equivalent of the higher division of the Vectian of the south of England and the Aptian of western Europe; the lower division consisting in the Wealden area and the Isle of Wight of the Atherfield Clay, a very fossiliferous marine deposit having no representative in Bedfordshire. The Lower Greensand extends across the county from Leighton Buzzard to Potton, forming a very picturesque range of hills running generally from south-west to north-east. For some portion of its extent it is concealed by the boulder clay and alluvium of the valley of the Ivel, and on reappearing it attains a considerable elevation in the vicin- ity of Sandy, having there a rather steep and very prominent escarp- ment. Its maximum thickness is about 220 feet and its exposure is several miles in width, the area it covers being more extensive than in any other of the midland counties. In passing under the newer strata in a south-easterly direction it thins out rapidly, terminating in the adjoining county of Hertford somewhere between Hitchin and Ware. It was the absence of the knowledge of this fact which led the late Sir Joseph Prestwich to believe that it might form a valuable water-bearing stratum for the supply of London ; but although he was mistaken on this point, owing to no boring having at that time (18 51) been carried to a * In Geol. Mag. dec. 2, vol. ii. p. 375. Io GEOLOGY sufficient depth to prove that it thus thinned out, his ‘ Geological Inquiry respecting the Water-bearing Strata or the Country around London’ is a classic of geological literature replete with valuable information. Near Leighton the Lower Greensand consists for the most part of white and light-coloured sand known as ‘silver sand,’ which has an industrial value.’ It is now chiefly obtained for filter-beds, but it is in places so free from iron and other colouring matter that it has been used for glass-making. The larger quartz grains show signs of attrition, being rounded and polished, like the sands of the sea-shore. At Leighton and near Silsoe a bed of dark-brown ferruginous sand- stone is exposed which is sufficiently indurated to be of service for building purposes, several churches in this part of the county being built of it, but it weathers rather rapidly and very unevenly. This ‘ carstone,’ as it has been called, is a local feature which has been stated to be dependent on the presence beneath the sand of beds of clay which have arrested the percolation of ferruginous water.’ Opposite the Castle Hill near Clophill there is a very instructive section showing 10 feet of dark-coloured clay, called by the workmen ‘black clay’ to distinguish it from the ‘blue clay’ of the Gault, occurring in three distinct beds of about equal thickness with thin layers of sand between them, dark-red carstone being above the clay and light-coloured sand beneath it; but elsewhere the carstone is frequently seen resting on light-coloured sand with no trace of clay. The sand is, wherever exposed, seen to be partially or wholly false-bedded, showing that it was deposited in a shallow sea with shifting currents. The false-bedding is also evident in the carstone whether it occurs in a continuous layer or in isolated masses which are called ‘ doggers.’ Concretions of brown iron-oxide are of frequent occurrence. At the base of the series near Woburn, and at a rather higher horizon near Potton, there is a peculiar bed of variable thickness (6 inches to 2 feet) consisting for the most part of pebbles with water-worn fossils derived from a distant source, and containing also numerous (so-called) ‘coprolites.’ The pebbles are of quartz, quartzite, limestone, ironstone, slate, etc., and they are sometimes cemented into a hard rock by car- bonate of lime. Sub-angular fragments of rock also occur. Most of the fossils are derived from older beds, the majority of Upper Jurassic and some of Lower Cretaceous age. With these may sometimes be found fossils proper to the formation, that is which lived in Vectian times. The indigenous fossils are chiefly brachiopods and lamellibranchs ; the derived fossils, teeth and bones of saurians and fishes. At Mill- brook have been found remains of the saurians Ichthyosaurus, Plestosaurus, and Dakosaurus, and of the fishes Spherodus, Pycnodus, and Acrodus. Most of these also occur in the neighbourhood of Potton ; and in addition a previously undescribed brachiopod, Terebratula dallasn, and 1 Analyses of this sand from Heath near Leighton are given in E. W. Lewis’s Lectures on the Geology of Leighton Buzzard, p. 61 (1872). 2 H. B. Woodward, Geohgy of England and Wales, ed. 2, p. 379 (1887). YI A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE a cycadian stem, Cycadoidea yatesii,’ amongst other forms, have been found there. One of the most abundant of the derived fossils is Ammonites biplex. The bed has long been worked for the phosphate of lime which its coprolitic nodules contain, but all the workings in the county are now closed. At a higher horizon are beds of fullers’ earth which have formed an item of local commerce for the last two centuries. This earth occurs in ‘tabular lenticular masses,’” the areas and thicknesses of which vary considerably. It is an ‘ earthy hydrated silicate of alumina’ possessing saponaceous and detergent qualities which render it of use in certain industrial operations. Its colour varies in the different seams, its hues being sometimes sharply defined and at other times graduated’; the variations in shade are not accompanied by important alterations in chemical composition. A peculiarity of this mineral is that although it has an argillaceous base it has no coherent properties, being quite un- suited for the manufacture of pottery. For a long period it was obtained by sinking ‘ earth-wells,’ usually unprotected by masonry or brickwork. This method was superseded about the year 1890, when two companies were formed for working the bed. The most modern machinery was employed and extensive mining operations were carried on for some time, but the concerns did not prove a financial success and the works were closed in 1901. Quite recently * a fossiliferous band of much interest has been dis- covered at the summit of the series in pits which have been opened on Shenley Hill near Leighton in order to obtain the silver sand before mentioned. The fossils occur in blocks of ‘ hard, horny-looking, gritty limestone’ between two undulating floors of iron-grit at the junction of the Lower Greensand with the Gault. These blocks, as well as the iron- grit bands, afford evidence of having been ‘ uncovered on the sea-floor,’ where they have been eroded by current-action, but ‘ the shells embedded in the limestone, although fragile, are in splendid preservation, and rarely show even the slightest traces of abrasion.’ Brachiopods are by far the most numerous ; next come the pectens; spines of echinoderms are rather plentiful ; and amongst other fossils are joints of a crinoid, cara- paces of a crustacean, and polyzoa with which many fossils are encrusted. The chief interest in this discovery lies in the fact that the fauna has a decidedly Upper Greensand facies ; so much so that were not the strati- graphical position of the bed so clearly defined it might have been con- cluded to be of Upper Greensand age. Similar forms of life doubtless appear under similar conditions, but the connection is here so close that it leads to the inference that the Lower and Upper Greensand must some- where be continuous, the fauna of the Lower Greensand migrating under 1 Carruthers, Geol, Mag. iv. 199, pl. ix. (1867). 2 A.C. G, Cameron, The Geology of the Fuller’ Earth (1893). Mr. Cameron has added greatly to our knowledge of the geology of Bedfordshire, and this is the best account we possess of fullers’ earth as it occurs in the county. 3G, W. Lamplugh and J. F. Walker, ‘On a Fossiliferous Band at the Top of the Lower Green- sand near Leighton Buzzard,’ Quart. Tourn. Geol. Soc. lix. 234-65 (1903). 12 GEOLOGY the altered conditions of the Gault period and coming back with no further change than would occur in its natural process of development and modification elsewhere during the deposition of the Gault. The town of Leighton Buzzard derives its water-supply from the Lower Greensand, but the formation is not here a very satisfactory water- bearing one. The yield is sufficiently copious, but the presence of iron in a form exceedingly difficult to get rid of is a great drawback. The water is rather hard, but is much softened by ebullition.’ A well for the supply of Biggleswade has recently (1903) been sunk into the same formation, the Greensand having been reached at a depth of 110 feet. At 170 feet it was found to contain a seam of rock, which, with the sand immediately overlying it, is coloured green through the presence of grains of glauconite. UPPER CRETACEOUS—GAULT AND UPPER GREENSAND Upper Greensand . . Zone of Pecten asper Selbornian or Albian } Upper Gault . . . » Ammonites rostratus Lower Gault . . . » A. interruptus While in the Vectian epoch only a small portion of England was submerged, all in its eastern division; in the Selbornian the sea extended so far to the west as Devonshire, and probably covered the whole of the Midland as well as the Eastern Counties. The sea-bed sank as it gradu- ally extended, and may have reached a depth of several hundred fathoms before the close of the period. ‘The composition and fossil contents of the Lower Gavutt however indicate a comparatively shallow sea, not so deep as 100 fathoms and probably not averaging more than half that depth. The passage from the Lower Greensand to the Lower Gault is in some places continuous and in others shows a decided break, apparently owing to the former not having been entirely submerged when the deposition of the latter commenced. ‘Thus in a brickfield south of Leighton no distinct line of demarcation can be seen, the Gault clay gradually becoming more sandy downwards until it passes into a clayey sand with small pebbles, and that into a coarse yellow sand, obliquely bedded, the pebbly bed marking the base of the Gault and indicating current-erosion. In a sand-pit north of Leighton, on the other hand, a well-marked plane of division may be seen, ‘14 feet of dark-grey clay with small patches of bright-red clay at the base resting directly on yellow sand.” The Lower Gault stretches right across Bedfordshire, from south of Leighton to west of Potton, but in a portion of its course eastwards from Heath and Reach it is covered by drift deposits ; it is again exposed to the south of Flitton, Silsoe, and Shefford. On the slopes of the Lower Greensand hills to the north of the Ivel valley there are several small outliers of it, and there is a large one north of Shefford. It is the 1 Analyses by Professor Attfield have been published in Trans. Brit. Assoc. of Waterworks Engineers, ili. 199, 224, 225 (1899). ne 2 Jukes-Browne, Cretaceous Rocks of Britain, i. 284-5. 13 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE erosive action of a tributary of the little river Ivel (the Flit) which has cut them off from the main mass ; they form however but a slight indi- cation of the former extent of the Gault to the north and west. The Lower Gault is usually a light or dark grey marly clay. Where it is worked for brickmaking near Silsoe it is called ‘ blue clay,’ and it is used mixed with the ‘black clay’ of the Lower Greensand before mentioned. At Arlesey its higher part is extensively worked, a section about 50 feet in depth showing a transition from dark clay at the base to that of a much lighter colour at the top. It there con- tains from 26 to 31 per cent of carbonate of lime.’ Near the base of the clay there is usually a bed ot phosphatic nodules which has been worked at various places for making into artificial manure. Many fossils have been found in and with these nodules, species or Ammonites and Belemnites prevailing, and by far the most abundant species being Be/emnites minimus. In a brickyard at Heath near Leighton the nodule-bed contains an admixture of Lower and Upper Gault fossils ; while at Campton near Shefford, apparently about the same horizon, 20 to 25 feet from the base of the Gault, there is a nodule-bed with fossils, all of which, with the exception of Terebra- tula biplicata, are of Lower Gault age.” An interesting relic in proof of the existence of the Gault beneath the south of the county is furnished by a brick which is built into the wall of the market room of the Cock Inn, Luton, bearing the legend ‘F. Burr, 465 feet, Jan. 1828.’ This brick was made from material brought up from the bottom of a boring for an artesian well at the Old Brewery adjoining. From the estimated thickness of the beds from the Middle Chalk to the Upper Gault inclusive, it is safe to assume that the stratum in which the boring terminated was Lower Gault. Another bed of phosphatic nodules marks the base of the Upper Gau tT, which in this district is a much more calcareous formation than the Lower Gault, containing about 50 per cent of carbonate of lime. The sequence of formation was continuous, but the alteration in the mineral composition of the Upper Gault indicates that it was here deposited at a much greater distance trom the shore of the Cretaceous sea than was the Lower Gault. In fact it was laid down in a sinking sea with a receding shore-line. It is a marly clay much resembling the Chalk Marl in appearance and composition, Mr. William Hill having found it by microscopical examination ‘to consist of calcareous matter in a fine state of division enclosing many small particles which are pro- bably shell-fragments and some tests of Foraminifera.’* It is not of the same composition throughout, for this light-grey marl passes up into a darker grey sandy and micaceous marl.‘ When traced across the county in an easterly direction it is seen to diminish in thickness, its basal nodule-bed being brought nearer and nearer to the overlying Chalk, until, between Barton and Shillington, it 1 Jukes- Browne, Cretaceous Rocks of Britain, i. 319. ® Ibid. p. 286. 3 Loc. cit. * Loc. cit. 14 GEOLOGY disappears altogether, the Chalk Marl resting directly upon the Lower Gault. This thinning-out is most probably due to erosion, for the nodule- bed which forms the base of the Chalk Marl contains phosphatic fossils derived from the zone of Ammonites rostratus, that is to say of Upper Gault age. From recent borings the Gault appears to be much thicker in the south of the county than has hitherto been supposed. The Upper GREENSAND is not a continuous bed; after running through the greater part of Buckinghamshire it dies out before it reaches Bedfordshire, re-appearing again near the boundary of the two counties. It can be traced, but not very clearly, in the parishes of Eddlesborough, Eaton Bray, and Tilsworth ; its maximum thickness in the county being 20 feet. ‘It consists of fine yellowish-grey micaceous sand passing up into dark-green glauconitic sand, which in turn passes up into the glauconitic sand that forms the base of the Chalk Marl.” Only one fossil, Aucellina (Avicula) grypheoides, has been recorded from it in the county and that with some doubt, its horizon being uncertain. In the opinion of Mr. Jukes-Browne the restricted area of the Upper Greensand in this district is not due to the erosion of a much larger deposit, but to the present outcrop marking the easterly extension of the original shore-line. He also thinks that beyond its eastern limit near Kateshill there was a land-surface which was unaffected either by erosion or deposition until the period of the Chalk Marl, when the area was submerged beneath the Cretaceous sea. ‘The absence of the Chloritic Marl in this locality tends to confirm this view. UPPER CRETACEOUS—THE CHALK Senonian Upper Chalk Chalk-with-flints. . Zone of Micraster cor-bovis Chalk Rock . . . » Ldeteroceras reussianum Turonian Middle Chalk { Soft white Chalk. . » Lerebratulina lata Melbourn Rock . . 3 Rhynchonella cuvieri Soft grey Chalk . . » Actinocamax plenus Tough blocky Chalk. » Holaster subglobosus Cenomanian Lower Chalk { Totternhoe Stone . », Pecten fissicosta Chalk Marl . . . » Ammonites varians Chloritic Marl . . »» Scaphites equalis The Chalk is essentially a pelagic formation, and during its deposi- tion the whole of England, with the exception of the mountainous districts of Cumberland and Westmorland, North and South Wales, and Devonshire, was submerged. The depth of the sea gradually increased on the whole, but varied greatly from time to time, and at one period especially, when the Chalk Rock was being tormed, it must have been comparatively shallow; but there is no indication of the prox- imity of a shore-line in our area during the deposition of the Chalk. The lowest bed of the Chalk is very different from the white lime- stone which gives the name to the formation ; the Cutoriric Mart, which immediately succeeds the Upper Gault, being usually a grey or bluish 1 Jukes-Browne, Cretaceous Rocks of Britain, i. 287. 15 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE sandy clay containing phosphatic nodules and numerous organic remains. It is regarded as the westerly extension of the Cambridge Greensand, the fossils which it yields being identical with those found in this bed in Cambridgeshire. The phosphatic nodules, with their associated fossils, have in all probability been derived from the denudation of the Upper Gault, which appears to have extended before this period con- siderably to the west of its present limit. The Chloritic Marl extends from Arlesey in the extreme east of the county, westerly by Shillington, Barton, and Sharpenhoe, and probably so far as Harlington, towards which place it is concealed by newer beds. During the period in which the coprolite-pits were being worked, numerous fossils were brought to light, especially in the neighbourhood of Barton and Sharpenhoe. That the assemblage of organisms was very remarkable may be seen from its inclusion of the reptilian genera Ich- thyosaurus, Plestosaurus, and Pterodactylus,and the cephalopods Ammonites auritus, A. studert, A. mantelli, and Belemnites minimus. Some of these were derived from the Gault during the extensive denudation to which it was subjected, and others are of the age of the bed in which they occur; but when the attempt is made to distinguish between the two series, the difficulties which present themselves are well nigh insuperable. An attempt to do so has however been made by Mr. A. J. Jukes-Browne in a paper ‘ On the Relations of the Cambridge Gault and Greensand.’’ The Cuatk Mart is an impure limestone, dark in hue and some- what plastic in texture, which features are due to a small admixture of silt. Its mineral composition indicates that it was deposited in much deeper water than the Gault. It attains its maximum development over an area which extends due east from Berks through the counties of Herts and Beds, north and south of which it rapidly diminishes in thickness. This change is accompanied by differences in its mineral constituents, that to the north indicating an increase in the depth of the sea in which it was laid down, and that to the south-west a decrease in the depth. During the progress of the works connected with the extension of the Midland Railway, numerous fossils were found in this stratum, some of which are worthy of mention. Two specimens of a previously un- described crustacean were obtained (one from the dark grey portion of the bed and the other from the higher and lighter-coloured part of it) which were figured and described, with specimens from elsewhere, by Dr. Henry Woodward under the name of Palega carteri.” The cephalopods include Ammonites varians in abundance, Actinocamax (Belemnites) lanceo- Jatus, a rare species, and Turrilites mantelli, previously recorded only from the south of England. Of reptilian remains a portion of a jaw of Ichthyosaurus campylodon with teeth im situ is the most noteworthy. The Chalk Marl, as well as some other divisions of the Chalk, contains numerous nodules of iron-pyrites, a mineral which is locally * Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. xxxi. 256-316. 2 Geol. Mag. vii. 496, pl. xxii (1870). 16° GEOLOGY known as ‘crowgold,’ but is nowhere present in the county in suffi- cient quantity to be of commercial value. The stratum plays an impor- tant part in connection with the water-supply of the district. The argillaceous character of the middle portion renders it partially impervious to water, so that at its junction with the overlying porous portion numerous springs arise, which however are now fewer in number and smaller in volume than they were some twenty years ago. This feature was strikingly exemplified during the excavation of the extensive cutting at Chalton, the flow of water in the Chalk Marl being so copious that in driving a heading into the escarpment the workmen had to wear miners’ costume, as their clothing was in a state of constant saturation. The Chalton cutting is the only exposure of the bed of any importance in the county. A sandy layer near its base is not exposed here. The ToTTERNHOE Stone takes its name from the village of Tottern- hoe about three miles west of Dunstable, where it attains its maximum development which does not exceed 22 feet. Away from this locality it rapidly diminishes in thickness. It is a dark grey, slightly arenaceous, compact limestone, with a peculiar grain to which the term ‘curly’ is applied by the quarrymen. The comparative coarseness of the materials of which it is composed, and the presence of siliceous particles, indicate that there was a temporary increase in the force of the currents which effected its deposition, over those which prevailed during the era of the Chalk Marl. Scattered irregularly through it are numerous dark brown amorphous masses, and at its base there is usually a layer of green-coated phosphatic nodules ; a further indication of current-action. Many springs arise from it at the foot of the Dunstable Downs and elsewhere. Totternhoe Stone was formerly extensively employed in local archi- tecture, numerous churches in the south of the county affording examples of its use, but it is not sufficiently indurated to withstand for any great length of time the climatic changes to which it is subjected when used for exterior decoration. It weathers badly, as may be seen from the present condition of the west front of Dunstable Priory Church.” It is much more suitable for interior work ; but even for this it has long been superseded by more durable materials brought from a distance. The numerous and extensive relics of excavations on Tottern- hoe Hill show that this stone has been quarried for a very long period. Until about the middle of the nineteenth century it was customary to construct tunnels which commenced at the outcrop of the stone and were carried a considerable distance into the hillside. In later times tramways were used to bring the material to the surface, the incline, correspond- ing with the dip of the bed, being only slight. This system was then superseded by open quarrying, the whole of the overlying bed of Lower Chalk being removed and used for making lime. This method of working terminated during the last decade of the nineteenth century, consequent upon the cessation of the demand for the material. 1 This is now undergoing restoration, the material employed being a Bath stone. I 17 3 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The Totternhoe Stone has yielded at its headquarters numerous organic remains. Of these it may suffice to mention the crushing teeth of the fishes Prychodus polygyrus, P. latissimus, P. decurrens, and P. mam- milaris, the cephalopod Nautilus atlas, and the lamellibranch Pecten orbicu- Jaris, specimens of all of which are in the museums of Luton and St. Albans. Another exposure occurs in the Midland Railway cutting at Chalton, where it is visible on the face or the excavation when viewed from the bridge which carries the road to Sundon. This section has furnished Pecten fissicosta, P. orbicularis, Ammonites varians, and several fine examples of Nautilus elegans, the largest of which, about 8 inches in diameter, is now in the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge. Overlying the Totternhoe Stone is a tough grey blocky limestone, the zone of Ho/aster subglobosus, which in some of its exposures has a yellowish tinge at the base, doubtless due to the presence of iron oxide. In its passage upwards it becomes light grey or white. The lines of deposition are indistinct, and it was evidently laid down under tranquil conditions. Its mineral composition and fossil contents indicate that there was a gradual increase in the depth of the sea during its deposi- tion; one result of which was that many of the genera of Mollusca which previously existed died out or migrated to other districts and were succeeded by others which were adapted to the altered conditions. The stratum contains a high percentage of lime, this material averaging at least three-fourths of its bulk. There is also present a small amount of silica, both organic and inorganic, the former consisting of sponge- spicules and the latter of siliceous granules. Oxide of manganese is often present in the form of a fine black deposit on the surface of the blocks into which it separates during weathering, as well as distributed unequally through the mass. The fossils of this division of the Lower Chalk are both numerous and interesting. Conspicuous amongst them are the palatal teeth of several species of Ptychodus, and the pointed teeth of Lamna, Corax, and Notidanus, the latter occurring only rarely. The lamellibranchs are represented by species of Inoceramus, Plicatula, and Spondylus, and the brachiopods by Rhynchonella cuviert, Terebratula semiglobosa, and Terebra- tulina striata. Gastropods are of rare occurrence. Echinoderms are represented by the characteristic Holaster subglobosus, and crustaceans by Enoploclytia. Examples of these fossils are to be seen in the Luton and St. Albans museums. Exposures of the bed are not unfrequent along the line of the Chalk escarpment at Totternhoe, Sewell, Puddle Hill Sundon, Sharpenhoe, and Barton. Overlying the zone of Holaster subglobosus is a soft grey chalk or shaly marl known asthe zone of Belemmnitella plena, or to use the most modern terminology, Actinocamax plenus. This is remarkably persistent across England from the south-west to the north-east coasts. The presence of a seam of impure limestone at this horizon indicates a marked change in the conditions under which it was deposited, and in explanation of its formation the theory has been advanced that a sub- 18 GEOLOGY arctic current set in froma northerly direction, from its coldness tra- versing the lower part of the sea and effecting the extinction, at least locally, of many of the Mollusca, as only a few species survived the interval which elapsed between the deposition of the Lower and Middle Chalk. Mr. Jukes-Browne has identified the following fossils found in this bed between Luton and Leagrave: Rhynchonella cuvieri, R. plica- tilis, Ostrea vesicularis var. baylet, Ptychodus decurrens, Lamna gracilis, and a crustacean of the genus Lepas. The escarpment of the Lower Chalk forms the most striking physical feature of South Beds as well as of the adjoining counties through which it passes. In most of its course it rises abruptly from the plain lying at its base, often to a height of 200 feet above it, clothed only with closely-cropped herbage. Occasionally the monotonous though not unpleasing rounded contour ot the hills is relieved by groves of trees, mostly beech, the best illustrations of which are in the parishes of Sundon and Streatley. In several places the escarpment is intersected by the remarkable ‘ coombes’ which are a striking feature of this range of hills. These have been formed mainly by the erosive action of springs which in former times were much more copious than they are now, and also issued at higher levels. ‘This process of erosion still continues, but on a greatly reduced scale, the Barton and Streatley valleys furnishing examples. On the eastern side of Barton there originates a narrow pre- cipitous valley which describes a semicircle in the heart of the hills. It starts from the base of the north-west angle of Ravensbury Castle (a Roman camp), takes a southerly curve, then turns south-easterly, and finally debouches in a north-easterly direction in the parish of Hexton, Herts. ‘The spring which has been the prime factor in the formation of the coombe is known as ‘Burwell,’ and now originates at the angle at which the valley is deflected from an easterly to a north-easterly course. At Pegsdon, on the eastern confines of the county, there is a peculiar coombe designated ‘Pegsdon Barns,’ the sides of which are as smooth and sharply defined as though they had been cut by human agency. When this valley is approached from the northern end of Lilley Hoo it opens out to the observer with startling suddenness. Many springs formerly existed at the junction of the Lower with the Middle Chalk at Houghton Regis, Leagrave, Limbury, and Biscot, but they are now greatly reduced in number and volume. The Mexzourn Rock, which forms the base of the Middle Chalk, has been traced in the neighbourhood of Dunstable, Houghton Regis, Sundon, and Barton. ‘There are outliers of it on Totternhoe Knoll. Sections are exposed in chalk-pits about a mile south-east of Leagrave, and between that village and Sundon. Its thickness in the county is about 10 feet. It is an impure limestone having in its lower part many well-defined nodules which are often greenish-grey in colour, especially after weathering. Some of these nodules have on their surface shells of immature Ostree, which suggests that they were exposed on the soft ooze of the sea-bed for a considerable period before they were covered 19 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE with silt. The upper portion has a yellowish tinge, it is less fossili- ferous than the lower, and its nodules are not so easily distinguished from the surrounding matrix. The coarse gritty texture of the Melbourn Rock, to which the term ‘rag’ is applied by the workmen, is mainly due to the presence of the remains of G/obigerina and other Foraminifera, and of the triturated tests of marine Mollusca. The most abundant fossil in this district is Ostrea vesicularis var. baylei; other less common forms are Rhynchonella cuviert, Plicatula inflata, and Actinocamax plenus (Belemnitella plena). The central division of the Middle Chalk, comprising the zones of Terebratulina gracilis (or Jata, as it is now called) and Ho/aster planus, consists of a soft white limestone about 200 feet in thickness, which is much more homogeneous in texture than the Melbourn Rock. The lines of deposition are occasionally indicated by thin seams of grey marl which persist over a considerable area. When exposed on the face of a section these seams are seen to be broken at intervals by slight faults varying from a few inches to 2 or 3 feet indepth. Examples are present in the cuttings for the Midland Railway south-east of Luton. In the cutting at the twenty-ninth mile from London there are at least half a dozen faults in 200 yards, appearing like a series of steps, and there are others which are obscured by vegetation. In the next cutting south- eastwardly there isa conspicuous fault about 1o yards in length and with a downthrow of 2 or 3 feet. These faults appear to have been pro- duced by the upheaval of the Chalk and its shrinkage from desiccation. The sea in which this portion of the Chalk series was formed seems to have been deeper than that in which the Lower Chalk was laid down, though not so profound as the ocean in which the G/obigerina-ooze of the present day is being deposited. The fossils in this division are both numerous and _ interesting, including the typical species Terebratulina lata and Holaster planus, well- preserved examples of Terebratula semiglobosa, Spondylus spinosus, and Gal- erites albo-galerus, and occasionally the teeth of Lamna, Corax, and Ptychodus. Broken fragments of Inocerami are abundant. Other less common forms are the curious Hippurites mortoni, and aptychi, the man- dibles of belemnites, three specimens of which have been found in the neighbourhood of Luton and are now in the Blackmore Museum, Salisbury. This portion ot the Middle Chalk occupies a considerable surface over the south of the county, and is largely devoted to arable agriculture. The hard seams of chalk above and below it (the Chalk Rock and Melbourn Rock) have been important factors in the production of the existing outlines of the Chalk escarpment, and by their resistance to erosion they have greatly assisted in the formation of the ‘lynchets’ which are not uncommon over this area. The uniformity in texture of the great mass of the Middle Chalk, and the slight changes in the general features of its fauna, suggest that subsidence and deposition nearly balanced each other, so that an almost 20 GEOLOGY uniform depth of water was maintained during its formation. Flint nodules become numerous in its higher part, indicating an increase in the num- ber of silex-secreting organisms living in the seas of the period. The Cuax Rock consists in this district of two bands of indurated limestone, each about 2 feet thick, separated by about ro feet of soft white chalk known as the Micraster-bed. The ‘rock’ itself, so termed from its hardness, is cream-coloured, sometimes with a greenish tinge owing to the many glauconitic grains which it contains. It is often sub-crystalline, sometimes shows a conchoidal fracture, and in places is so hard that when struck with a hammer it has a metallic ring. The hardest seams are nodular, the nodules being slightly phosphatic, very irregular in shape, and cream-coloured with a green coating. The fossils of the Chalk Rock are numerous and varied, consisting chiefly of Foraminifera, sponges, echinoderms, and Mollusca. The delicate microscopic tests of the Foraminifera are often in fragments, and the former existence of branched sponges is sometimes indicated by tubular cavities occasionally containing a powdery substance in which sponge-spicules are present. The state of preservation of the remains of the Mollusca varies considerably. As a rule the shells of the gastro- pods and cephalopods have perished, casts of both the interior and ex- terior being present, the latter exhibiting the ornamentation, which can be reproduced by means of a wax impression. The lamellibranchs usually have their shells well preserved, as is also the case with the tests of the echinoderms and brachiopods, but they are difficult to extract owing to the hardness of the matrix. The general features of the organic remains indicate a marked difference in the conditions under which they lived from those which existed when the softer beds of the Middle Chalk were deposited. The prevailing species, especially of the gastropods, prove that at this period the sea-floor was not deeper than from 150 to 200 fathoms, this being the extreme depth at which their modern representatives are found. Taking all the observed facts into consideration, it is probable that the Chalk Marl and Chalk Rock, which are separated by 400 feet of Creta- ceous beds, were deposited in seas the depths of which were very similar. A few species are common to both horizons,’ indicating that, although absent from this area, they maintained their existence during the interval in some other locality. The Chalk Rock appears to form the summit of the escarpment of the Chalk along the Dunstable Downs as seen from the plain below, but the higher ground behind is on the Upper Chalk. It may be traced westwards along the ridge from the Five Knolls, and sections of it are exposed in a pit near the top of the downs. Sections may also be seen on both sides of the Luton valley near the 500-feet contour line. Owing to its extreme hardness it is affected much more slowly by denudation than the associated softer beds, so that its presence has largely determined 1 See H. Woods, Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. liii. 396. 21 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the existing outlines of the hills overlooking the valley of the Lea in South Bedfordshire. The most instructive exposure is that on the Mid- land Railway between the 284 and 284 mile marks. At the deepest part of the cutting the following beds are seen in descending order :— The base of the Upper Chalk with numerous flints, about 20 feet ; upper seam of Chalk Rock, 2 feet; white chalk with few flints (the Micraster-bed), 10 feet; lower seam of Chalk Rock, 2 feet; Middle Chalk with few flints, 30 feet. The beds are approximately parallel and are interrupted with occasional faults, the dislocations being very apparent in the seams of Chalk Rock. The series of beds thus shown indicates several variations in the depth of the sea which were accompanied by changes in the fauna. That for the Middle Chalk below the Chalk Rock suggests a deep sea of 1,000 fathoms or more; that for the lower bed of Chalk Rock much shallower water ; again a deepening for the Micraster-bed, followed by another period of shallower water during the formation of the upper bed of Chalk Rock ; and then a great depression of the sea-floor during the deposition of the Upper Chalk. Much original work on the paleontology of the Chalk Rock has been accomplished in recent years, especially by Dr. Morison* and Mr. Henry Woods,” the latter of whom has figured and described several species found near Luton. ‘The most prevalent forms which occur in this district are the sponges Ventriculites, Cephalites, and Plocoscyphia; the echinoderms Micraster, Holaster, and Echinocorys; the gastropods Trochus, Turbo, Avellana, Aporrhatis, and Pleurotomaria; and the cephalopods Nautilus, Ammonites, Scaphites, Turrilites, Baculites, Ptychoceras, and Hetero- ceras. ‘Taken in the aggregate these genera present a group which is incomparable with any other in the Chalk series. The absence of flints in the Chalk Rock, and the finding of a pebble of quartzite in it near Luton, are noteworthy. The deepening of the sea at the commencement of the Senonian or Upper Chalk period was accompanied in this area by a great paleon- tological break which indicates a cessation of deposition of strata for a prolonged interval after the formation of the Chalk Rock. The presence of dislocations in the lines of bedding in the Middle Chalk and their absence in the Upper Chalk are confirmatory of the assumption that there were great oscillations in the level of the sea-floor at the close of the Middle Chalk period. The surface of the Chalk Rock also some- times appears to show indications of erosion. The Uprer Cuatk, of which only the lower portion is present in Bedfordshire, covers the summits of the hills in the south of the county, and is often concealed by accumulations of gravel, loam, and clay. That it has been subjected to an enormous amount of denudation is attested by the numerous flints which are present in the superficial deposits of the district. Those in the drift gravels are usually much 1 «Notes on the Chalk Rock,’ Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc. v. 199-202 (1889). 2 ¢The Mollusca of the Chalk Rock,’ Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. Iti. 69-98, liii. 377-404 (1896-7). 22 GEOLOGY waterworn, while those in the clays, having been subjected to less at- trition, retain their angular form. Each separate flint is an index of a much larger amount of chalk which has been removed; and so numerous are the flints over this area that it is a popular belief that ‘stones grow, the supposition being that the supply is maintained by their production within the soil by some occult influence. This is more particularly the case in the soil covering the superficial stratum known as clay-with-flints. Considered lithologically the Upper Chalk is a soft, white, almost pure limestone which in weathering separates into thin flakes. It con- tains flint both in the nodular and tabular forms. Its exposures in this district are neither numerous nor extensive; they lie chiefly between Luton and the extreme south of the county. A chalk-pit at East Hyde exposes about 20 feet of this stratum. Near the top of the section is a thin layer of marly chalk similar to those which occur in the Middle Chalk but remarkably even. About 3 feet below this, and parallel with the lines of deposition, is a thin seam of flint which breaks into small fragments under weathering. There are also present numerous flint nodules, most of which are disposed in layers, a few being distributed unequally through the mass of chalk. The most typical fossils which have been recorded from this stratum in Bedfordshire are Echinocorys vulgaris, Ostrea normanniana, Pecten quin- gquecostatus, and Belemnitella quadrata. Between the period of the Upper Chalk, which closes the Mesozoic epoch in western Europe, and the commencement of the Cainozoic epoch, important changes were effected in the life-history of this part of the globe, whole genera of organisms becoming extinct. As examples represented in the Mesozoic strata of the county may be named the marine reptiles Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and the winged Pterodactylus, and also the cephalopods Ammonites, Scaphites, and Belemmites. The allied genus Nautilus, which occurs in several of the local beds, still survives, being now found in tropical seas. The Chalk once extended very much farther to the north-west than it now does. Proofs of such former extension of one formation over another are furnished by outliers, which are detached portions of the main mass. Instances of such outliers of the Chalk Marl on the Gault occur at Billington Hill near Leighton, and between Upper and Lower Gravenhurst. These however only give a slight idea of the former extent of the great Chalk formation. The Chalk of the south- midland and eastern counties was once continuous with that of Lincoln- shire and Yorkshire, having since been cut through by the rivers which flow into the Wash. EOCENE—READING BEDS A long interval must have elapsed between the close of the Meso- zoic era in western Europe and the commencement of the Cainozoic, and this was more prolonged in. Bedfordshire than in the south of 23 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE England owing to the absence of the latest Cretaceous and earliest Eocene strata. There are great contrasts between the Upper Chalk and the Read- ing Beds, which, when present in this area, lie in contact with it. Palzontologically the contrast is between the fauna of a deep sea and that of an estuary; stratigraphically between a nearly pure limestone of organic origin slowly and evenly deposited, and bright-coloured clays, sands, and pebbles accumulated rapidly and distributed irregularly. The arm of the sea in which these beds were deposited extended from the district which is now the south midlands, to Hampshire or beyond, in- cluding the areas known as the London and Hampshire Tertiary Basins. The northern margin of the London Basin runs through the south or Hertfordshire, and beyond and not far from it there is a series of Eocene outliers of considerable extent followed by another of much smaller ones; and far away to the north, in South Beds, a few very small ones have escaped the complete denudation which has removed the inter- vening mass, testifying to its former extension. These are in the parishes of Caddington, Kensworth, and Studham, the largest being near Ringsall. In the superficial deposits of the valley of the Lea, within our county, there are frequently found large masses of conglomerate or ‘ pud- ding stone,’ which are probably of the same origin as the Hertfordshire conglomerate. As they are but slightly waterworn they may have been dropped into their present position owing to the dissolution of the softer strata of the Reading Beds of which they formed a part. One that was met with in a shallow excavation just south of Luton measured 6 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet thick. The pebbles of the Reading Beds, which are thus locally consolidated into a conglomerate with a siliceous matrix, are almost invariably chalk-flints, indicating that the higher Cretaceous strata were subjected to an enormous amount of erosion at the beginning of the Eocene epoch. PLEISTOCENE The greatest change of climate which is definitely known to have taken place in this area and western Europe generally, occurred between the Eocene and Pleistocene epochs, tropical conditions giving place to arctic. The tropical fauna and flora of the London Clay became sub- tropical in later Eocene times, and continued so during the Oligocene and Miocene periods. Early in the Pliocene period temperate conditions set in, and before its close the climate had become boreal or arctic. This change or climate was accompanied by considerable alterations in the distribution of land and sea, the whole of south-eastern England from the Severn to the Humber being at first submerged, then rising so far above the waters that Britain became joined to the continent, neither German Ocean nor English Channel existing, and finally again becoming submerged. It was probably about this time, that is towards the close of the Pliocene period and before the last great submergence, that our 24 HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE OROGKHRAPI “Thw Ediubumgh Geogeaphical lash inte THE VICTORIA HISTORY OF Me HICAL MAP. dS) 0° 2 lathneton > o REFERENCE NOTE above 800 feet | 600 to 800 feet 400 to 600 feet 200 to 400 feet 100 to 200 feet 50" below 100 feet SCALE 4 MILES TO AN INCH 1 2 3 Ey 6 okey (oy J G.Bartholomew County Boundary shown thus THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND GEOLOGY existing south-eastern river-system originated, and that the northern es- carpment of the Chalk commenced to be formed by the erosion of a river with its tributaries flowing towards the north. There is no reason to suppose that any great physiographic alteration has taken place since that time in the lower valley of the Thames, besides its deepening and its widening on the north where it has encroached upon the catchment- basin of the northerly-flowing river; but many changes must have taken place in the course of the latter river during the long period in which it has been developing into the present sinuous Ouse. But the features then impressed upon this district were afterwards obliterated by the great ice-sheet which advanced from the north and ploughed up the surface, leaving its record in the chalky boulder clay which covers the greater part of Bedfordshire. This is not nearly the earliest of the Pleistocene deposits, earlier beds of a very varied nature, showing great changes to have taken place both in climate and in the distribution of land and water, having been deposited elsewhere. It is thus seen that a very long period elapsed of which there is no record in the county, even in Pleistocene times, and to this must be added the whole of the interval since almost the commencement of the Eocene period. It would be useless to give a sketch of the geological history of Britain during all this time, for how Bedfordshire fared would have to be left to the imagination." What was the condition of the district when the chalky boulder clay was deposited, whether the land was sub- merged or not, is a disputed point; but from the presence here and there of marine shells in beds of gravel and sand intercalated with the boulder clay, it seems most probable that in the southern portion of its course the ice-sheet travelled over submerged land, abrading the submarine hills and filling up the submarine valleys by material dropped into the sea from icebergs or from the under-surface of the ice to which it was frozen and from which it would become detached on the partial thawing of the ice as warmer latitudes were reached. The northern land from which this ice-sheet came, whether Scandinavia or Scotland or no farther than Shap Fell, was no doubt much above the level of the sea, the submerged area probably extending over the whole of the midland and eastern counties, including Bedfordshire. The ‘great chalky boulder clay,’ as it has been called, covers an area in these counties of nearly 5,000 square miles, including nearly the whole of Bedfordshire except the valley of the Ouse, which has been cut through it, and part of the county south of Bedford where it occurs in patches. Portions of the hills of the Lower Greensand and of the Chalk are free from it, and in some places it is difficult to say whether it is present or not, for over the Oxford Clay and the Gault there has been such a mixture of the older and newer clays that the presence of the boulder clay can only be inferred by the drifted rocks and fossils which occur in it and work up to the surface of the land. This admix- 1 Part of this period is treated of in the Y.C.H. Hertford, in the account of the Westleton Shingle and Middle Glacial sands and gravel, on pp. 18-23. I 25 4 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ture of the clays is of great benefit to agriculture owing to the amount of chalk which the boulder clay contains. While this clay occurs in such cases only as a thin sheet, some- times it attains a great thickness. Over a considerable area it is from 30 to 50 feet thick ; in the valley of the Ivel near Sandy, as already stated, it is known to attain a thickness of 104 feet, and in the same valley near Biggleswade it has recently been ascertained to be go feet in depth. In each of these localities it has been cut through in well- sinking, and in the latter a transported mass of Ampthill Clay, 67 feet in thickness, was found in its midst." At the well at Northill near Sandy, which is west of the Ivel, the surface-level is about 105 feet above ordnance datum, and the base of the boulder clay which rests on Oxford Clay is therefore nearly at mean sea-level, while at the well near Biggleswade the surface-level is 160 feet above ordnance datum, and the base of the boulder clay which rests on disturbed and denuded Gault is 55 feet above mean sea-level. There is evidently a Glacial or pre-Glacial valley here which has been filled up by boulder clay, and it would be of great interest if its further extension could be traced. Biggleswade is on its eastern flank ; Northill may or may not be in its centre, but cannot be far off it; and the evidence points to the conclusion that the Ivel flows through a valley of earlier formation than that of the Ouse above the junction of the two rivers; but whether this valley, now nearly filled up by boulder clay, was the deep channel of a glacier or that of a powerful river which flowed in Pliocene times, if so probably during the period of greatest elevation of the land, can- not be determined without much further knowledge of the contour of the old land-surface beneath the boulder clay than we now possess. The boulder clay is a tenacious brownish or bluish clay con- taining numerous subangular fragments of rocks of various kinds, and sometimes large boulders, transported from a distance, with lumps of hard chalk and Liassic and Oolitic fossils, usually water-worn. Its boulders are ice-scratched, and glacial striae may even be seen on its chalk pebbles. These are usually of hard chalk, red as well as white, very similar to that of the Yorkshire Wolds. The harder rock-fragments are of granite, syenite, quartzite, limestone, etc., from a distant source, and flints from the Chalk ; and the ‘boulders,’ as shown above, some- times take the form of huge masses of adjacent strata of a soft nature. Chalk in the boulder clay has even been quarried. At Toddington, a village situated nearly at the top of a hill which rises to a little over 500 feet above sea-level, there is a bed of gravel the precise geological age of which is uncertain. It has been described by Mr. Worthington Smith* from information given to him by the late Major W. C. Cooper of Toddington Manor. It is a flint-gravel with many 1 An account of this discovery was given by Mr. Henry Home in a paper read before the Geo- logical Society on 24 June 1903, and published since this was in type (Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. lix. 375-81). ; 2 In Man, the Primeval Savage, p. 69. 26 GEOLOGY rocks and fossils drifted from a distance, including basalt, porphyry, granite, slate, encrinital limestone, red sandstone, rocks and fossils from the Coal Measures, Lias, and Oolites, and ironstone from the Lower Greensand, etc. Major Cooper has also found in it ‘a good red-tinted example of Pectunculus glycimeris . . . apparently from the Crag,’ and ‘a patella from one of the hind legs of Cervus elaphus.’ This gravel appears from its constituents to be of glacial origin, but differs somewhat from the Middle Glacial sands and gravels below or intercalated with the boulder clay in Hertfordshire and elsewhere. It may possibly represent the plateau or ‘cannon-shot’ gravel which overlies the chalky boulder clay in many places in the eastern counties, and which ‘ may perhaps have resulted in part from the melting away of the ice-sheet that formed the clay.’* It is difficult to account for the presence in it of a bone of the red deer, but that may have been derived from beds of later Pliocene age, and it does not necessarily indicate a non-marine origin for the gravel.’ Bedfordshire was certainly beneath the sea at the close of the Glacial epoch, if not during the deposition of the boulder clay, and before the land again rose milder conditions had set in. There are evidences of successive stages of elevation before the present level was attained and the British Islands were finally cut off from the continent of Europe. It was during this period that much the greater part of our present fauna and flora was introduced from the continent, and that early man reached Britain, for his advent must have preceded the formation of the Straits of Dover by which England was finally severed from France. It was also during this period of elevation that the present river-system of Bedfordshire originated, except in the case of those streams which took the course of existent or pre-Glacial valleys not entirely filled up by boulder clay. Snow-fields had not altogether disappeared from Britain, for as our present mountainous districts rose higher and higher after their submergence to a depth of at least 2,000 feet, they were again covered by ice and snow, the glaciers from which have left ice- grooved rock-surfaces and moraines as evidence of their passage down the valleys. In the lowlands the rainfall was probably copious, and as the rivers in the midland and eastern counties flowed over boulder clay, percolation would be small and most of the rain which fell would flow off the surface and make the rivers large and swift and the rate of denu- dation much greater thanit isnow. This is the period of the formation of the older river-gravels, much of the material of which was derived from the erosion of the boulder clay, the clay being carried down the swift-flowing streams in suspension, leaving sheets of gravel, and being deposited as alluvium when the current became less swift. The river Ouse in its passage across the county flows in a valley 1-H. B. Woodward, Geohgy of England and Wales, ed. 2, p. 510. : 2 Since the above was in type we have seen, near the summit of the hill west of Toddington, exposures of this bed of gravel and sand which we consider to be a local development of the boulder clay (the higher part here) into which the bed merges. 27 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of Recent alluvium usually flanked on either side by Pleistocene gravel forming a bed from Io to 20 feet thick resting on Oolitic strata at a considerably higher level than the present surface of the river. Between Felmersham and Bedford the river is very sinuous, below Oakley the gravel exceeds a mile in width, and below Bedford its width exceeds 2 miles, in places extending to 4 miles. At Tempsford, where the Ivel joins the Ouse, the bed of gravel narrows to about a mile in width. The Ivel and the Hiz have formed similar but less extensive beds of gravel along their courses, and so has the Lea, the town of Luton being situated on such a bed about half a mile in width, which extends, though narrower for the most part, to above Leagrave Marsh for some distance beyond the present source of this river. The old river-gravels of the Ouse near Bedford have been described by Sir Charles Lyell in his Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.’ It was at Biddenham, about 2 miles west of Bedford, that in 1861 Mr. James Wyatt first found the earliest traces of man in these gravels which here form the capping of a low hill nearly encircled by one of the windings of the river. Sir Joseph Prestwich had ascertained that the valley was bounded on both sides by Oolitic strata capped by boulder clay through which it had cut its way, and also that the gravel ‘ con- tained bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bos, equus, and cervus, which animals he therefore inferred must have been posterior in date to the boulder clay.’ In the same gravel many land and fresh- water shells had been found by Sir John Evans. These discoveries induced Mr. Wyatt to very carefully watch the excavation of the gravel from day to day for some months, and at last he saw two well-formed implements thrown out by the workmen ‘ from the lowest bed of stratified gravel and sand, 13 feet thick, containing bones of the elephant, deer, and ox, and many freshwater shells.’ The implements occurred at the base of the gravel and rested immediately on Oolitic limestone at a height of 40 feet above the present level of the river. Since then Mr. Wyatt found several other flint tools in this gravel, and also a freshwater mollusc, Hydrobia marginata, which occurs in the south of France but no longer inhabits the British Isles. Remains of E/ephas antiquus have been dis- covered in the same gravel at Biddenham and elsewhere, and ‘ at Sum- merhouse Hill, which lies east of Bedford, lower down the valley of the Ouse, and four miles from Biddenham,’ Mr. Wyatt obtained ‘a flint implement associated with bones and teeth of hippopotamus.’ Sir Charles Lyell concluded that the Bedford sections ‘teach us that the fabricators of the antique tools and the extinct Mammalia coeval with them, were post-glacial, or, in other words, posterior to the grand submergence of central England beneath the waters of the glacial sea.’ The most important discovery of flint implements in the county is that of Mr. Worthington G. Smith at Caddington, an account of which 1 First edition (1863), pp. 163-6 ; 4th ed. (1873), pp. 214-7. The quotations here given are from this, the last, edition. 28 GEOLOGY is given in his work, Man, the Primeval Savage (1894). Caddington lies nearly at the head of a dry valley which must have been excavated by a stream at one time flowing past Kinsbourne Green, Harpenden, and Sandridge, between the valleys of the Ver and Lea, and joining the Colne near Wilkins Green about midway between St. Albans and Hatfield, a distance, measured along the windings of the present valley, of 14 miles. This valley commenced in a swamp, outlying portions of which may have drained into the Lea on the east and the Ver on the west. Boulder clay then covered the hills; only one patch of it has been left in position within a mile of Caddington, but its former presence elsewhere in this district is proved by the occurrence of a clay- stained Gryphea and ice-scratched flints which must have been washed out of it, and by seams of the boulder clay itself which have been carried down to the horizon of the swamp. Close to the village ‘an ancient chalk valley, filled in with water-laid brick-earth . . . serpen- tine on plan, as if made by a brook, has been followed in its curved course, and dug out by the brickmakers for theclay.’ This appears to have led into the present dry valley of Ailey Green which joins the valley of the Ver at Friars Wash. The brickfields at Caddington are in loam or brick-earth overlying the Chalk, and it isin these that Mr. Worthington Smith has discovered a Paleolithic floor or old land-surface on which primeval man lived near a shallow lake or swamp on the margin of which he established a manufactory of tools and weapons of flint. The heaps of flints have been found which were gathered together for the purpose, the finished and unfinished implements, and the flakes which have been struck off them, and Mr. Smith has pieced together the implements and flakes and built up the original flint. Many of these are described and illustrated in his work, in which he says that his Caddington reattachments then numbered over five hundred. The Paleolithic workshops at Caddington are some feet beneath the present surface of the ground. The brick-earth in which they lie is mixed in places with Reading and other Tertiary clays and pebbles which have been washed into it from an old land-surface, and it fre- quently shows evidence of strong current-action, while around are patches of re-deposited chalk-with-flints and long stretches of red clay-with-flints, chiefly on the higher ground. In one section one workshop was seen a few feet above another, the older one having been covered up by an accumulation of brick-earth, on the surface of which the industry was again carried on. ‘The descent of the red-brown stony clay,’ Mr. Smith says, ‘finally drove the Paleolithic people away from the position.’ And from the way in which the implements were left, finished and un- finished, and the presence of heaps of unworked flints, he is of opinion that the workmen were driven away in a hurry. The implements found in and about these Palzolithic workshops, which are of lustrous flint, are not the oldest known to occur in this neighbourhood ; for others, ochreous in colour and more primitive in 29 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE type, are found here and there in the brick-earth, having been washed down from the higher land with the material by which the Palzolithic floor was covered up. But little of this higher land now exists, Cadding- ton, the site of which then was near the bottom of the valley, being now nearly at the top of the hill. A flint from this brown drift has been found with apparent ice-scratchings, one of which stops suddenly at an artificially-flaked surface, showing that the scratches were made before the flint was chipped ; and neither here nor elsewhere has a glacial scratch or groove been seen on an artificially-worked surface. Nowhere can evidence be found of a pre-Glacial flint-chipping animal ; but man may have existed for ages before he acquired the art of chipping flints to a fine edge and so first left evidence of his presence. The ochreous implements found in the brick-earth of the Cadding- ton hillside are probably of the same geological age as the older imple- ments of the valley-gravels. Both date back to an earlier period than that of the deposition of the beds in which they occur, having been washed into these beds from a pre-existing land surface ; but the lustrous implements were fashioned during intervals of non-deposition of the brick-earth, the men who made them being contemporary with that formation. While the brick-earth is mostly if not altogether water-laid, the clay-with-flints which caps the hills of Upper Chalk has a very different origin. It is the residue of the Chalk left after its dissolution by water holding carbonic acid in solution, and also of Tertiary and more recent clays which formerly covered the Chalk. Its formation has doubtless been going on during the whole of the time that the Chalk has been above the level of the sea, and it is still proceeding, but it may generally be considered as of (post-Glacial) Pleistocene and Recent age. It is a stiff brown and red clay containing unworn flints, which are often much broken up by frost and by the plough, and its presence may be recognized in ploughed fields by the soil appearing to consist of little else than broken flints. The surface of the Chalk, except when covered by an impervious stratum, is exceedingly uneven, owing to its unequal dissolu- tion, and the clay-with-flints upon it may be of any thickness, from less than a foot when its surface is fairly even, to many feet when a‘ pipe’ is formed which the clay-with-flints fills up. A layer of flints in the Chalk may sometimes be seen extending across a pipe, let down a little where embedded in the clay. In an old chalk-pit on Farley Hill, now closed, a line of Chalk Rock nodules occupied a similar position in a broad but shallow pipe of brown clay. RECENT The Recent accumulations of Bedfordshire are unimportant, except in connection with the Neolithic flint implements which they contain. They consist almost entirely of the alluvium of existing rivers, which is nowhere of great extent. There are far wider stretches of alluvium in the valley of the Colne than there are in Bedfordshire in that of the 30 GEOLOGY Ouse, and it is not until after the Lea leaves the county that there is any considerable sheet of alluvium in its valley. Alluvium is a silty deposit of sandy clay or peaty mud, in which there may be seams of gravel. It contains recent land and freshwater shells, sometimes bones of existing animals, and occasionally Neolithic flint implements. These are fairly common on both sides of the Lea from its source at Leagrave to its outflow in the Thames. Many such implements have been found in the county, but as they do not occur in regularly-stratified deposits, usually being found on the surface of the ground or just under the sur- face-soil, and occasionally in alluvium, their consideration rightly belongs to the domain of Pre-historic Archeology. EARLY NOTICES OF BEDFORDSHIRE GEOLOGY The earliest notices of the geology of Bedfordshire relate to strata of economic importance, to petrifying earth, and to mineral springs. The soil of the county was mentioned so early as 1615;° petrifying earth at ‘ Aspley-Gowiz’ (Guise) near Woburn claimed much attention from the year 1660,” and the fullers’ earth of Woburn from the year 1662.’ In 1680° it was stated that a gold mine had been discovered at ‘ Pollux Hill’ near Silsoe, and the statement was repeatedly copied, even being mentioned as a fact in Calvert’s Gold Rocks of Great Britain and Ireland (1853). Although the Society of Mines Royal seized the mine and granted a lease of it, the ‘ gold’ was merely flakes of mica in drifted stones occurring in a bed of gravel. On the Ordnance Map (old series) ‘Gold Mine’ marks the position north-east of Pollox Hill in a field which is still called Gold Close. A petrifying spring at Barton was first mentioned in 1738 ;° mineral springs generally were frequently alluded to from the year 1808,’ some dozen localities for them being mentioned in various works ; and ferru- ginous water at Priestley Bog near Woburn was analyzed by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1813.” It is probably of the same origin as the mineral water of Flitwick Moor and somewhat similar in composition. The Totternhoe Stone seems to have been first described in 1820 ;° and although Professor Henslow called attention to the value of phosphatic nodules for manure in 1845, the ‘coprolites’ of Bedfordshire do not appear to have been noticed until 1866.” 1 John Speed’s [Description of England and Wales): ‘Bedfordshire.’ (Without title-page or pagination.) ? Childrey’s Britannia Baconica, p. 86. 3 Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England, p. 114. * Abbot’s Essay on Metallic Works, p. 203. (Not seen ; referred to in Calvert’s Gold Rocks, p. 101, under the above date. See also p. 109, in which he gives a list of unauthenticated gold localities.) 5 Atlas Geographicus, 1. 150. ® Batchelor’s Agriculture of the County of Bedford, p. 15. 7 Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, p. 291. = bbe 8 E. Hanmer, ‘Letter describing the Totternhoe Stone,’ 4m. Phils. xvi. 59. (It was in this year that William Smith published his Geolgical Map of Bedfordshire, the earliest geological map of the county. S26 Hf -_ P. B. Brodie, ‘On a Deposit of Phosphatic Nodules at Sandy in Bedfordshire’ ; Geol. Mag. iii. 153-5. (With analysis by Dr. Voelcker-) 3! A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The first mention of Bedfordshire fossils seems to have been in the year 1728, and since then much work has been done on the palzonto- logy of the county, the results having been given in numerous papers. The chief interest in the geology of Bedfordshire has continued to lie in the economic products and the fossils of its strata, but it was thought advisable to devote the most attention in the preceding pages to the geological history of the county, and especially to the physical changes which it appears to have undergone. 1 Dr. John Woodward, 4 Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England, ii. 93, 104. See also vol. i. (1729), pt. 1, pp. 60, 62 ; pt. 2, pp. 67, 72. 32 PALZONTOLOGY EDFORD is a county of comparatively little interest to the vertebrate paleontologist, although it is probable that if the remains of reptiles from the Oxford Clay were collected as care- fully as they have been in the neighbouring county of Hunting- don, the number of species from that formation might be very largely increased. Apparently only two species of fossil vertebrates—one a plesiosaur and the other a reptile of unknown affinity—have been named on the evidence of Bedfordshire specimens. ‘The four horizons from which vertebrate fossils have been obtained in the county are the Pleistocene gravels of the valley of the Ouse near Bedford, the Cam- bridge Greensand, the Lower Greensand beds of Potton and the Oxford Clay. Most, if not all, of the vertebrate fossils in the Potton Sands are derived from older formations, chiefly the Kimeridge Clay, and they are therefore of much less interest than would be the case were they native to the deposit in which they occur. The occurrence of mammalian remains in the gravels of the Ouse valley was first recorded by the late Mr. James Wyatt,’ whose collection now belongs to the corporation of Bedford. The most important pits whence the remains were obtained are those of Cardington, Harrowden, Biddenham and Kempston. The species recorded by Mr. Wyatt (many of whose specimens were submitted to Sir R. Owen) are as follows :— The wild ox or aurochs (Bos taurus primigenius), the red deer (Cervus elaphus), the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), the Pleistocene hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius major), the woolly rhinoceros (Rhinoceros antt- guitatis), the straight-tusked elephant (E/ephas antiquus) and an undeter- mined species of bear. Specimens in the Wyatt collection are referred to the mammoth (Edephas primigenius), Pleistocene bison (Bos priscus), and cave-bear (Ursus spelaus). As I learn from private information, the Chalk—notably its middle and lower divisions—has yielded remains of fishes. Among these, the ridged and pustulated quadrangular crushing teeth of the ray-like Prychodus are by no means uncommon, as are the pointed teeth of sharks of the genus Lamna, while those of another type of shark, Corax, are more rarely met with. Other remains of fishes have been referred to the genera Cimolichthys and Enchodus. 1 See Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. xvii. 366 (1861), xviii. 113 (1862), xx. 183 (1864). I 33 5 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Two reptiles have also been identified from the Chalk of the county, namely the common Cretaceous fish-lizard Ichthyosaurus campy- lodon, of which an imperfect jaw is known from the Totternhoe Stone at Chalton ; and the large short-necked pliosaurian Po/yptychodon interruptus, of which the large fluted conical teeth occur in the Chalk-marl. I am informed that Mr. W. Ransom of Hitchin has in his collec- tion remains of the cave-lion (Felis /eo spelea) and wild horse (Equus caballus fossilis) from Langford. Mr. J. S. Elliott has shown me a tooth of the above-mentioned saurian Ichthyosaurus campylodon and another of a shark from the Cam- bridge Greensand of Henlow ; and the coprolite-pits in that formation have doubtless yielded many other vertebrate remains similar to those from Cambridgeshire. Among the reptilian remains from the Potton Sands is included the base of a dinosaurian skull, described by Professor H. G. Seeley * as Craterosaurus pottonensis ; it is too imperfect to afford decisive evidence as to the affinity of the animal to which it belonged. Bones and teeth of the great three-toed bipedal reptile of the Wealden, the Iguanodon, occur not uncommonly in these deposits; as well as those of its carnivorous cousin Mega/osaurus. Crocodiles are represented by the huge Dacosaurus (or Geosaurus) maximus, of which the conical and carinated teeth have been washed out of the Kimeridge Clay and reburied in these deposits. Remains belonging to both groups of the great marine saurians characteristic of the Secondary period are also common in the Potton Sands. Of the ichthyosaurs, or group in which the head is large, the neck short, the eyes furnished with a ring of bones, and the bones of the paddles articulated together in a pavement-like manner, the Cambridge Museum possesses a fine series of remains from these deposits. Of the second group, or plesiosaurs, in which the neck is often long and the bones of the paddles are of more normal type, several forms are known. Among the long-necked and small-headed types are Colymbosaurus trochanterius, C. brachistospondylus and Murenosaurus trun- catus, all of which occur typically in the Kimeridge Clay. From the same formation are derived the large triangular teeth of P/osaurus—a short-necked and large-headed member of the group—which are of such common occurrence in the Potton beds. Scales, spines, palates and teeth of several kinds of Jurassic fishes are likewise met with in the Potton beds. Among these it will suffice to mention the large button-like teeth and polished rhomboidal scales of the Kimeridgian ganoid Lepidotus maximus, the palates of the pycno- dont ganoid Gyrodus cuviert, the elongated crushing teeth of the shark Hybodus obtusus, derived from the Kimeridge or Oxford Clay, and the dental plates of Ischyodus townsendi, a species belonging to the same group as the modern chimera, whose remains occur typically in the Portland Limestone of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. 1 Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc. xxx. 183 (1874). 34 PALZONTOLOGY From the Oxford Clay of Bedford the late Professor J. Phillips described the fore-limb of a long-necked plesiosaurian under the name of Plesiosaurus eurymerus. The species, of which nearly perfect skeletons have subsequently been obtained from the same formation in Huntingdon- shire, is characterized by the great width and shortness of the upper bone (humerus) of this limb, and is now known as Cryptoclidus eurymerus. Another plesiosaurian, Pe/oneustes philarchus, which is nearly related to Pliosaurus, is represented in the Oxford Clay of the county by an imperfect skeleton (now in the British Museum) from Kempston. Finally, an imperfect dermal spine in the same collection from the Oxford Clay of Bedford indicates the occurrence of an armoured dinosaur probably belonging to the genus commonly known as Omosaurus. 35 ope: a ee Ay eli | 01 |= eet 12210 “TA 359M 9SNO “TTT wpa ods 2807 asng Ate 120) Rea auaN “Ty OG L SLOIYLSIO IVOINVLOS 3O LS!I71 = 1 ,0T.O "'SLOIYULSICG IVOINVLOG TUIHSGUOMGad JO ALOLSIA GQNVION3 40 SAILNNOD FHL 40 AYOLSIH VIYOLOIA 3HL “Aires OC orargeuy jwonqde Boa qPangmpy “11 BOTANY T must be confessed that although a considerable proportion of the species of plants which actually occur have been put on record, yet their distribution through the various parishes of the county is at present inadequately known, and the knowledge of such critical genera as the brambles, roses and eyebrights, the segregation of which has during the last years of the nineteenth century been made the object of special study, is most imperfect. The publication of this sketch of the flora of the county, incomplete as it avowedly is, will, it is to be trusted, stimulate local workers to fill up the lacunz, and to prepare a complete flora such as exists for so many other counties. It is true a very excellent work on the subject, the Flora Bedfordiensis by the Rev. Charles Abbot, D.D., of Oakley Raynes, was published in 1798, but necessarily a work issued at that date is insufficient in detail, and has an archaic nomenclature. Moreover shortly after its publication the Enclosure Act led to a considerable change in the vegetation of the county from the introduction of hedges as separating boundaries to the fields, and from the enclosure of commons, some of which had at one time a heathy growth, but which soon under the influence of cultivation lost much of their original flora, and either as pasture or arable land became like their neighbours in possessing few plants of interest ; indeed so rare has the true heath (Erica cinerea) become that it now exists, it is said, in only one locality in the county. The higher cultivation of arable land and the more complete system of drainage have likewise been factors in gradually eliminating some of the original species from their homes and replacing them by less interesting and more widely dis- tributed plants. Nor is the process arrested ; each decade threatens some local species, and witnesses the encroachment of common plants. Need we wonder then that several plants mentioned by Abbot have either become extinct, or are now so scarce as to have evaded the observation of recent botanists. The area of the county is small, indeed only Hunts, Middlesex and Rutland are smaller in England. Compared with other counties its flora is small also ; there are several reasons, apart from the mere extent of surface, why this should be so, the chief of these perhaps being the excellent condition of tillage and cultivation of the surface soil, which necessarily means that the aboriginal features of the flora have long ago disappeared ; while, although so much of the surface is below two hun- dred feet in altitude, yet the drainage is so complete that few marshes, 37 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE and still fewer bogs, remain. Bedfordshire has neither any large expanses. of water such as the East Anglian broads, with their interesting aquatic vegetation, nor any rocky escarpment on which a rupestral flora could grow, as in the Derbyshire dales; indeed the limestone of the Great Oolite only comes to the surface in small and widely separated patches, and were it not for the long line of the Chalk escarpment, and the elevations of the Greensand at Woburn and Sandy, the flora would possess but few species of an attractive character. In the few pages allotted to this subject it is desired to give the salient features of the county botany and to show how they compare with those of some of the border- ing counties. In its general character Bedfordshire has much in common with the botany of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, since the dominating feature in each is the long range of the Chalk hills, and the picturesque escarpment of the Lower Greensand about Woburn also extends into Buckinghamshire. As there is no sea coast, there is, with the exception of a few casuals, no maritime flora. The physical character of the county is very varied for so small an area, but for botanical purposes the geological formations offer naturally two main divisions which are not dispropor- tionate in size. Putting it briefly, the northern division is clay, with a river valley of alluvium, gravel and limestone ; the southern division has a lighter soil, which in turn falls into two divisions, Greensand and Chalk, with a slice of Gault sandwiched between them. In the following obser- vations the terms northern and southern divisions will denote these geological characteristics. In the north most of the hills are capped with Boulder Clay, which also forms a broad patch between the windings of the Ouse. The Oxford Clay comes to the surface south of the county town as far as Lidlington, where it is succeeded by the Lower Greensand. Following the course of the Ouse, besides the gravels and alluvium there are exposures in bands of Oolitic limestone and Oxford Clay and Cornbrash—the latter forming a persistent bed of slight thickness and about a quarter of a mile wide. The Lower Greensand enters the county at Leighton Buzzard and crosses it about mid-way. Aspley Guise, Lidlington, Millbrook, Haynes, Southill, Sandy and Everton are on its northern edge. At Leighton, Heath, Tingrith, Pulloxhill, Silsoe, Campton, Shefford, Eyworth and Potton, the Greensand is contiguous with the Gault, which extends in a narrow band from Eaton Bray on the south-west to Arlesey on the east. Along the line of contact the surface soil is often of a mixed character, chiefly owing to farming operations. ‘The Lower Chalk suc- ceeds the Gault at Dunstable, Eggington, Chalgrave, Toddington, Harl- ington, Hexton, Stondon, Arlesey and Stotfold. The Chalk without flints is well developed in the south of the county. A flora typical of the Chalk is found on the downs of Luton and Dunstable, and the characteristic orchids are plentiful in those localities but are not confined to them, The bee (Opsrys apifera), the fragrant (Habenaria conopsea), 38 BOTANY butterfly (H. ch/oroleuca), and the helleborines Epipactis latifolia and E. violacea are not infrequent in the northern division, owing apparently to the calcareous nature of the subsoil in many parts. Among plants which seem to occur only on the Chalk are the pasque flower (Anemone Pulsa- ti/la), which flourishes on the slopes of the chalk combes near Barton, the blue milk vetch (Astragalus danicus), the horse-shoe vetch (Hippo- crepis comosa), the squinancy wort (4sperula cynanchica), the field rag- wort (Senecio campestris), the mountain cat’s-foot (Antennaria dioica), the Canterbury bell (Campanula glomerata), the felwort (Gentiana Amarella), and the ground pine (Ajuga Chamepitys). In the list of chalk-favouring plants there are possibly others that are practically limited to the Chalk. The Lower Greensand is responsible for several plants which in its absence would be rare or non-existent in the county. It is a warm and greedy soil, which in parts will grow little more than pines and larches, but where it is mixed with clay a very productive loam is formed, well adapted for market-gardening, as at Biggleswade, Sandy and Potton. The phosphatic nodules known as coprolites are found at the base of the Greensand at Sandy, Shillington, Sutton, Potton and Ampt- hill. Two other seams of coprolites occur in the Gault near Barton, but as they are usually found at some depth it would be difficult to say how far the coprolites affect the character of the flora. Among the plants which have been found only on the Greensand are the silver cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea), the saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria), the sheep’s scabious (‘fastone montana), the bilberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus), and the lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis). In the list there are several others that pre- fer the Greensand, and possibly some of them are limited to it. The grasses Aira precox and A. caryophyllea occur not only on the Greensand, but also on a patch of Tertiary sand in the south of the county. The river Ouse at Bedford is about go feet above sea-level. Luton rises from 350 to 450 feet, Dunstable to 483 feet, and Dunstable downs to 799 feet. The northern part of the county is hilly, though the heights rarely exceed 300 feet. In the centre and on the eastern side the county is flat right away into Cambridgeshire, but it can hardly be described as fen country. For the last hundred years, especially, the county has been under very high cultivation, particularly in the market-gardening districts. The most interesting piece of marshland is undoubtedly Flitwick Moor, which is a peat bog on Greensand, associated with the river Flitt, and containing a chalybeate water derived from the ferruginous subsoil in contact with vegetable acids. At Gravenhurst there was formerly an interesting moor where such plants as the marsh arrow-grass (Triglochin palustre) and the marsh helleborine (Epipactis palustris) grew. Mr. C. Crouch reports that the former is still found on what survives of the moor, though the orchid is apparently extinct in the county ; and in referring to such plants as the flea sedge (Carex pulicaris), the butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris), and the grass of Parnassus (Parnassia palustris), which he found on the dry chalk of the Markham Hills, he 39 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE speaks of them as seedling survivals of an ancient bog which filled the present valley. In August, rgo1, Mr. Saunders, after many years’ search, at last found Erica cinerea in a green lane near Pepperstock. There was only a small patch, and it was evidently a relic of the flora of a large common that formerly existed. At Stevington, Ampthill, Potton and elsewhere there are remains of ancient marshland, which would proba- bly repay more careful examination than they have received. Some of the older woods contain interesting native plants, such as the wild licorice (Astragalus glycyphyllos), the crested cow wheat (Melampyrum cris- tatum), the nettle leaved bell flower (Campanula Trachelium), and the birds’-nest orchid (Neottia Nidus-avis). The following table corrected to the present date shows the number of species which are reported on good authority to have been seen growing in a wild state in the various counties, the standard adopted being practically that of the last edition of the London Catalogue, which has already been followed in the accounts of the botany of the counties of Northampton, Buckingham, Berks, etc. Beds Bucks Herts Northants Native plants . . . . . . 762 845 795 765 Denizens and colonists . . . 85 97 95 85 847 942 890 850 In addition many named varieties, several hybrids, and many species of casual occurrence, or undoubtedly alien, have been recorded. Taking the London Catalogue as a standard of specific limitation, the total number of British species is about 2,000, but of these 250 are not native, 144 are confined to the coast, while at least 200 are found onl in northern latitudes, or only extend to the same latitude as Bedfordshire in mountainous situations in the west of England and Wales, 17 are exclusively Irish, and about 20 belong to the Channel Isles, and are not real constituents of the British flora. It will therefore be seen that about 1,350 species remain which might be found in the county ; but such is not the case, and some of the influencing reasons have already been given, while others, such as soils and altitudes, need not now be referred to. Bedfordshire, although it has no species peculiar to itself, however possesses some plants of considerable interest, among which may be men- tioned the great pig-nut (Carum Bulbocastanum), which is limited to Bucks, Herts and Cambridgeshire, and is found locally in some plenty in arable fields on the Dunstable downs ; the crested cow-wheat (Melam- pyrum cristatum), which apparently has its western limit in the county (unless indeed it really occurs in Bucks and Hants, whence it has been reported, but on somewhat uncertain evidence), occurs in some of the woodlands. Another eastern species, the sulphur clover (Trifolium ochro- /eucon, Huds.), which occurs sparingly, also has its western range in this county and Surrey. Another very local species is the box (Buxus semper- virens), which by some authorities is considered to be native on the Dunstable downs, and in a few other localities such as Box Hill in 40 BOTANY Surrey, at Edlesborough and Ellesborough in Bucks, etc., but which in most of its habitats in Britain is certainly an introduced shrub. A specially interesting species is the grass Phleum phalaroides, which at one time was wrongly called P. Boehmeri, and has a peculiarly restricted area in Britain in the counties of Beds, Herts, Essex, Cambridge and Suffolk. The beautiful pasque flower (Anemone Pulsatilla) still occurs in the locality given by Abbot, on Barton Hills, with the mountain cat’s-foot (Antennaria dioica), a very rare species in the southern midlands, although known in Northants, Oxfordshire, etc. A rare species of charad, Nite//a mucronata, was found by Mr. C. Davis in 1882 in the Ouse. BOTANOLOGIA As will be gathered from the foregoing notes the foundation of Bedfordshire botany was laid by the Rev. Charles Abbot, D.D., who was born probably at Winchester about 1761, and was vicar of Oakley Raynes and Goldington, Beds. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1793 and in 1798 published the Flora of Bedfordiensis. He became D.D. Oxon in 1802. His herbarium is still preserved at Turvey Abbey, and has been critically examined by Mr. R. A. Pryor, B.A., F.L.S. (the author of the Flora of Herts), who published some interest- ing details respecting it in the ‘fournal of Botany, x. (1881) 40 et seq. ; and Mr. E. M. Holmes, F.L.S., has also reported on the lichens and alge. Dr. Abbot was a frequent correspondent of Sir James E. Smith, to whom he sent many specimens, several of which are figured and described in English Botany. He also noticed Asarum europeum in the Thames valley. The Flora Bedfordiensis included not only the flowering plants and the higher cryptogams, but also the mosses, liverworts, lichens, alge and fungi ; though, owing to changes already alluded to, many species are no longer to be found in the stations mentioned by Abbot, and some are, it is to be feared, no longer existing in the county. These missing species include the fen orchis (Ma/axis paludosa), a tiny plant which once grew on the sphagnum bogs at Potton, the cranberry (Vaccinium Oxycoccos or Oxycoccos quadripetala), the petty whin (Genista anglica), the Lancashire asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum), which grows at Brickhill just outside our area, the black bog rush (Schaenus nigricans), the white beaked bog rush (Rynchospora alba), the deer’s club- tush (Scirpus c@espitosus), the marsh St. John’s wort (Hypericum elodes), the marsh fern (Lastrea or Dryopteris Thelypteris), the horse-tail (Eguzse- tum hyemale) and the flea bane (Pulicaria vulgaris) ; and the extinction or diminution of these may all be attributed to drainage or cultivation. Among others which cultivation has either extirpated or rendered much more rare, are the maiden pink (Dianthus deltoides), the cress (Draba muralis), the star thistle (Centaurea Calcitrapa) and the grass Glyceria distans ; the latter Abbot called Poa retroflexa. The misnomers in Abbot’s Flora! include Spergula pentandra, by which probably a form See papers in Fournal of Botany (1881), pp. 40-6, 66-73. I 41 6 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of the corn spurrey (S. sativa) was meant ; Carex montana, for which Abbot cites Leers, but Leers’ C. montana is really C. ericetorum. ‘The specimen in his herbarium is immature, but is probably C. pi/ulifera, and Abbot may well have been led astray by Linnzus, since the C. montana of Linneus’ Flora Suecica is correctly named, though the C. montana of the Species Plantarum is really C. pilulifera. Galium pusillum, by which early British botanists meant the plant now identified with G. sylvestre of Pollich, is not that species but only a form of G. Mollugo. His G. erectum is also a form of G. Mo/lugo, L. Abbot’s Cerastium pumilum is not the plant of Curtis but probably a form of C. semidecandrum, which is still plentiful in the localities he gives, and as we gather from his herbarium where C. semidecandrum is represented by another species. The Po/ypodium cristatum from Potton Marshes and Aspley Wood is not Lastrea cristata, but L. spinulosa, the Callitriche autumnalis is C. hamulata ; the former plant is absent from the midlands, and his C. verna is probably C. obtusangula. ‘The wild everlasting pea (Lathyrus latifolus), which he records from Haynes and Bromham, is, as his herbarium shows, only L. sy/vestris, which still occurs in the county, and sometimes with broader leaflets than those of the southern plant. His Galum spurium is really G. tricorne. His Veronica agrestis is V. polita, the grass Festuca fluitans is Glyceria pedicellata, Towns. ‘funcus sylvaticus is represented by Lwuzula vernalis, DC.; his Vicia lathyroides is really V. angustifolia, and Ervum tetraspermum is Vicia hirsuta, Gray ; his Hieracium murorum is probably H. sciaphilum; his Viola canina is V. Riviniana ; his Orchis latifolia is O. incarnata; his Carex distans is C. binervis ; his C. pamicea is represented by a specimen of C. remota ; and C. cespitosa is C. Goodenowi. Mr. J. McLaren, formerly gardener to Mr. Whitbread at Southill Park, where his herbarium is preserved, was a careful investigator. The Rev. W. Crouch, sometime curate of Lidlington, seems to have made an extensive collection of plants between the years 1841 and 1846. His herbarium is in the possession of Mr. Charles Crouch of Ridgmont, himself for many years an industrious observer and re- corder. The Rev. W. W. Newbould, M.A., F.L.S., the well known botanist, occasionally visited the county, and has left some records which are quoted as the Newbould MS. He supplied a considerable number of records of Bedfordshire plants to Topographical Botany. Mr. W. Hillhouse, Professor of Botany at Mason College, Bir- mingham, was formerly at the Bedford Modern School, and when there compiled a list of the county plants in which several appeared for the first time as Bedfordshire species. Mr. James Saunders, A.L.S., of Luton, has been one of the most assiduous workers in recent times at the flowering plants of Bedford- shire, of which he published a very complete list of species found in the south of the county in the ournal of Botany for 1883. He has also worked at the Characee, of which he discovered the rare To/ypella 42 BOTANY intricatd for the first time as a Bedfordshire plant, as well as several commoner forms. He has turned his attention also to the mosses, and more recently to the Mycetozoa. Mr. T. B. Blow of Welwyn, Herts, made some additions to the county flora which were published in the Report of the Botanical Record Club. He also found Phalaris phalaroides in the county. Mr. R. A. Pryor, F.L.S., the author of the Flora of Herts, added several plants to the county list including Vicia gracilis and Potamogeton praelongus. He also made a critical examination of Abbot’s herbarium and published accounts of it in the "fourna/ of Botany, in which also ap- peared a valuable paper in 1875 on the plants of the county. The following are the principal sources from which the informa- tion given in the following pages has been in the main collated :— Flra Bedfordiensis, by Charles Abbot, M.A., F.L.S. (1798), abbreviated (Abbot) ; Plant Records of J. McLaren of Cardington ; Plant Records of William Hillhouse, F.L.S., 1875 and 1876 ; List of the Wild Flowers of South Bedfordshire ; also a List of Plants observed in North Beds, but at that time unknown in South Beds, by James Saunders, 1881, abbreviated (J.S.) ; Bedfordshire Plant List, by J. Saunders and A. Ransom (1882) ; ‘The Wild Flowers of Bedfordshire’ (List published in the Luton Advertiser), by James Saunders (1900); Plant Records by Charles Crouch, up to 1901 ; Plant Lists collated, with additions by local observers, and noted by the botanical secretaries to the Beds Natural History Society, by J. Hamson, 1886 to 1901 ; various Herbaria referred to in the lists; Records of Musci, Characez, Hepatice and Mycetozoa, by James Saunders ; Hymenomycetes and other fungi, by J. Hamson, 1885 to 1901, who has also made a collection of Mosses which, with the records by Dr. S. Hoppus Adams, mostly refer to the northern division ; Records of Flowering Plants noticed by G. Claridge Druce, abbreviated (Druce). THE RIVER DRAINAGE AS A BASIS FOR THE DIVISION OF THE COUNTY INTO BOTANICAL DISTRICTS In the lists of the Flora of the various British counties which have been published during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it has been the almost universal custom to select the river drainage of each county as a means of subdividing it into districts, thereby showing the plant distribution in a more scientific manner, and enabling the student of phyto-geography to more easily compile a flora of a river basin which might be contained in several counties. There is no doubt such a plan possesses considerable advantages, but it also presents difficulties, and these are especially felt when the water partings are obscure, but they are not greater or indeed so formidable as those which are met with if the boundaries were made conterminous with a geological stratum or a surface soil. Therefore in order to bring the county into line with those of its neighbours which have a published flora, a plan is here suggested for. dividing Bedfordshire into districts based upon its drainage, which shall as far as possible be uniform with those adopted for the counties of Herts, Buckingham, and Northants. Bedfordshire is contained in the two great basins of the Ouse and Thames, but by far the larger portion belongs to the former river, which has a most erratic course through the county and forms its western border for about three miles ; it has a tributary in the south-west in the Ouzel, and a considerable feeder in the Ivel with its tributaries the Hiz and Flitt. In the north- 43 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE east of the county a small portion about Podington and Wymington is drained by a brook, which belongs to the Nene drainage, and corre- sponds with the Nene B district of Druce’s Flora of Northamptonshire ; a Narrow strip on the eastern side containing the parishes of Cockayne, Hatley, Wrestlingworth, and a portion of Edworth belongs to the Cam drainage, itself, like the Nene, a tributary of the main Ouse. We may therefore subdivide the county into seven botanical districts, namely :— (1. THE NENE, which has its counterpart in the Harper’s Brook or Nene B district of Druce’s Flora of Northamptonshire. 2. Tue East Ouss. 3. THe West Ouse, which has its counterpart in the Ouse district of Druce’s Flora of Northamptonshire and the Flora of Buckinghamshire (in preparation). 4. Tue Iver, which corresponds with the Ivel district, No. 2, of Pryor’s Flora of Hertfordshire. 5. Tue Cam, corresponding to district 1, the Cam, of Pryor’s Flora of Hertfordshire. (6. THE Ouzez, which corresponds with the same district in the Flora of Bucking- hamshire. Thames. 7. THE Lega, which has its counterpart in district No. 6 of Pryor’s Flora of Hertfordshire. The boundaries of the above districts are briefly as follows :— 1. Tue Nene District is a small portion in the north of the county containing the parishes of Podington, Wymington and Farndish, having its southern limitation in the Forty-foot Lane, which is practically the water-parting of the Nene and the Ouse drainage. Lotus tenuis is the only plant recorded for this area from near Podington. 2. Tue Easr Ouse Disrricr is bounded on the north by Northants, and on the east by Hunts as far as to Cold Arbour, which is about two miles east of Roxton. From Roxton to the Forty-foot Lane near Wymington Wold in the north, the separating line from the West Ouse district is traced by Florns Wood, between Wilden and Ravensden to Tilwick farm. ‘Then by Cross-end farm and Bletsoe Park, Harner Wood, and Souldrop village to the Nene boundary. The botany of this district is much less known than that of the other portions of the county. Keysoe Park and Melchbourne Woods should repay systematic search, and the river flora itself is sure to yield additional species to those recorded. ‘The gravelly soils should also prove remunerative. Among the interesting species recorded for the district are :-— Thalictrum flavum, L. Ouse tOrnithogalum pyrenaicum, L. Between Eaton Ranunculus fluitans, Lam. Ozse Socon and Thurkigh (Abbot), Keysoe Park tCentaurea Calcitrapa, L. Eaton Socon (Abbot) ; (Bot. Guide) not recently seen — nutans, L. Eaton (Bot. Guide) Cuscuta Trifolii, Bab. Basmeade (Pryor) Acorus Calamus, L. Ouse Hottonia palustris, L. Eaton Socon (Abbot) Orchis incarnata, L. Basmeade (Pryor) Thymus Chamedrys, Fries. Basmeade (Pryor) Calamagrostis Epigeios, Roth. Basmeade (Pryor) 3. Tue West Ouse Districr is bounded on the north and east by the district of the East Ouse which has been described. It is separated from the Nene district by the Forty-foot Lane to Dungey Corner, from which place to Nun Wood it is limited by the county of Northampton. At the latter place the county boundary of Bucks is followed by Harrold Lodge to the river Ouse, which then becomes the county boundary as far as to the vicinity of Newton Blossomville. Thence the Bucks boundary limits the West Ouse district until the road from Broad Green to North Crawley is t before a plant name means that the plant is recorded for one district only, * means probably extinct. A plant name in italics signifies that it is not native in the district. 44 BOTANY met with. From this point where the Ouzel district is reached the water-parting of the two districts is traced by Cranfield to Boughton End ; the Ouzel district is then replaced by the Ivel district, and the separating line is drawn along the Ampthill road to Malden, and thence by West End to Wilshamstead, Moggerhanger and Herring’s Green to Blunham Station, where it meets the East Ouse district near Roxton. The West Ouse district, although it includes the northern escarpment of the Lower Green- sand hills, is on the whole a very flat and low-lying area, chiefly on clay soils, or consisting of extensive alluvial deposits, and in many instances the strata are obscured by drift deposits, and for some distance the glacial clay obscures the porous bed-rock of the Lower Greensand, so that the flora of this area differs essentially from that of the Ivel and Ouzel districts, in which not only plants characteristic of arenaceous soils are well represented, but also those peculiar to or fond of cretaceous ground. Hence in this area Pelophilous or clay-loving plants naturally predominate. This district was however the one in which Dr. Abbot lived and in which the greater part of his research was made, so that many local plants are recorded for it. Among the species recorded for the district are :— Clematis Vitalba, L. - Thalictrum flavum, L. Common by the Ouse Ranunculus fluitans, Lam. Ouse — Lingua, L. Goldington, Oakley (Abbot) Myosurus minimus, L. Biddenham, Fenlake (Abbot) Helleborus foetidus, L. Steventon (Abbot) — viridis, L. Goldington (Abbot) Delphinium Consolida, L. Near Bedford (Abbot) Berberis vulgaris, L. Clapham, Milton Ernest, Honey Hills (Abbot) Nymphza alba, L. Ouse ; as well asa small pink- flowered form Papaver somniferum, L. By the railway, Turvey — Lecogqii, Lam. Cheiranthus Cheiri, L. Wall of Bedford Castle (Abbot) Alyssum calycinum, Jacq. Biddenham Sisymbrium Sophia, L. Common (Abbot) ; sporadic Diplotaxis muralis, DC. Railway Erysimum cheiranthoides, L. Near Bedford, etc. tLepidium latifolium, L. Kempston ; alien or in- correctly named Stellaria palustris, Retz. Ford End (Abbot) Saponaria officinalis, L. Bromham Silene noctiflora, L. Ozk/ey (Abbot) Sagina apetala, Ard. — nodosa, Fenzl. Steventon (Abbot) Cerastium arvense, L. Ford End (Abbot) Geranium columbinum, L. Biddenham (Abbot), etc. — lucidum, L. Ehtow, Caldwell (Abbot) — pyrenaicum, Burm. Ford End (Abbot) Genista tinctoria, L. Clapham, Steventon (Abbot) Cytisus scoparius, Link. Ampthill Ononis spinosa, L. Too abundant in stiff soils Anthyllis Vulneraria, L. Ozk/ey (Abbot) Trifolium medium, L. Bromham and Mitton (Abbot) — striatum, L. Biddenbam (Abbot) — ochroleucon, Huds. C/apham (Abbot) Astragalus glycyphyllus, L. Brombam, Oakley (Abbot) ; Turvey (Miss Higgins) Lotus tenuis, Waldst. and Kit. Near Bedford Stagsden, Brombam, 45 tVicia gracilis, Lois. Clapham (R. Pryor) Lathyrus Nissolia, L. Putnoe, Brombam (Abbot) — sylvestris, L. Bromham (Abbot) ; under the name L. /atifohus tGeum rivale, L. Putnoe Wood (Abbot) Crategus oxyacanthoides, Thuill. Near Bedford Sanguisorba officinalis, L. Fenlake (Abbot) Pyrus communis, 1. Thurleigh (Abbot) — Aria, Ehrh. Near Fenlake (Abbot) ; probably planted here tChrysosplenium alternifolium, L. (W. Crouch) Parnassia palustris. Svteventon, Turvey (Abbot) Sedum dasyphyllum, L. Ford End (McLaren) S. album, L. Steventon (Abbot) Drosera rotundifolia, L. Cat Hill, Ravensden Hippuris vulgaris, L. Ouse Lythrum Hyssopifolia, L. Oakley, Westfield (Abbot) Epilobium obscurum, Schreb. bould) — tetragonum, L. Estow (Pryor), Bedford *Cicuta virosa, L. Oakley Springs (Abbot) Smyrnium Olusatrum, L. — Ravensden, Oakley (Abbot) ; E/stoco Apium graveolens, L. Wishamstead, Goldington (Abbot) ; Edstocw — repens, Reichb. f. Green (Abbot) CEnanthe fistulosa, L. Ouse —- silaifolia, Bieb. Fenlake (Abbot) ; the true plant — fluviatilis, Colem. Ouse Carum segetum, Benth. and Hook. Clapham (Abbot) — Carui, L. Thurleigh (Abbot) Sium latifolium, L. Ouse tAnthriscus Cerefolium, Hoffm. Goldingron (Abbot) +Caucalis daucoides, L. Oakley, Westfield (Abbot) *_ Jatifalia, L. Oakley, Thurleigh (Abbot) Pimpinella major, Huds. Common (Abbot) var. dissecta, Druce. Twin Woods Adoxa Moschatellina, L. Céeat Hill, Ravensden, Lidlington Sambucus Ebulus, L. Between Brombam and Stagsden Lidlington Goldington Green, Ektow (New- Steventon, Goldington Goldington, A HISTORY OF Dipsacus pilosus, L. Goldington, Kempston (Abbot) Bidens cernua, L., var. minima. Kempston Pits (Abbot) Erigeron acre, L. Thurleigh, Biddenham (Abbot) Inula Helenium, L. Ravensden, Steventon (Abbot) ; Thurleigh Lane (Ransom), Cox’s Pits near Bedford (McLaren) Tanacetum vulgare, L. Bromham (Abbot) Pulicaria vulgaris, Gertn. Go/dington, Ravensden (Abbot) Carduus tenuiflorus, Curt. (Abbot) *Centaurea Calcitrapa, L. Biddenham (Abbot) Lactuca virosa, L. Near Bedford (Pryor), Houghton Conquest (C. Crouch) tMariana lactea, Hill (Silybum). Woods, Ampt- bill Park (J.8.) Crepis taraxacifolia, Thuill. Campanula Trachelium, L. — Rapunculoides, L. Common near Bedford UH.) Anagallis coerulea, Schreb. (Abbot) Samolus Valerandi, L. Ouse Lysimachia vulgaris, L. Vinca major, L. Ravensden, Clapham (Abbot) Menyanthes trifoliata, L. Kempston (Abbot) Blackstonia perfoliata, Huds. Brombam (Abbot) Pulmonaria officinalis, L. Between Thurkigh and Milton Ernest (Abbot) Cynoglossum officinale, L. Edtow, Cleat Hill Symphytum officinale, L., var. patens (Sibth). Ouse (Abbot) Cuscuta europea, L. Common (Abbot) Solanum nigrum, L. Garden ground Atropa Belladonna, L. Bromham (McLaren) ; doubtfully native Near Bedford Lidlington (Druce) Oakley, Westfield Linaria Elatine, Mill. Bromham, Clapham (Abbot) — spuria, Mill. Clapham, Bromham, Steventon (Abbot) — viscida, Minch. Oakley (Abbot) Limosella aquatica, L. Goldington Green (Abbot), Fenlake (McLaren) Antirrhinium majus, L. Bedford, Ektow (Abbot) Melampyrum cristatum, L. Common (Abbot), as in Twin Woods near Clapham Lathraza Squamaria, L. Oakey Hill Orobanche major, L. Ozk/ey (Abbot) Utricularia vulgaris, L. Brombam Verbena officinalis, L. Goldington, Wilden UH.) tMentha citrata, Ehrh. Wild in a ditch near Bedford (Abbot) Leonurus Cardiaca, L. Ford End (Abbot) Salvia pratensis, L. Near Ford End Farm (Abbot) +Stachys germanica, L. On a hill two miles from Bedford (Bot. Guide) ; ? if native Marrubium vulgare, L. Elstow (Abbot) Plantago arenaria, W. & K. Cardington Chenopodium urbicum, L. Near Bedford (Abbot) var. intermedium — hybridum, L. Mii] Lane, Bedjord (Abbot) t— strigosa, Huds. BEDFORDSHIRE Chenopodium murale, L. Common (Abbot) ; not so now Atriplex deltoidea, Bab. Ouse side Polygonum Bistorta, L. TAurleigh (Abbot) — minus, Huds. Goldington, Elstow (Abbot) Rumex maritimus, L. Go/dington Green (Abbot) — acutus, L. Bedford (Pryor) Daphne Laureola, L. Near Lid/ington (Druce) Euphorbia platyphyllos, L. Near Bedford (Abbot) Mercurialis annua, L. Ford End (McLaren) Salix triandra, L. Thurkeigh, Fenlake (Abbot) ; Bedford — purpurea, L. Thurleigh (Abbot) — rubra, Huds. Bedford (Bot. Guide) Hydrocharis Morsus-ranez, L. Fenlake (Abbot), Goldington (J.S.) 5 Ouse Spiranthes autumnalis, Rich. Thurleigh (Abbot) Ophrys apifera, Huds. Habenaria conopsea, Benth. Clapham (Abbot) — viridis, Br. Steventon, Thurleigh (Abbot) Neottia Nidus-avis, Rich. C/apham (Abbot), etc. Epipactis palustris, Crantz. Steventon (Abbot) Iris foetidissima, L. Bromham, Steventon (Abbot) Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus, L. C/apham (Abbot), Ravensden, Cranpield Polygonatum multiflorum, All. (Abbot) Fritillaria Meleagris, L. Bromham (Abbot) Paris quadrifolia, L. Renhold, Clapham, Thur- Leigh (Abbot) Colchicum autumnale, L. Ampthill Park Ruscus aculeatus, L. Oakley (Abbot) Typha angustifolia, L. Kuotting Green (Abbot), Lidlington (C. Crouch) Acorus Calamus, L. Ouse Alisma ranunculoides, L. Marston (Miss Steven- son) tPotamogeton pralongus, Wulf. Ouse (Pryor) — lucens, L., var. acuminatus. Ouse (J.S.) — compressum, L. Fen/ake (Abbot) Carex axillaris, Good. Fenlake (McLaren) — acuta, L. Fenlake (J.S.) Putnoe, Renhold (Abbot) Cardington, Thurleigh Calamagrostis Epigeios, Roth. Houghton Conquest — lanceolata, Roth. Sheer Hatch Wood (Abbot) Apera Spica-venti, Beauv. Ford End (Abbot) Bromus secalinus, L. Buryfeld, Bedford (Abbot) — commutatus, Schrad. Brombam (Abbot) tBrachypodium pinnatum, Beauv. Clapham (Abbot), Houghton Conguest Park (Bot. Guide) tGlyceria distans, Wahl. Hordeum sylvaticum, Huds, (Abbot) Lolium temulentum, L. Fenlake (Abbot) Asplenium Trichomanes, L. Cardington Clapham Lane (Abbot) Thurleigh, Putnoe Scolopendrium vulgare, Symons, Edstow, Lid- lington tBotrychium Lunaria, Sw. Oakky, Westfield (Abbot) tNitella mucronata, Kiitz. Jord (C. H. Davies) Tolypella glomerata, Leonh. (J.8.) River Ouse near Bed- Near Bedford BOTANY 4. Tue Iver Districr has for its boundaries those of the West Ouse district already described from near Roxton to Boughton End. At this place it touches the Ouzel district, from which it is separated by a line drawn across the county from Boughton End to Eversholt, Toddington, Chalgrave, and Chalton Cross; it then borders the Lea district along the Icknield Way until the Herts county boundary is reached, and this limits it as far as to Edworth. Here the Cam district comes in, and the water parting is traced by Dunton, and west of Eyworth, to Tadlow, where the Cambridge county border then limits it on the north as far as to Cold Arbour, at which point an arbitrary line is drawn across county to about a mile west of Tempsford, and thence southwards to Blunham station. The district is also watered by the Flitt and Hiz streams. ‘The greatest elevation is about 530 feet near Streatley, but a large extent of the area is below 200 feet. The Ivel district is perhaps the most interesting portion of the county from a botanist’s point of view, since it comprises a great variety of soils, including the bare chalk of the downs, the flat valley of the Flitt with its extensive deposits of peat and a rich uliginal flora, and the southern slopes of the Lower Greensand ridge, which affords a warm porous soil with a varied selection of characteristic plants. The country too is very charming from a scenic point of view, and there are still spots untouched by cultivation, where the lover of nature may revel, and where the student may yet make additions to the county flora. The meadows by the Flitt from Flitwick to Flitton are particularly rich in bog species, notwithstanding some attempts at drainage having been made, and there are detached portions of bog-land which occur as far as to Shefford. Here occur the sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), the marsh violet (Viola palustris), the small valerian (Valeriana dioica), the bog bean (Mdenyanthes trifoliata), the marsh bedstraw (Galium palustre) and its variety elongatum, the marsh and the heath louseworts (Pedicularis palustris, P. sylvatica), the bog stitchwort (Stellaria uliginosa), the ivy-leaved crowfoot (Ranunculus hederaceus), a large form of the common spearwort (R. Flammula), the scorpion grass (AZyosotis cespitosa), the starworts Callitriche hamulata and C. platycarpa. ‘The cotton grass (Eriophorum angustifolium) is peculiarly plentiful, and the sedge vegetation includes the very local Carex canescens, besides C. pultcaris, C. rostrata, C. disticha, C. leporina, C. flava, C. echinata, C. acutiformis, C, Goodenowit, and great tussocks of C. paniculata. Scirpus setaceus is local, and Lotus uliginosus and the marsh willow-herb (Epilobium palustre) also are found. On the soil reclaimed from the bog there is a considerable growth of the rare hemp nettle (Galeopsis speciosa), discovered here by Mr. Saunders in 1883; the borage (Borage officinalis) as well as a form of the prickly comfrey (Symphytum asperrimum) also occur, and the North American snowberry (Symphoricarpus racemosus) is semi-naturalized. There are remains of alder coppices, showing that at one time the vegetation must have been in great part woodland, and here and there a bush of the grey willow (Salix cinerea) and much more rarely S. aurita occur. The rushes include Funcus supinus, F. acutiflorus, F. lamprocarpus, F. conglomeratus and F. effusus. Luzula or Funcoides multiflora and its variety erecta are frequent; here and there are patches of ling (Calluna Erica), and on the drier parts may be occasionally seen Poa pratensis as the var. subcerulea as well as Festuca ovina and its variety pa/udosa. Molinia varia, Phragmites communis, Glyceria fluitans, Agrostis vulgaris, Steglingia decumbens, the pond-weed Potamogeton polygonifoltus, Pour., and the form ericetorum, have been observed. The Lower Greensand about Ampthill affords abundance of the cress Teesdalia nudi- caulis, of the scorpion grasses MLyosotis collina and M. versicolor, of the chickweed Ceras- tium semidecandrum, which Abbot mistook for C. pumilum, the buck’s-horn (Plantago Coronopus), the hair grass (Aira precox), the foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), the hawkweed Hieracium boreale, the vetch Vicia angustifolia and its variety Bobartii, the sheep’s scabious (‘fasione montana), the holly (Idex Aquifolium), the heath hair grass (Deschampsia flexuosa), the meadow saxifrage (Saxifraga granulata), the thale cress (Sisymbrium thalianum), the broom Cytisus scoparius, the clovers Trifolium arvense, T. filiforme and T. striatum, the bird’s-foot Ornithopus perpusillus, the sandwort Buda rubra, etc. The chalk downs afford a characteristic flora, and some very local species are found on the Barton Hills. Among these rarities are the pasque flower (Anemone Pulsatilla), the mountain cat’s-foot (Antennaria dioica), and the blue milk vetch (Astragalus dantcus). Abbot found a cress (Draba muralis), which was figured in English Botany from a Bedford specimen, but the plant appears to be extinct, and it was probably introduced and not indige- 47 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE nous; Wilbury Hill is one of the few British localities for the grass Phleum phalaroides, Wibel, at onetime knownas P. Behmeri. The cultivated fields also have three choice species, namely the ground pine (Ajuga Chame- pitys), the great earth nut (Carum Bulbocastanum), and the great corn rattle (Rhinanthus major). Besides these the arable ground affords the fumitories Fumaria densiflora, F. Vaillantii and F. parviflora, the candytuft (Iberis amara), the crimson poppy (Papaver hybridum), the toadflaxes Linaria spuria, L. elatine, and L. viscida, the Venus’ looking-glass (Specularia hybrida), the grass Bromus secalinus, the hone-wort Carum segetum, and the bur parsley Caucalis nodosa. The grassy downs are resplendent with the rock-rose (Helanthemum Chamecistus), the lady’s-fingers (Anthyllis Vulneraria), the horse-shoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa), the small scabious (Scabiosa Columbaria), the squinancy wort (Asperula cynanchica), the field ragwort (Senecio cam- pestris), the Carline thistle (Carina vulgaris), the musk thistle (Carduus nutans), the marjoram (Origanum vulgare), the milkwort (Polygala vulgaris), the orchids Orchis pyramidalis, Habe- naria conopsea ; the perfoliate yellow-wort (Blackstonia perfoliata), the felwort (Gentiana Amarella), the Canterbury bell (Campanula glomerata), and the mullein (Verbascum Thapsus), etc. The grasses consist of Keeleria cristata and its var. gracilis, Festuca ovina, F. rigida, F. rubra, Bromus erectus, Avena pubescens, A. pratensis, Briza media, etc. The yew (Taxus baccata) is almost certainly native in the district, but the scarcity of the juniper (Funiperus communis) is remarkable, since it is so frequent on the chalk escarpment of Buckinghamshire. The rarer plants of the Ivel district include :-— Clematus Vitalba, L. tThalictrum calcareum, Jord. Flitwick (R. H. Webb.) Ranunculus Lingua, L. Reed Pond, Sundon (J.S.) t— Baudotii, Godr. — fluitans, Lam. Ive/ parviflorus, L. Tingrith (W. Couch) acris, L., var. Steveni (Andrz.) (Druce) Aquilegia vulgaris, L. Barton Leete (Abbot) Berberis vulgaris, L. Sreppingley Papaver dubium, L., var. Lamottei Fiitwick (Druce) var. Lecoqii (Lam.) C/ophill Capnoides claviculata, Druce (Corydalis). Clop- bill, Kings Wood tDraba murals, L. E.B. Plate(Abbot); drawn from a Bedford specimen Erophila stenophylla, Jord. Ampthill (Druce) Erysimum cheiranthoides, L. Fétwick (J.S.) Diplotaxis muralis, DC. Railway Viola palustris, L. Ampthill (J. H.), Westoning (C. Crouch) — hirta, L., var. calcarea, Bab. Barton (J.S.) “Dianthus deltoides, L. Everton, Potton (Abbot) Cerastium quaternellum, Fenzl. mprhill War- ren, Clophill (Abbot) ; Fuitwick (McLaren) — viscosum, L., var. apetalum (Dum.) dmpt- 4ill (Druce) [— pumilum, Curtis. Amprhill (Abbot) ; error, it should be C. semidecandrum] Stellaria media, Cyr., var. Borzana (Jord.) Ampthill, Flitwick (Druce) Silene noctiflora, L. Barton Hills (J.S.) — anglica, L. Barton (Abbot) -— Cucubalus, Wibel, var. puberula (Jord.) Barton (Druce) Sagina ciliata, Fries. — nodosa, Fenzl. (Druce) Arenaria leptoclados, Guss. ” ” Fiitwick (Lam.) Ampthill (Druce) Ampthill (Abbot), Fiitwick Fiitwick (Druce) Saponaria officinalis, L. Harlington (J.8.) Claytonia perfoliata, Donn. Ampthill on the Maulden road Montia fontana, L., var. minor (All.) Fvitwick (Druce) *Hypericum elodes, L. Potton (Abbot) — calycinum, L. Haynes Geranium sanguineum, lL. (Abbot) — pusillum, L. Ampthill (Druce) — columbinum, L. Pegsdon Erodium cicutarium, L’Hérit. AmpzHill, etc. — moschatum, L’Hérit. Abbot (1801), Evers- Aolt (McLaren), Ampthill Warren Genista anglica, L. Ampthill (Abbot) Medicago Fakata, L. Flitwick t— lappacea, Desv. Near Caddington (Pryor) Trifolium scabrum, L. Fétwick (McLaren), Potton, Ampthill (Abbot) — ochroleucon, Huds. Potton, Everton (Abbot) — subterraneum, L. Ampzthill, Chphill (Abbot) Lotus uliginosus, Schk. F&twick — tenuis, W. & K. Haynes Vicia angustifolia, L., var. Bobartii, Koch. Ampthill (Druce) [— lathyroides, L. Ampzhill, Maulden, Chphill (Abbot), but his specimens are V. angusti- Sola] Lathyrus sylvestris, L. Haynes (Abbot) — Nissolia, L. Wilbury Potentilla argentea, L. Ampshill, frequent t— palustris, Scop. Flitwick Marsh (J.8.) Alchemilla vulgaris, L. Sandon Poterium polygamum,W. & XK. Railway banks, etc. Crategus oxyacanthoides, Thuill. etc. (C. Crouch) Pyrus Aria, Ehrh. Warden *Parnassia palustris, L. Ampthill (Abbot) tSedum album, L., var. teretifolium (Haw.) Barton (J.8.) Potton, an escape Pulbxhill, 48 BOTANY *Drosera longifolia, L. Poston (Abbot) *— anglica, Huds. ¥5 3 Callitriche obtusangula, Le Gall. River Flitt (Druce) Peplis Portula, L. 4mprhill (Abbot) Hydrocotyle vulgaris, L. Fétwick, etc. Smyrnium Olusatrum, L. Between Sihoe and Barton (C. Crouch) ; Gravenhurst (W. Crouch) Apium graveolens, L. Barton (C. Crouch) — inundatum, Reichb. Ampthill (Abbot) Bupleurum rotundifolium, L. Barton Hils (Abbot) Carum segetum, B.& H. Barton Hills, Wilbury — Petroselinum, B.& H. Féitwick railway — Carvi,L. Gravenhurst Pimpinella major, Huds., and var. dissecta, Druce. Fhitwick Anthriscus vulgaris, Bernh. Ampthill Cnanthe silaifolia, Bieb. Porton (Abbot) ; possi- bly this was @. Lachenali — fistulosa,L. Fhrwick Adoxa Moschatellina, L. Sundon, Streatley, etc. Galium Mollugo, L., var. elatum (Thuill.) This is Abbot’s G. pusilum from Shefford; therefore G. sy/vestre Poll., with which it has been wrongly identified, is stilla desid- eratum to the Beds flora. —erectum, Huds. Fiitwick; Abbot’s G. erectum is G. Mollugo var. elatum Valeriana officinalis, L Barton (Druce) — sambucifolia, Mik. Flitwick Dipsacus pilosus, L. Near Ampzbill, Chphill, Warden, etc. Solidago Virgaurea, L. Ciophill Woods (J.S.) Erigeron acre, L. Barton, etc. Filago minima, L. Fé&twick, etc. Common about — apiculata. Fitwick (J.S.) Inula Helenium, L. — Pulloxhill, Higham Gobion (C. Crouch) Taraxacum erythrospermum, Andrz. Ampthill (Druce) Tanacetum vulgare, L. Maulden (J.S.) Anthemis arvensis, L. FAtwick (J.S.) Cnicus eriophorus, Roth. Sandon (J.S.) Onopordon Acanthium, L. Serratula tinctoria,L. Aspley Arnoseris pusilla, Gertn. Ampthill, Maulden (Abbot) ; Potton, Clophill, etc. Crepis taraxacifolia, Thuill. Near Ampthill (Druce) Hieracium boreale, Fries. Cbphill (J.S.) — tridentatum, Fr. Shefford (R. A. Pryor) Hypocheeris glabra, L. Ampshill, Sandy, Potton (Abbot) Jasione montana, L. Ampehill Campanula Trachelium, L. Streatley, Barton (J.S.) — latifolia, L. Barton Leete (J.S.) — rapunculoides, L. Between Barton and Hexton (Messrs. Carruthers) *Oxycoccus quadripetala, Gilib. Potton (Abbot) Erica Tetralix, L. Ampthill, Potton (Abbot) ; Maulden (W. Crouch) — cinerea, L. Potton (McLaren) The Cranberry, I 49 Hypopitys Monotropa, Crantz. tCentunculus minimus, L. Ampshill Moor (Abbot) Cuscuta europea, L. Flitwick, 1841 (Rev. R. H. Webb) — Epithymum, Murr. Barton Hill, Ampthill Warren (Abbot) Atropa Belladonna, L. Antirrhinum majus,L. Midland railway, Har- lington (J.S.) Linaria repens, Mill. Dunstable Downs tRhinanthus major, Ehrh. Chalky fields on Barton Hills (J.8.) Verbena officinalis, L. Mentha longifolia, Huds. West Flitwick (J.S.) Marrubium vulgare, L. Sundon Salvia Verbenaca, L. — verticillata, L. Flitwick (C. Crouch) Lamium hybridum, With. Mauiden (Miss Berrill) Teucrium Chamedrys, LL. Warden (Abbot) *Utricularia minor, L. Ampshill, Potton (Abbot) Pinguicula vulgaris, L. Barton (C. Crouch) Lathraa Squamaria, L. Sundon (J.S.) Orobanche major, L. (O. Rapum-genista, Thuill.) Ampzbill (Abbot) Polygonum minus, Huds. Féitwick Marsh (J.S.) Euphorbia Cyparissias, L. Barton Leat Wood (Eng. Fl.) Viscum album, L. Barton, etc. tUrtica pilulifera, L. Shefford Salix aurita, L. Fiitwick (Druce), Warden (Abbot) Castanea sativa, Mill. Sikoe Populus tremula, L. King’s Wood, Flitwick (J.S.) Quercus sessiliflora, Salisb. Ampthill Ceratophyllum demersum, L. Pudbxhill (J.S.) Juniperus communis, L. Barton (Abbot) Salix repens, L. F&tewick, Amprhill Alisma Plantago, L., var. lanceolatum (Afz.) Fiitwick Marsh (J.S.) — ranunculoides, L. Ampthill (Abbot) *Epipactis palustris, Crantz. Gravenhurst, 1842 (C. Crouch) Cephalanthera pallens, Rich. Streatley, etc. *Malaxis paludosa, Sw. Potton Marshes (Abbot) Neottia Nidus-avis, Rich. Sundon, etc. Orchis ustulata, L. Barton Downs Habenaria conopsea, Benth. Barton — viridis, Br. Sundon (J.S.) Ophrys apifera, Huds. Barton, Streatley, etc. (J.S.) — muscifera, Huds. Streatley, Sundon (J.S.) — aranifera, Huds. Souzhi/l (Abbot) Spiranthes autumnalis, Rich. Pegsdon and Barton Hills (J.8.), Haynes Iris foetidissima, L. Féitwick West (J.S.), Haynes, etc. Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus, L. Maxdden, Warden, etc. Galanthus nivalis, L. Sandy (Abbot) Ornithogalum nutans, L. Potton (Mr. Bond Smith) — umbellatum, L. Everton Heath (Abbot) Triglochin palustre, L. Gravenhurst Moor, Westoning (C. Crouch), Ampthill Bogs (Abbot) 7 A HISTORY OF *Potamogeton Balb. Crouch) — pusillum, L., var. tenuissimus, Jve/ (J.S.) Paris quadrifolia, L. In chalk and clay, not arenaceous soils Ruscus aculeatus, L. Colchicum autumnale, L. Barton (Abbot) Allium ursinum, L. Calton (J.S.) *Narthecium ossifragum, Huds. Amprhill Bogs (Abbot) Typha angustifolia, L. C/p4il? (C. Crouch) Juncus obtusiflorus, Ehrh. Harlington Brickyards U.S.) *Schoenus nigricans, L. Ampthill, Potton (Abbot) Scirpus sylvaticus, L. Flitwick Marsh (J.H.), Westoning *— cespitosus, L. Ampthill, Flitton Moors (Abbot) *Rynchospora alba, Vahl. Potton (Abbot) t*Carex dioica, L. Ampzthill (Abbot) alpinus, Chphill (W. Ampthill Moor and — flava, L., var. minor, Towns. Soushill (J.S.) Acorus Calamus, L. Tingrith Park ; planted J.-S.) Apera Spica-venti, Beauv. Srreatiey (J.S.) BEDFORDSHIRE Roth. Maulden Calamagrostis Epigeios, (C. Crouch) +t— lanceolata, Roth. Chicksands (C. Crouch) Catabrosa aquatica, Beauv. tPhleum phalaroides, Wibel. (T. B. Blow) Poa compressa, L. Sérearley (J.S.) Festuca sciuroides, Roth. Ampthill (Druce): Bromus commutatus, Schrad. Barton (J.S.) Nardus stricta, L. FAtwick (McLaren) Lomaria Spicant, Desv. Flitwick (J.S.) Asplenium Adiantum-nigrum, L. tLastrea uliginosa, Newm. Fétwick (McLaren), 188 i— a Pres]. Potton (Abbot), probably L. spinulosa was meant *— Thelypteris, Presl. Poston (Abbot) Aspidium aculeatum, Sw. Fiitwick (J.8.), Potton, Chicksands Scolopendrium vulgare, Symons. Toddington Ophioglossum vulgatum, L. Sandon (J.S.) Equisetum maximum, Lam. Barton (J.S.) Wilbury Hill ?*Lycopodium clavatum, L. Potton Heath (Abbot) ?*— inundatum, L. Ampthill (Abbot) Nitella mucronata, Kuetz. Sandy (J.S.) tTolypella intricata, Leonh. Near Sundon (J.S.) 5. THe Cam District is very small and narrow and is bounded on the west by the Ivel district as already described, and on the east by Hertfordshire. As the water-partings are obscure, no part of the district being above 200 feet in altitude, it may be well to merge it in the Ivel district which it so closely resembles. 6. Tue Ovzet District is in the south-west of the county and has for its eastern boundary the districts of the West Ouse and the Ivel district already described, but in the south it is separated from the Lea district by the Icknield Way from Chalton Cross by Houghton Regis to the Bucks boundary, which it touches above Edlesborough, and this county bounds it on the western side to Wharley End. This district is very varied in scenery as well as in its geological character. The streams which feed the Ouzel rise from the juncture of the Chalk with the impervious soil at its base, and cutting through the Upper Greensand and crossing the Gault also drain the picturesque country about Heath and Reach and Woburn Woods, which are on the Lower Greensand ; they finally pass through the country situated on the Oxford Clay, and that covered by the Ouse gravels. The latitude near Birdshill is 550 feet, at Toddington 485 feet, at Heath and Reach 460 feet, while no part appears to be below 200 feet. There are some boggy portions still left undrained near Aspley, also some interesting meadows with peat near Totternhoe, and the warm dry soil about Heath and Reach and Woburn affords a large number of ericetal species ; then the Chalk escarpment has its typical cretaceous vegetation, and its grassy slopes afford abundance of the rock-rose (Hekanthemum Chameecistus), the lady’s-fingers (Anthyllis Vulneraria), the horse-shoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa), the milkwort (Polygala vulgaris), the carline thistle (Carlina vulgaris), the stemless and musk- thistles (Cuicus acaulis and C. nutans), the field ragwort (Senecio campestris), the yellow-wort (Blackstonia perfoliata), the marjoram (Origanum vulgare), the thyme (Thymus Chamedrys), the orchids Orchis pyramidalis, O. ustulata, Habenaria conopsea, etc., the bee orchis (Ophrys apifera), the grasses Bromus erectus, Avena pratensis, A. pubescens, Festuca ovina, F. rigida, F. rubra, Keeleria cristata), the squinancy wort (Asperula cynanchica), the Canterbury bell (Campanula glomerata) and the scabious (Scabiosa Columbaria). The arable fields on the Chalk have the candytuft (Iberis amara), the great earth-nut (Carum Bulbocastanum), the crimson poppy (Papaver hybridum), the rattle Rhinanthus major, if indeed this be correctly named, the bur parsley (Caucalis nodosa), the Venus looking-glass 50 BOTANY (Specularia hybrida), the toadflaxes Linaria Elatine, L. spuria, L. viscida, and the calamint (Calamintha arvensis). The heathy district near Leighton Buzzard, Woburn and Aspley affords a completely different flora from the Chalk. Here occur in open places the cress Teesdalia nudicaulis, the pearl-wort (Sagina ciliata), the sand-wort (Buda or Arenaria rubra), the St. John worts (Hypericum humifusum and H. pul- chrum), the scorpion grass (AZyosotis collina and M. versicolor), the wood pea (Lathyrus montanus), the buck’s horn (Plantago Coronopus), the clovers Trifolium arvense and T. striatum, the sheep’s scabious (Fasione montana), the climbing fumitory (Capnoides claviculata), the cudweeds Gna- phalium syluaticum and Filago minima, the chickweed (Cerastium semidecandrum), the hemlock- leaved stork’s-bill (Krodium cicutarium), the silvery cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea), the crane’s- bill (Geranium pusillum), the hawkweeds Hieracium umbellatum and H. boreale, the golden rod (Solidago Virgaurea), the dog violet (Viola canina), the grasses Molinia varia, Agrostis canina, Deschampsia flexuosa, Aira caryophyllea, A, praecox, Festuca ovina and var. paludosa, F. sciuroides, the foxglove (Digitahs purpurea), the grass Poa pratensis var. subcoerulea, the sedge Carex pilulifera, and the musk mallow (Malva moschata var. heterophylla). The cultivated ground on this light soil yields the small succory (Arnoseris minima), the corn camomile (Chrysanthemum segetum), the spurrey (Sfergula sativa), the grass Bromus secalinus, the bird’s-foot (Ornithopus perpusillus), the saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria), etc. The woods and bushy portion have, in addition to the planted pines and larch, a native growth of huckleberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus), heather (Calluna Erica), the lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), the aspen (Populus tremula), the grasses Molinia varia and Poa nemoralis, the wood rush (Luzula maxima or ‘funcoides sylvaticum), the foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), and the fern Lomaria Spicant. The boggy parts yield the local sedge, Carex canescens, the bog pimpernel (Anagallis tenella), the marsh bedstraw (Galum uliginosum), the sedges Carex echinata, C. flava var. minor, the biting persicaria (Polygonum Hydropiper), the blinks (AZontia fontana as the var. minor), the grass Sieglingia decumbens, the marsh violet (Viola palustris), the rushes Juncus supinus, Funcoides multiflarum and var. erectum, and the grass Molinia varia. On clay soils, as about Cranfield, Salford, etc., we have the graceful sedge Carex pendula, not only by hedges but in the woodlands, where also occur the spurge laurel (Daphne Laureola), the small burdock (Arctium minus), the water elder (Viburnum Ofulus), the grass Calamagrostis Epigeios, the violet Viola Reichenbachiana, the grass Milium effusum, the cow wheat (AZelampyrum pratense), the gromwell (Lithospermum officinale), etc. The riverside vegetation includes Epilobium roseum, E. obscurum and a hybrid of the two, the winter cress (Barbarea vulgaris var. divaricata), the sedge Carex paludosa (which is probably Abbot’s C. acuta), C. riparia, etc.; the willows Salix triandra, 8, Smithiana, S. cinerea, S. caprea, S. purpurea, 8. viminalis; the orach (Atriplex deltoidea), the water chickweed (Stel- laria aquatica) ; the black poplar (Populus nigra) is not uncommon, and P. canescens and P. alba occur, but all as planted trees. The maple (Acer campestre) is very frequent and is often a good sized tree, and is found with glabrous var. /eiocarpa, as well as hairy fruit coverings (var. hebecarpa). The wych elm (U/mus campestris) is not uncommon, but like the common elm (U. sativa) may be a planted tree. The streams have Potamogeton densus and P. crispum, and Zannichellia palustris. The ponds have Ranunculus heterophyllus, R. peltatus, R. Drouetii and Ceratophyllum. In the pastures the rest harrow (Ononis spinosa) is frequent ; the eyebright (Euphrasia) is almost universally 2. nemorosa, and the rattle is Rhinanthus minor. Other plants of the Ouzel district :— Clematis Vitalba, L. Erophila stenophylla, Jord. Woburn (Druce) Thalictrum flavum, L. Camelina sativa, Crantz. Clover fields near Ranunculus heterophyllus, Web. Woburn Sands, Woburn Sands (Druce) etc. (Druce) Erysimum cheiranthoides, L. Woburn " ; — pseudo-fluitans, forma. Oxze/ (J.5.) Diplotaxis muralis, DC., var. Babingtonii. Rail- — divaricatus, Schrank. Aspley (J.S.) way near Woburn Sands (Druce) Myosurus minimis, L. Sa/ferd (Druce) Hesperis matronalis, L. Woburn Sands : Berberis vulgaris, L. Woburn Brassica elongata, Ehrh. Casual at Leighton Mill Papaver Lecoqii, Lam. Near Eaton Bray (Druce) : (Druce) Viola tricolor, L., var. agrestis (Jord.) Woburn Bunias Erucago. Leighton Mill (Druce) (Druce) 51 A HISTORY OF Viola tricolor, L. var. subtilis (Jord.) Woburn (Druce) var. Deseglisei (Jord.) _,, — canina, L. Heath and Reach (J.S.) Polygala serpyllacea, Wahl. Heath and Reach, Woburn (Druce) Silene anglica, L. Woburn Lychnis alba x dioica. Woburn (Druce) Cerastium semidecandrum, L. Aspiey (this is Abbot’s C. pumilum) ; Heath and Reach (Druce) — viscosum, L., var. apetalum, Dum. Woburn (Druce) Arenaria leptoclados, Gun. Common about Leighton and Woburn (Druce) Claytonia perfoliata, Donn. Leighton Buzzard tGeranium pheum, L. Eversholt (Abbot) Erodium moschatum, L’Hérit. Eversholt (Mc Laren) ; the plate in £.B. was drawn from a Bedfordshire specimen sent by Dr. Abbot — cicutarium, L’Heérit., var. pimpinellefolium (Sibth.) Asp/ey (Abbot) Rhamnus Frangula, L. {Abbot) Hypericum calycinum, L. Woburn — quadrangulum, L. Aspley Malva moschata, L., var. heterophylla, Lej. Woburn (Druce) Tilia parvifolia, Ehrh. Asp/ey, planted (Druce) Medicago denticulata, Willd. Leighton Melilotus alba, Desv. Leighton (Druce) Trifolium filiforme, L. Leighton, Aspley ; com- mon on the Greensand Vicia Lathyroides, L. Near Leighton (Druce) — sylvatica, L. Eversholt ” Aspley, Eversholt — angustifolia, L., var. Bobartii. Leighton (Druce) Potentilla argentea, L. Common on the Green- sand Alchemilla vulgaris, L. Totternhoe (J.S.) var. filicaulis (Buser) (Druce) Crategus oxyacanthoides, Thuill. Sa/ford (Druce) Pyrus communis, L, Eversholt ; Sedum Telephium, L., var. Fabaria (L.) Aspley Wood (Abbot) Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, L. Toddington S Eversholt (Abbot) ; Near Woburn Callitriche obtusangula, Le-Gall. Near Salford (Druce) Epilobium roseum, Schreb. Near Sa/ford (Druce) — roseum x obscurum. — obscurum, Schreb. — angustifolium, L. — tetragonum, L. Salford Pimpinella major, Huds. Totternhoe Caucalis nodosa, Scop. Eaton Bray, etc. Anthriscus vulgaris, Bernh. Heath and Reach S.) Carum Carvi, L. Totternhoe, apparently native S. agian rotundifolium, L. Woburn Galium uliginosum, L. Heath and Reach (J.S.) Valeriana officinalis, L. Eaton Bray (Druce) ” ” ” ” ” ” 52 BEDFORDSHIRE Valeriana sambucifolia, Mik. Woburn (Druce) Valerianella dentata, Poll. Eaton Bray (Druce) Filago spathulata, Presl. Birchmore near Woburn — apiculata. G. Sm. Heath and Reach, etc. (Druce) Gnaphalium sylvaticum, L. spy (Abbot), Leighton (J.8.) tCentaurea Solstitialis, LL. Totternhoe Knolls (J.8.) Tanacetum vulgare, L. Ridgmount Serratula tinctoria, L. Aspley, Salford Wood (Druce) Senecio sylvaticus, L. Aspley Hieracium sciaphilum, Uecht. 4sp/y (J.S.) — boreale, Fries. Abundant about 4spley (Druce) Arnoseris pusilla, Gertn. (Druce) Taraxacum erythrospermum (Andr.) and Reach (Druce) Crepis taraxacifolia, Thuill. Campanula latifolia, L. Pyrola minor, L. Aspley Cuscuta europea, L. Totternhoe (J.S.) — Epithymum, Murr. Leighton (Druce) — Trifolii, Bab. Sz/ferd (Druce) Veronica montana, L. Eversholt (Abbot only) Pedicularis palustris, L. Totternhoe, Heath and Reach (J.S.) — sylvatica, L. Heath and Reach, etc. Orobanche major, L. Aspley Anagallis tenella, L. Totternhoe, Heath and Reach (J.S.) Lysimachia nemorum, L. sp/ey (J.S.) Lemnanthemum peltatum, Gmel. —Standridge Ford (J.S.) ; perhaps planted Menyanthes trifoliata, L. Ridgmont Myosotis cespitosa, Schult. Heath and Reach (Druce) Verbena officinalis, L. Totternhoe (J.S.) Pinguicula vulgaris, L. Totternhoe Mead (Worth- ington Smith) Salvia Verbenaca, L. Toddington (J.S.) Rumex Hydrolapathum, Huds. By the Oxzel; this is the R. aguaticus of Mr. Saunders’ list Populus tremula, L., var. villosa, Lang. Rather common in Salford Wood (Druce) Quercus sessiliflora, Salisb. Near Heath and Reach, Salford, etc. (Druce) Ophrys muscifera, Huds. Orchis latifolia, L. Totternhoe (Worthington Smith) Neottia Nidus-avis, L. Salford Wood (Druce) Epipactis violacea, Bor. Woburn (Abbot in Eng. Bot. Supp.) Polygonatum multiflorum, All. Aspley (W. Aspley Leighton Buzzard Heath Aspley (Druce) ” ” Crouch) Maianthemum Convallaria, Weber. but requires confirmation Fritillaria Meleagris, L. Eaton Bray (H. C. Chambers) Juncus squarrosus, L. Aspley (J.S.) Sparganium neglectum, Beeby. Near Salford (Druce) Potamogeton pusillus, L. Near Salford (Druce) Scirpus setaceus, L. Totternhoe (J.S.) BOTANY tCarex elata, All. (=C. stricta, Good.) Markham Festuca Myurus, L. 4sphy, Heath and Reach Hills (J.8.) (J.S.) — pulicaris, L. Eversholt (McLaren) Poa nemoralis, L. Rather common — binervis, Sm. Torternhoe (J.S.) — compressa, L. Leighton — echinata, Murr. Aspley, Woburn, Heath and Bromus commutatus, Schrad. Totternhoe (J.S.) Reach tAlopecurus fulvus, Sm. Near Heath and Reach — flava, L. Totternhoe (J.S.), near Eaton Bray (Druce) (Druce) Phalaris canariensis, L. Woburn Sands, etc. var. minor, Towns. Woburn (Druce) Lolium italicum, Braun. 3 Be — acuta, L. Totternhoe (C. Crouch) Lastrea spinulosa, Desv. Aspley (J.S.) — pilulifera, L. Woburn, etc. (Druce) — dilatata, Presl. Woburn (Druce) — disticha, Huds. Salford Scolopendrium vulgare, Symons. Toddington (J.S.) Phleum pratense, L., var. nodosum (L.). Eaton *Osmunda regalis, L. 4sp/ey (Abbot) Bray (Druce) Polystichum aculeatum, Presl. Eversho/t Anthoxanthum Puehi, Lec.and Lam. Heath and Equisetum maximum, Lam. Woburn (Druce) Reach Chara hispida, L. Totternhoe (J.S.) Calamagrostis epigeios, Roth. Near Leighton — fragilis, Desv. 3 3 (J.S.), Cranfield (Druce) — contraria, Kitz. _,, 5 Setaria viridis, Beauv. Leighton Buzzard Tolypella glomerata, Leonh. Near Woburn Melica uniflora, Retz. Woods and hedges (Druce) 7. Tue Lea Districr is a small irregularly shaped portion of the county which lies to the south of the Icknield Way, and has for its southern boundary the county of Herts, from which it is only artificially divided. The river itself rises from springs near Houghton Regis and from others in Leagrave Marsh three miles above Luton, and cuts through the chalk escarpment before entering Hert- fordshire. The greatest altitude of the district is about 630 feet. A small portion may belong to the drainage of the Colne, itself a Thames tributary. It has an expanse of grassy chalk downs, bare chalky arable fields, and woodlands where brick-earth gives the subsoil, and marshy ground about Limbury, and it includes also the rich park of Luton Hoo and its ornamental waters. Although the area is small it has had the advantage of being well explored by Mr. J. Saunders of Luton, so that the list of interesting species recorded for it is quite out of propor- tion to the area it includes. It will not be necessary to repeat the names of the plants common to the chalk downs, as they are already given for the Ivel and Ouzel districts ; the other interesting species found in this district include :— Ranunculus Drouetii, Sch. Limdury with the Onobrychis vicizformis, Scop. Apparently in- variety Godronii, Gren. (J.S.) digenous on the ancient greensward of the Anemone apennina, L.. Luton Hoo (Abbot) Chilterns (J.S.) Helleborus viridis, L., var. occidentalis, Druce. Melilotus arvensis, Desv. Luton (R. Pryor) Limbury (J.S.), Whipsnade (Worthington Prunus Padus, LL. Luton Hoo Park, probably Smith) planted (J.S.) — fetidus. Lynchetts near Luton (J.S.) Alchemilla vulgaris, L. Luton Hoo (J.S.) Papaver Lecoqii, Lam. Luton (R. Pryor) Epilobium angustifolium, L. Whipsnade (J.S.) Erysimum cheiranthoides, L. Luton (J.S.) — obsurum, Schreb. Limbury, Luton Hoo (J.S.) Hesperis matronalis, L. Luton Hoo (J.5.) Saxifraga granulata, L. Limdury (J.S.) Camelina sativa, Crantz. Luton deodorizing Carum Bulbocastanum, Koch. Limbury (J.S.) works (J.S.) Adoxa Moschatellina, L. 5 5 Neslia paniculata, Desv. Casual, Luton (Pryor) Hippuris vulgaris, L. Luton Hoo Lake (J.S.) tViola permixta, Jord. New Mill End (J.S.) +Myriophyllum alterniflorum, DC. Pepperstack — canina, L. Chiltern Green Common (J.S.) (J.S.) Stellaria aquatica, Scop. Mew Mill End (J.S.) Peplis Portula, L. Studham (J.S.), Luton Hoo — palustris, Retz. Luton Hoo Park (Mr. J. (J. Catt) Ekins) Sambucus Ebulus, L. Limbury (J.S.) Sagina nodosa, Fenzl. Leagrave (J.S.) Arctium majus, Sckhuhr. ,, A Geranium lucidum, L. Marslets near Luton Erigeron acre, L. Leagrave (J.S.) (j.8.) Picris hieracioides, L. Pepperstock (J.S.) — pyrenaicum, Burm. Luton Hoo (Abbot) Lactuca muralis, Fres. Luton Hoo (J.S.), near Hypericum calycinum, L. Luton Hoo Dunstable (Pryor) ; — quadrangulum, L. Luton (Bot. Guide) Hieracium umbellatum, L. CAikern Green (J.S.) 53 A HISTORY OF tCampanula patula, L. Luton Hoo (J. Edge) — latifolia, L. Whipsnade, Studbam Common (J.5.) Cuscuta Trifolii, Bab. See paper by Mr. Carruthers on the devastation of Swedish turnips at Dunstable (Fourn. Royal Agric. Soc. vol. ix. pt. i.), where it is stated that the plant not only fed on the foliage but actually on the turnips themselves. Erica cinerea, L. Pepperstock (J.S.) Pyrola minor, L. Woods near Luton (Abbot), (? if in Beds) Hypopitys Monotropa, Crantz. New Mill End 5 Vinca minor, L. Limbury, New Mill End (J.8.) Menyanthes trifoliata. Limbury, Leagrave Marsh (J.S.) » Atropa Belladonna, L. Whipsnade (Abbot) Hyoscyamus niger, L. Limdury (J.S.) Digitalis purpurea, L. Luton Hoo (J.S.) Linaria repens, Mill. Luton with the hybrid L. vulgari-repens (R. Pryor) Mimulus Langsdorfii, Donn. Luton Hoo (J.8.) Lysimachia nemorum, L. Chivern Green (J.S.) Ajuga Chamepitys, Schreb, Luton Downs (Abbot) Rumex maritimus, L. Mew Mill End (J.S.) Polygonum Bistorta, L. South of Luton (J.S.) — maculatum, Trim. and Dyer. Lea Side (J.S.) t Aristolochia Clematitis, L. Thoroughly natural- ized in a wood at Luton Hoo (J.S.) Daphne Laureola, L. Leagrave, New Mill End U.S.) Ceratophyllum demersum, L. Luton Hoo Lake in fruit, 1882 (J.S.) BEDFORDSHIRE Carpinus Betulus, L, Fine trees near Luton and at New Mill End (J.S.) Populus canescens, Sm. Caddington (J.S.) Salix purpurea, L. Limbury (J.S.) Triglochlin palustre, L. Luton Zannichellia palustris, L., drachystemon, Gay. Luton Hoo, sources of the Lea (J.S.) Potamogeton perfoliatum, L. Limbury Pond (J.S.) — pusillum, L. New Mil! End (J.8.) — pectinatum, L. Luton Hoo Lake (J.S.) Butomus umbellatus, L. River Lea (J.S8.) Habenaria viridis, R. Br. Pepperstock (J.S.) Cephalanthera pallens, Rich. New Mill End S.) Tulips sylvestris, L. Whipsnade (Abbot) Polygonatum multifiorum, All. Luton Hoo (J.S.) Ornithogalum umbellatum, L. Limbury (J.8.) Alluin ursinum, L. East Hyde (J.S.) Orchis ustulata, L. Dunstable Downs Iris foetidissima, L. Luton Hoo Scirpus multicaulis, Sm. Woodside, Pepperstock (J.S.) Carex disticha, Huds. Luton Hoo (J.S.) — leporina, L. Pepperstock (J.S.) — Goodenowii, Gay. Biscot (J.S.) Sieglingia decumbens, Beauv. Pepperstock (J.S.) + Bromus arvensis, L. Not uncommon near Luton (J.S.) Lomaria Spicant, Desv. Luton Hoo (J.S.) Asplenium Trichomanes, L. Luton Hoo Scolopendrium vulgare, Symons. ,, Chara fragilis, Desv. Hedwigii Nitella opaca, Ag. Sources of the Lea at Biscot (J.S.) ” Limbury (J.8.), with var. THE BRAMBLES (Rai)! The brambles of Bedfordshire are only imperfectly known, but the extensive area of the Lower Greensand is especially prolific in species, and systematic search would probably reveal a large number. The areas of the Chalk and Clays are poor and afford little beyond Rudus ulmifolius, R. corylifohus with its varieties cyclophyllus and sublustris, and the dewberry (R. cesws), the latter being especially frequent in damp woods and by the sides of wet ditches. "The woodlands on the Clay also have R. /eucostachys, and occasionally R. radula and R. echinatus. The Chalk, where it comes to the surface, is also singularly poor, but where, as at Chiltern Common, it has a covering of brick earth or tertiaries a much more varied selection of brambles is to be met with. The richest districts are Woburn, Heath and Reach, the neighbourhood of Leighton Buzzard and Ampthill. At Woburn, in both Bucks and Beds, is a variety of R. Airtus, namely flaccidifolius (P. J. Miiller), which is unknown elsewhere in Britain ; and in this neighbourhood the writer has met with R. pyramida- lis, R. fissus, R. plicatus, R. Lindletanus, R. rhamnifolius, R. pulcherrimus, R. macrophyllus, R. rudis, R. dasyphyllus, R. dumetorum, R. corylfolius and 1 By G. Claridge Druce. 54 BOTANY var. sublustris. The raspberry R. ideus is local, but is found in all the larger districts and is common locally. Several other species are recorded in various works, but the specific limitations are now so different from what they were when the records were made that it is impossible, with accuracy, to determine what species (as we now understand them) they are identical with, and it is safer to ignore them, a course which has been followed in the Handbook of the British Rubi, by the Rev. W. Moyle Rogers. THE ROSES (Rosa) The roses, like the brambles, have been much neglected so far as critical study goes, and such records as have been made are in many cases unsatisfactory. The dog rose (Rosa canina) is widely distributed and shows more variation on clay soils. Among the modifications of it that the writer has met with are R. /utetrana, Leman, which is the commonest form, and is generally distributed, although less abundant, on the Greensand ; R. dumals, Bechst., under which is placed the Jdzserrata of English writers, is also very common. R. dumetorum, Thuill., with which is grouped R. urbica, Leman, is widely distributed and occurs about Salford (Ouzel) in many situations. R. verticillata, Mérat, is local ; it occurs near Eaton Bray (Ouzel). The field-rose (R. arvensis, L.) is abundant in the woods and hedges on clay soils. ‘The peduncles vary much as regards their armature of bristles; an extreme form is var. ga/licoides, Baker. R. micrantha, Sm., is local, but is rather more frequent on the Chalk. The sweet brier (R. Eglanteria, L.=R. rubiginosa, L.) is rare and only scattered through the district, and is often only an escape from cultivation. The downy rose (R. mollissima, Willd., R. tomentosa, Sm.) is rather rare ; it occurs in a few localities, chiefly on hilly ground, as near Aspley (Ouzel), and usually as the var. subg/obosa (Sm.) CRYPTOGAMS THE CLUBMOSSES (Lycopodiacee) This order is probably extinct in Bedfordshire. According to Abbot, Lycopodium clavatum grew on Potton Heath, and L. znundatum at Ampthill, at the end of the eighteenth century, but there is no modern record of either. THE FERNS (Filices)' Although there are old-established woods in Bedfordshire, the ferns are not numerous. The hard fern (Lomaria Spicant) is frequent on sides of ditches at Aspley and Flitwick. The black maiden hair (Asplenium Adiantum-nigrum) was found on Stafford Bridge by Abbot, and is men- tioned as not uncommon in the South Beds list, 1881. Wall-rue (4. Ruta-muraria) has been frequent on walls in the north since Abbot’s 1 By J. Hamson, Bedford. 55 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE time. 4. Trichomanes has been found at Stafford Bridge, Luton Hoo and Cardington. Aspidium aculeatum is native but very local ; Eversholt, Flitwick, Potton and Chicksands have been returned as stations. The hart’s-tongue (Sco/opendrium) is not common ; for many years it has grown in a well at Elstow, and it has been found on Newnham walls, at Lidlington, Luton Hoo and Toddington. Polypodium cristatum was noted by Abbot at Potton and Aspley, but Lastrea spinulosa was probably meant, and it has several modern stations. LL. u/iginosa was certified as correct by Dr. F. A. Lees, being found by McLaren at Flitwick in 1885. L. Thelypteris grew on Potton Marsh in Abbot’s time, and the name occurs in Hillhouse’s list, 1876, which also includes L. dilatata without station. The adder’s tongue (Opsiog/ossum) is widely distributed, but the moonwort (Botrychium), which Abbot found in Oakley West Field, is apparently extinct, as is also the royal fern (Osmunda), which formerly grew in Aspley Wood, and of late years has been found at Little Brick- hill just outside the county boundary. THE HORSETAILS (Eguisetacee)' The great horsetail (E. maximum) is generally found on marshes, especially in the north, but is rarer in the south. The mud-horsetail (E. Amosum) is frequent on bogs, and Mr. Saunders gives the Ivel near Sandy as a station for the var. fuviatile, which Mr. Hillhouse also met with. Abbot recorded E. syemale at Potton and Ampthill, and E. sy/- vaticum at Haynes Wood, but there has been no recent confirmation of either. MARSILIACE None have been found in the county. THE MOSSES (Musci)? As Bedfordshire is an inland county and possesses no mountains the following moss list of some 160 species and varieties is not so extensive and varied as it might be with different physical features. The sphag- nums or bog mosses are found only on the Lower Greensand formation, which stretches across the middle of the county. The most noteworthy species in the list are Dicranum montanum and Hypnum Sendtneri, the latter of which it is feared has recently been exterminated through the plough- ing up of its only known station. The nomenclature and arrangement is that of the London Catalogue, ed. 2 (see, South Bedfordshire Mosses,’ J. Saunders, ‘Yourn. Botany, xxii. 47). SPHAGNACEE SPHAGNACEZ (continued ) Sphagnum acutifolium, Ehrh. Sphagnum intermedium, Hoffm. var. tenue — cuspidatum, Ehrh. » rubellum var. riparioides — fimbriatum, Wils. — cymbifolium, Ehrh. — squarrosum, Lind. var. squarrosulum var. laxum ! By J. Hamson, Bedford. 2 By James Saunders, Luton. 56 WEISSIACEE Weissia viridula, Brid. — cirrhata, Hedw. Dicranella varia, Hedw. — heteromalla, Hedw. — Schreberi, Hedw. — cerviculata, Hedw. Dicranum montanum, very rare — scoparium, L. — majus, Thurn. — palustre, Schimper. Campylopus flexuosus, Brid. Leucobryum glaucum, L. BRUCHIACE Pleuridium nitidum, Brid. — subulatum, L. . BOTANY Hedw. Aspley, Seligeria calcarea, Dicks. (Bryum calcareum of Abbot) East Hyde, 1903 (J.S8.) PoTTiAcE& Phascum cuspidatum, Schreb, — rectum, Sm. Pottia cavifolia, Ehrh. — minutula, Schweg. — truncata, L. — intermedia, Turn. — lanceolata, Dicks. Didymodon rubellus, B. & S. Ditrichum flexicaule, Schweg. Trichostomum tophaceum, Brid. Barbula muralis, L. — ambigua, B. & S. — unguiculata, Dill. fallax, Hedw. var. brevifolia convoluta, Hedw. tortuosa, L. subulata, L. levipila, Brid. ruralis, L. — intermedia, Brid. Ceratodon purpureus, L. CALYMPERACEE Encalypta vulgaris, Hedw. GRIMMIACEZ Grimmia apocarpa, L. — pulvinata, Dill. Zygodon viridissimus, Dicks. Orthotrichum saxatile, Brid. — affine, Schrad. — diaphanum, Schrad. — Lyellii, H. & T. FUNARIACEZ Physcomitrella patens, Hedw. Physcomitrium pyriforme, L. Funaria fascicularis, Dicks. — hygrometrica, L. BaRTRAMIACEE Bartramia pomiformis, L. Philonotis fontana, L. I 57 Bryacka@ Leptobryum pyriforme, L. Webera nutans, Schreb. — cruda, Schreb, — carnea, L. Bryum pendulum, Hornsch. — inclinatum, Swartz. bimum, Schreb. Flitwick murale, Wils, Luton Hoo atropurpureum, W. & M. cespiticium, L. argenteum, L. capillare, L. pseudo-triquetrum, Hedw. roseum, Schreb. MNIAcE& Mnium affine, Bland. — undulatum, Hedw. — rostratum, Schrad. — hornum, L. — punctatum, Hedw. Aulacomnium androgynum, L, — palustre, L. ‘TETRAPHIDACEE Tetraphis pellucida, L. Aspley PoLyTRICHIACE® Atrichum undulatum, L. Pogonatum nanum, Neck. — aloides, Hedw. — urnigerum, L. Polytrichum formosum, Hedw. — piliferum, Schreb. — juniperinum, Willd. — commune, L. FissIDENTACEZ Fissidens bryoides, Hedw. incurvus, W. & M. viridulus, Wils. crassipes, Wils. Bromham adiantoides, Hedw. taxifolius, L. RIPARIACEZ Cinclidotus fontinaloides, Hedw. Fontinalis antipyretica, L. — dolosa, Cardot. Limbury Cryphza heteromalla, Hedw. LrucoDoNnTACEz Leucodon sciuroides, L. NECKERACEE Neckera crispa, L. On the chalk hills — complanata, L. Homalia trichomanoides, Schreb. LEskKEACEZ Leskea polycarpa, Ehrh. Anomodon viticulosus, L. Thuidium tamariscinum, Hedw. HyYpnace& Thamnium alopecurum, L. Climacium dendroides, L. Isothecium myurum, Poll. A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE HyYpPNAcE# (continued ) Homalothecium sericeum, L. Camptothecium lutescens, Huds. Brachythecium glareosum, B. & S. — albicans, Neck. — velutinum, L. — rutabulum, L. var. longisetum, Bry. Eur. Eurhynchium myosuroides, L. — striatum, Schreb. — crassinervium, Tayl. — piliferum, Schreb. — Swartzii, Turn. — prelongum, Dill. Rhynchostegium tenellum, Dicks. — confertum, Dicks. — murale, Hedw. — ruscifolium, Neck. Plagiothecium denticulatum, L. var. aptychus, Spruce — undulatum, L. Amblystegium serpens, L. — riparium, L. Hypnum aduncum, Hedw. var. Kneifhii, Bry. Eur. Hypnace (continued ) Hypnum exannulatum, Gtimb. — Sendtneri, Schpr. Totternhoe ; proba- bly exterminated about 1890 — fluitans, L. — filicinum, L. — commutatum, Hedw. — cupressiforme, L. var. tectorum, Schpr. On thatch var. filiforme, Bry. Eur. On trees var. ericetorum, Bry. Eur. On heaths — resupinatum, Wils. — patientia, Lindb. — molluscum, Hedw. — palustre, L. — chrysophyllum, Brid. — stellatum, Schreb. — cordifolium, Hedw. — cuspidatum, L. — Schreberi, Ehrh. — purum, L. — stramineum, Dicks. Fhrwick Hylocomium splendens, Dill. — squarrosum, L. — triquetrum, L. THE SCALE-MOSSES AND LIVERWORTS (Hefatice)' There are about two hundred species of Hepatice catalogued for the British Isles and of these only about twenty appear in the-appended list. It is evident therefore that there is room for original investigation of the local forms of these plants. It is desirable that modern records should be obtained for Abbot’s Fungermannia viticulosa, f. tamariscifolia and “Ff. fissa. MaARCHANTIACE Marchantia polymorpha, L. Damp places, marshes and in greenhouses; fre- quent Concephalus conicus, L. Banks of rivulets, etc. ; very local (Sewell) Ricciella fluitans, L. In still waters; very local; Luton Hoo, near the Lower Island JUNGERMANNIACE Frullania dilatata, L. On trees ; eee Radula complanata, L. Porella platyphylla, L. On ng ‘roots, in shady places; not uncommon ; Chaul End, Caddington, Luton Hoo Lepidozia reptans, L. Shady banks ; local ; Aspley Woods, Heath and Reach Cephalozia divaricata, Sm., E. B. Shady banks, marshes, etc. ; local ; FAtwick, Barton, Heath and Reach Lophocolea bidentata, L. Damp woods ; frequent JUNGERMANNIACEZ (continued ) Lophocolea heterophylla, Schrad. Damp woods ; frequent Diplophyllum albicans, L. Moist woods ; rare; Heath and Reach Plagiochila asplenoides, L. Damp woodsand shady banks ; local; Streatley, Fitwick Jungermannia bicrenata, Lindenb. On old tree roots on shady banks ; rare ; woodside by the path to Caddington Blasia pusilla, L. Banks of rivulets ; rare ; Hazelwood Lane, Abbot Pellia epiphylla, L. Ditch banks, ete. ; local ; Ampthill, Flitwick — calycina, Tayl. Banks of rivulets ; local; at the foot of Markham Hills Aneura pinguis, L. Banks of rivulets ; local; Barton Springs — multifida, Gray. Woods; common; Abbot Metzgeria furcata, L. Shady banks ; local ; Limbury, Harlington, Ampthill 1 By James Saunders, Luton. BOTANY THE STONEWORTS (Characea)' The Charas or stoneworts constitute a well-defined group of aquatic plants, the English appellation being given to them on account of the quantity of lime that is secreted by some of the species. They are always submerged, and are to be found in ponds, pools, lakes and streams, affecting chiefly quiet waters, although sometimes occurring in rapidly running brooks. They are often the first kind of vegetation to occupy pools that have been newly formed, such as water holes in clay pits and reservoirs that are uncovered. In such situations they may sometimes be observed to have filled nearly the whole of the available space, to the temporary exclusion of other vegetation. It is also noteworthy that they occasionally die away rapidly from an apparently congenial habitat, and although they may have fruited abundantly, and the mud below con- tains multitudes of their fruits, they do not reappear for several years. Apparently they have exhausted the constituents in the water that are necessary to their existence, and do not start a fresh growth until the conditions are again favourable for that purpose. It may happen that, in the meantime, other aquatic plants, such as water-buttercups and pond- weeds, have occupied the site, and the Characee can only find a pre- carious existence, or fail to reappear for an indefinite period. In the waterways of the Fen districts they often occur in enormous quantities, and as their tissues contain a large proportion of mineral matter, they add annually in their decay an appreciable amount of soil. Their presence may often be detected by the fcetid odour they exhale when left uncovered by receding waters. The only two forms mentioned by Abbot (1798) are Chara vulgaris and C. tomentosa, the latter probably that now known as C. hispida. ‘The most noteworthy record given below is that of Nite//a mucronata, found in 1882 by C. H. Davis, after having been unrecorded in Great Britain for fifty years. ° Chara fragilis, Desv. Frequent Tolypella glomerata, Leonh. Rare; Lea- var. Hedwigii. Leagrave, Sundon grave, near Bedford » capillacea. Totternhoe — intricata, A. Br. Rare; Brammingham, — contraria, Kuetz. ss Sundon — hispida, L. Not common Nitella mucronata, Kuetz. Rare; River — vulgaris, L. Frequent Ouse, Bedford, River Ivel, Sandy var. longibracteata. Buscot — opaca, Ag. Frequent ALG * Practically the only available information concerning the freshwater alge is in Abbot’s records. A few microscopists have examined speci- mens from time to time but have kept no records, and apparently have had no means of determining species. Mr. E. M. Holmes, curator of the Museums of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, has been 1 By James Saunders, Luton. ; : 2 Revised by E. M. Holmes, curator of the Museums of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 59 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE good enough to revise Abbot’s list. In modern nomenclature it appears therefore that the following species were noted by that investigator. CYANOPHYCE: Nostoc commune, Vauch. Common — pruniforme, C. Ag. On the heath in Wrest Park Aphanizomenon Flos-aquz, Ralfs. Com- mon CHLOROPHYCEZE Spirogyra porticalis, Vauch. Common Hydrodictyon reticulatum, Lagerh. Wo- burn, Aspley Enteromorpha intestinalis, Link. Common Trentepohlia aurea, C. Ag. Barton Hill Cladophora canalicularis, Kttz. Mill- ponds, ‘common — fracta, Kitz. Common — glomerata, Kutz. Vaucheria sessilis, D., var. caspitosa, Cooke. Rare; Luton Hoo RHODOPHYCE/E Batrachospermum moniliforme, Roth. With regard to Conferva bullosa, Vaucheria sessilis (Conferva amphibia), and Spirogyra porticalis (Conferva rivularis), Mr. Holmes remarks that he does not positively identify the species, but has compared the references with the illustrations given by Dillenius (as quoted in Abbot’s work) but the illustrations do not show any structural details. As regards Conferva bullosa, concerning which Abbot says, ‘ threads matted, enclos- ing bubbles of air,’ Mr. Holmes remarks, ‘I have seen Cladophora fracta lifted to the top of the marsh ditches by gas given off by the weed in sunshine, and there could be no other alga of a bright green colour grow- ing in the situations described and in matted tufts that does the same.’ The Vaucheria is stated by Abbot to grow on damp walls, but Mr. Holmes says it is found in spring time in runnels of water at the foot of damp walls by farmhouses, etc. Abbot’s description of the branches unit- ing into points when dry exactly applies to it. The Spirogyra named is most likely the one intended, but the structure is not given by Dillenius. THE LICHENS (Lichenes)' In this section we have also to rely upon the observations of Abbot and the revision by Mr. E. M. Holmes. In the following list the numbers refer to the records in the Flora Bedfordiensis. 879 Collema tenax, Ach., var. coronatum, 896 Collema nigrescens, Ach. Keerb. 851 Calicium hyperellum, Ach. (?) The Lichen flavus of old authors apparently included the sterile thalli of several lichens. _C. Aypere/lum, common on old oaks, is probably the species intended by Abbot, as he mentions that Lichen flavus grows ‘on oak barks.’ 868 Bzomyces rufus, DC. 906 = Cladonia coccifera, Scher. 869 — roseus, Pers. 903 f. cornucopioides, Fr. 867 — icmadophilus, Ehrh. 908 Cladina rangiferina, Nyl. g05 Cladonia alcicornis, Floerke 909 — uncialis, Nyl. ial = pydaia, Fr. i son ie see We Nyl. — farinacea, Ach. go2 — fimbriata, Fr. 892 — fraxinea, "Ach. 904 f, exigua, Cromb. g10_ Usnea hirta, Hoffm. 907 var. subcornuta, Nyl. gi1 Alectoria jubata, Nyl. 1 Revised by E. M. Holmes, Curator of the Museums of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 60 BOTANY 895 Evernia prunastri, Ach. 871 Lecanora aurantiaca, Nyl. 890 var. stictocera, Hook. 875 — galactina, Ach. 883 Parmelia saxatilis, Ach. 878 — subfusca, Nyl. 888 — caperata, Ach. 865 — sulphurea, Hoffm. 880 — subaurifera, Nyl. 873 — atra, Ach. 882 — physodes, Ach. 876 — parella, Ach. 896 Lobaria pulmonaria, Hoffm. 857 — calcarea, Somm, 897 Peltidea aphthosa, Ach. 863 — fuscata, Schrad. 898 Peltigera canina, Hoffm. 865 P : 899 — horizontalis, Hoffm. 60} eetusaria amare, Syl, 881 Physcia parietina, De Not. 870 — communis, DC. 888 — lychnea, Nyl. 877 Urceolaria scruposa, Ach. 889 — ciliaris, DC. 864 Lecidea quernea, Ach. 885 — aipolia, Nyl. 869 — sanguinaria, Ach. 849 Leproloma lanuginosum, Ny]. (?) 858 — calcivora, Ehrh, 886 Lecanora saxicola, Ach. 861 — canescens, Dicks. 888 — laciniosa, Nyl. 862 — ceruleo-nigricans, Lightf. 876 — citrina, Ach. 850 — canescens, Ach. Although Lichen incanus is referred by subsequent writers to Lecidea pachycarpa, Duf., that is a comparatively rare species, whilst Abbot’s L. incanus is stated to be common on the bark of trees; he probably refers to the undeveloped growth of L. canescens in a sorediate condition. 872 Lecidea rubella, Ehrh. 854 Opegrapha varia, Pers., f. pulicaris, 860 — muscorum, Sw. Leight. 861 — canescens, Dicks. 853 Graphis scripta, Linn. 856 — petraa, Leight. 863 Verrucaria nigrescens, Pers, The rarer species in this list are Baomyces tcmadophilus, Alectoria jubata, Peltidea aphthosa, Lecidea sanguinaria and Peltigera horizontalis, which are usually found in upland or subalpine districts; Pe/tidea aphthosa generally occurs in limestone woods, as in Derbyshire, where it is frequent. Of the commoner lichens, which are almost certain to occur in districts where other species equally common are found, there is no doubt that many would be detected in the county by careful search and that this list might be largely increased. The first three lichens in Abbot’s list, Nos. 849, 850 and 851, used to be placed in the genus Lepraria, but all three, as well as the rest of this spurious genus, consist of undeveloped sorediate thalli, and prob- ably each included several species. Lichen incanus was probably L. canescens, but might be an undeveloped Pertusaria or Lecanora hema- tomma or even L. rubra, all of which have whitish powdery thalli. Similarly Lichen albus may have been Leproloma lanuginosum or several others, and L. flavus is likewise doubtful. These therefore cannot be regarded as positive records. Mr. Holmes has followed Crombie’s British Lichens as far as Urceolaria scruposa and for the remainder Leighton’s Lichen Flora of Great Britain. FUNGI’ Abbot gave considerable attention to the larger forms of fungi, and also includes in his list some of the smaller ones. About a hundred 1 By John Hamson, Bedford. 61 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE years after his time Mr. J. Hamson took up the subject. His records were confirmed in the first instance by Mr. Worthington G. Smith and afterwards for several seasons by Mr. W. B. Grove of Birmingham, who also revised Abbot’s list of fungi in terms of modern nomenclature. At that time the modern list was of almost equal length with that of Abbot’s, allowance being made for microscopic forms which Mr. Hamson did not collect. Mr. E. M. Langley of Bedford has also been a collector of fungi for several years ; the initials ‘E.M.L.’ indicate that the specimens were found by Mr. Langley and examined by Mr. Hamson. The initials ‘W.B.G.’ and ‘ W.G.S.’ signify that the specimens were seen and named by Mr. Grove and Mr. Worthington Smith respectively. Those to which no initials are attached or are followed by such remarks as ‘com- mon’ are on the authority of Mr. Hamson alone. A list of the recent finds was revised by Mr. W. B. Grove, read by him before the Birming- ham Natural History and Philosophical Society, 10 April 1894, and published in the ‘fourna/ of that society, vol. i. No. 13. The fairly well established records number about 266 so far, but many others have been found though doubtfully recorded, and some which have the repu- tation of growing in the county have not been seen by the author. Mr. Grove’s notes on Abbot’s Fungus Flora are set out at length in the Midland Naturalist, xvi. (1893), 212, 235. It will be sufficient to state here that according to the identifications, which Mr. Grove has very carefully traced, thirty-eight species of Agaricus found by Abbot have been rediscovered, together with seventy-eight fresh records ; but sixteen of Abbot’s species have not been since met with or only doubt- fully. Abbot gives five Coprini, and they have all been found again. He gives Bo/bitius titubans, but the modern record is B. hydrophilus. Of his four species of Cortinarius only one, Ainnuleus, is in the modern record. Gomphidius viscidus survives from Abbot’s time, as does Paxillus involutus ; but, singular to say, P. atrotomentosus, so common in recent years, is not in his list. Of Hygrophorus he gives five species, all re- discovered with seven additions. He records Lactarius torminosus and piperatus. ‘The latter is not in the modern list, which contains eleven in all. Herecords only Russula nigricans of that genus ; Cantharellus cibarius and C. retirugus, but not aurantiacus, which is very common ; and seven species of Marasmius, of which the first five constitute the modern records, but M. Hudsoni and M. epiphyllus have not been confirmed. Lentinus tigrinus and /epideus are now frequent, but Abbot found only L. cochleatus. His two species of Panus have not since been noticed, but Lenzites flac- cida is known at Ampthill together with L. betulina. Abbot gives only four Boleti, of which piperatus is not in the modern list. Out of eleven Polyport three, viz. varius, lucidus and intybaceus have not been since met with. He gives a much longer list of the Pezize than that below. The comparison might be pursued further with regard to many of the other families and genera ; but most of the common forms mentioned by Abbot have been rediscovered. A considerable number of his records can however be only doubtfully recognized. It is interesting to note 62 BOTANY that Cyanophallus caninus, which has been found by Mr. Saunders in Luton Hoo Park, was recorded by Abbot at Silsoe. In the fir woods on the Greensand the fungi grow in great profu- sion. Paxillus atrotomentosus, which Stevenson notes as rare, is really the prevailing form on fir stumps in these woods. It has come up regularly and in great quantity every season since 1885. Species of Boletus, notably e/egans, and also of Russu/a are common in these woods. Agari- cus rubescens is very frequent, but 4. muscarius is only occasionally found. The dangerous form, 4. phalloides, is frequent in the Southill woods and probably elsewhere. 4. procerus and A. rbacodes are both favourite esculents with the Bedford fungophagi ; but though numerous other kinds have been eaten by local specialists and their friends, the only kind that has any popular vogue outside the mushrooms is 4. personatus, locally known as the blue-leg. This is extensively used for making ketchup. The shaggy top (Coprinus comatus) comes next in popularity, mainly because it is easily identified ; but the people will not look at such superior sorts as the champillon, the morell, and the chanterelle, of which the first is abundant, the second frequent, and the third locally plentiful at Woburn. In the following list the names of the Hymenomycetes are those of Stevenson’s British Fungi :— Agaricus phalloides. Southill, Ampthill, Agaricus brevipes. | Kempston, Bedford, 1888 Sharnbrook (W.B.G.) — humilis. (W.B.G.) — muscarius. Ampthill Woods — subpulverulentus. Sandy, 1888 (W.B.G.) — rubescens. Common (W.B.G.) — nebularis, Ailton Ernest, 1891 (E.M.L.) vaginatus 55 35 — clavipes. Common (W.B.G.) procerus +3 5 — odorus 5 53 rachodes. Frequent, especially near Bed- — cerussatus. Clapham, 1891 (W.B.G. per ford (E.M.L., W.B.G.) excoriatus. Ampthill (W.B.G.), Willing- ton (E.M.L.) gracilentus. Frequent, 1892 (E.M.L.) acutesquamosus. Adelaide Square, Bedford, 1896 (E.M.L.) Badhami. Frequent, 1892 (E.M.L,, W.B.G.) cristatus. Common (W.B.G.) granulosus 9 - focalis. Ampthill Woods, 1887 (W.B.G.) melleus. Common (W.B.G.) portentosus. Near Bedford, 1892 (E.M.L.) rutilans. Common in 1888 (W.B.G.) luridus. Clapham, 1891 (E.M.L., W.B.G.) gambosus. Bedford, 1892 (E.M.L.) terreus. Common (E.M.L., W.B.G.) atrosquamosus. Ampthill, 1887 (E.M.L., W.B.G.) loricatus. Ampthill, 1892 personatus. _,, (W.B.G.) nudus. Common 3 melaleucus. Kempston, 1885 (W.GS.) E.M.L.) phyllophilus. Bedford, 1891 (E.M.L.) candicans i » (W.B.G.) elixus. Ampthill, 1887 infundibuliformis. Typical near Bedford, 1891 (E.M.L.) geotropus. Frequent at Ampthill (W.B.G.) brumalis. Common (W.B.G.) metachrons. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) fragrans. Common (W.B.G.) laccatus (and var. amethystinus) mon (W.B.G.) radicatus. Common (W.B.G.) longipes. Southill, 1890 (W.B.G.) fusipes. Kempston, etc., 1889 (W.B.G.) maculatus. Ampthill, Sandy 55 distortus. Milton Ernest, 1892 butyraceus. Common (W.B.G.) velutipes 7 3 tuberosus. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) dryophilus. Clapham, 1892 (E.M.L.) purus. Ampthill (W.B.G.) Com- rugosus. Ampthill, 1892 (W.B.G.) galericulatus. Ampthril 3 alkalinus. Carlton, 1887 % A HISTORY OF Agaricus ammoniacus. Sandy, 1887 (W.B.G.) tenuis. Sandy, Ampthill epipterygius. Ampthill, 1887 fibula, Sandy, 1887 and since (W.B.G.) » Swartzii. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) corticatus. 1892 (E.M.L.) ulmarius. Common (W.B.G.) lignatilis. Ampthill, etc., frequent circinatus. 1892 (E.M.L.) ostreatus. Common (W.B.G.) euosmus. Bedford, 1889 and_ since (W.GS.) septicus. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) speciosus. Ampthill, abundant, ;1892 (W.B.G.); the thin grey variety, Bedford, 1898 parvulus. Biddenbam, 1887 (W.B.G.) cervinus. Pavenham, 1887 3 chrysopheus. Kempston, 1887 ,, sericeus. Ampthill, etc., 1887 ,, prunulus. Frequent (W.G.S., W.B.G.) 35 orcella, Southill (W.B.G.) cretatus. Common (W.B.G.) pascuus re 35 durus. Common at Bedford (W.B.G.) pudicus. comosus, Bedford on elder, 1887 Ampthill, 1892 (W.B.G.) squarrosus. Common (W.B.G.) aurivellus. Great Barford, 1896 Bongardii. Southill Park, 1887 (W.B.G.) rimosus. Common (W.B.G.) asterosporus. Bedford, 1887 (W.B.G.) geophyllus. Ampthill, 1887 55 fastibilis. Kempston and near Bedford (W.GS., J.H., E.M.L.) glutinosus. Near Bedford, 1892 (E.M.L.) crustuliniformis. Ampthill, 1892 nudipes. Near Bedford, 1892 (E.M.L.) lentus. Bedford, 1887 (W.B.G.) flavidus. Ampthill, Bedford (W.B.G.) melinoides. Bedford, 1887 stripes. Kempston, very rare pediades. Pavenham, 1887 tener. Common (W.B.G.) furfuraceus. | Common (W.B.G.) inquilinus. Bedford, 1887 mollis. Bedford, Kempston Elvensis. Near Bedford W.B.G.) arvensis. Common (W.B.G.) campestris var. praticola. Common var. rufescens. 1901 (E.M.L.) sylvaticus. Near Bedford,'1891 (E.M.L.) » » ” ”» (E.M.L., zruginosus. Common (W.B.G.) coronillus. Kempston, 1887 ,, semiglobatus. Common _ sublateritius. Frequent 5 fascicularis. Common 85 lachrymabundus. Kempston, 1885 (W.GS.) 64 BEDFORDSHIRE Agaricus velutinus. Common (W.B.G.) — Candolleanus. Kempston (W.GS., W.B.G.) — appendiculatus. Common (W.B.G.) — areolatus. Kempston (W.G.S.) — fcenisecii. Frequent (W.B.G.) — corrugis $5 +3 —— separatus. Common in 1890 — fimiputris. Common — campanulatus _,, — papilionaceus ,, — gracilis. Bedford (W.B.G.) — atomatus, Brombam — disseminatus. Common Coprinus comatus. Common (W.B.G.) — atramentarius ma — niveus. Common » (W.B.G.) — micaceus — domesticus. Ampthill, 1887 — plicatilis. Common (W.B.G.) Bolbitius hydrophilus. Ampthill, (W.B.G.) Cortinarius callisteus. Great Warden, 1892 — tabularis. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) — hinnuleus. Bedford, 1887 a Gomphidius viscidus. Frequent (W.B.G.) Paxillus giganteus. Common in 1892 ” 1887 (W.B.G.) — involutus. Common (W.B.G.) — atrotomentosus. Ampthill, Sandy (W.B.G.) — lepista. 1901 (E.M.L.) Hygrophorus hypothejus. Ampthill, common (W.B.G.) — pratensis. Common (W.B.G.): — virgineus 3 3 — ovinus. Carlton, 1891 — ceraceus. Ampthill (W.B.G.) — coccineus. Frequent ,, — puniceus 55 + — conicus. Common ” calyptreformis. Carlton, 1887 (W.B.G.) chlorophanus. Ampthill, 1886 psittacinus. Common (W.B.G.) — nitratus. Bromham, 1887 Lactarius torminosus. Frequent (W.G.5., W.B.G.) insulsus. Frequent (W.B.G.) trivialis. Frequent in 1892 pyrogalus, Sandy, 1887; Great Warden, 1892 (W.B.G.) vellereus. Oakley, 1892 (E.M.L.,, W.B.G.) deliciosus. Sandy, 1887; Ampthill, Southill, etc. (W.B.G.) quietus. Common (W.B.G.) rufus > 5 volemus. Clapham, 1886 mitissimus. 1892 (E.M.L.) subdulcis. Frequent (W.B.G.) » BOTANY Russula nigricans. Ampthill, Southill (E.M.L., W.B.G.) adusta. Southill, 1887 (W.B.G.) delica. Frequent, 1892 (E.M.L.) cyanoxantha. The commonest species (W.B.G.) heterophylla. Southill, 1890 (W.B.G.) foctens. Frequent (W.B.G.) Queletii. Ampthill 5 — ochroleuca ,, 1886 (W.B.G.) — integra. Oakley, 1891 (E.M.L.) Cantharellus aurantiacus. Common, assum- ing various forms (W.B.G.) — cibarius. Woburn, plentiful, 1896 Marasmius peronatus. Common (W.B.G.) — oreades. Common; rare in 1887 (W.B.G.) — ramealis. Frequent (W.B.G.) — rotula. Kempston, 1887 (W.B.G.) — androsaceus. Sandy ,, 33 Lentinus tigrinus. Banks of Ouse (W.B.G.) — lepideus. On railway bridges, etc. ; com- mon (W.B.G.) Lenzites betulina. Ampthill (W.B.G.) — flaccida. Ampthill, 1889 ,, Boletus luteus. Common at Ampthill elegans. Sandy, 1888 ; Ampthill, 1891 flavus. Ampthill (W.B.G.) granulatus. Ampthilland Sandy (W.B.G.) — bovinus. Ampthill, 1889 —— badius. Frequent (W.B.G.) —— chrysenteron. Northill, Ampthill (W.B.G.) subtomentosus. Southill, 1888 (W.B.G.) edulis. Not common (W.B.G.) — fragrans. Near Bedford, 1893 (E.M.L.) impolitus. Ampthill, frequent Satanas. Oakley, 1892 (E.M.L.); Wo- burn, 1897 (J.H.) — purpureus. Ampthill, 1889, per Mr. Ferraby — laricinus. Ampthill, 1888 Fistulina hepatica. Ampthill Park, etc., frequent (W.B.G.) Polyporus rufescens. Pavenham, 1889 (W.B.G.) perennis, Ampthill (W.B.G.) squamosus. Common ___,, lucidus. Ampthill, 1887 — frondosus. 1892 (E.M.L.) ~~ sulphureus. Common in 1892 (W.B.G.) — chioneus. Frequent (W.B.G.) ~—— fumosus. Frequent in 1887 —— adustus. Kempston, 1887 (W.B.G.) hispidus. Frequent in 1887 dryadeus. Carlton, 1887 (W.B.G.) applanatus. Bedford, 1888 fomentarius, (W.B.G.) — igniarius. Oakley (E.M.L.) — fulvus. Bromham I 65 Polyporus ulmarius. Common (W.B.G.) — fraxineus. Lidlington — annosus. Common (W.B.G.) — versicolor % me — abietinus. Ampthill, 1887 Trametes gibbosa__,, » per Mr, Fer- raby (W.B.G.) — suaveolens. Bedford, 1887 (W.B.G.) Dedalea unicolor. Ampthill, Kempston (W.B.G.) — quercina. Hydnum auriscalpium. (W.GS.) Thelephora laciniata. Common (W.B.G.) — molissima. Ampthill, 1885 (W.GS.) Stereum purpureum. Bedford, Ampthill; frequent — hirsutum. Northill, 1886 (W.GSS.) — spadiceum. Ampthill ,, ss Auricularia mesenterica. Common (W.B.G.) Corticium corrugatum., Sharnbrook, 1885 (W.G.S.) — aridum. Ampthill, 1885 (W.GSS.) Clavaria muscoides. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) Ampthill, 1892 (E.M.L.) Ampthill, 1885 — coralloides. Ampthill, 1886 and since — cinerea + 1887 — rugosa » frequent (W.B.G.) — formosa ”? ” ” — fusiformis. Ampthill, 1887 and since ,, — argillacea. Ampthill, 1887 Calocera viscosa. Common (W.B.G.) Tremella mesenterica. Ampthill, 1889, per Mr. Ferraby (W.B.G.) Dacryomyces stillatus. Bedford (W.B.G.) Phallus impudicus, L. Common at Ampthill Mutinus (Cyanophallus) caninus, Fr. Luton Hoo Park (J. Saunders, W.G.5.) Bovista plumbea, P. Common (W.B.G.) Lycoperdon giganteum, Batsch. Common (W.B.G.) — celatum, Fr. Ampthill, 1887 — gemmatum, Fr. Common (W.B.G.) — pyriforme, Schoeff. Kempston, etc., 1887 (W.B.G.) Scleroderma vulgare, Fr. (W.B.G.) — verrucosum, P. (W.B.G.) Cyathus striatus, Hoffm. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) — vernicosus, DC. Bedford, 1887 (W.B.G.) Tubercularia vulgaris, Tode. Common on currant twigs (W.B.G.) Verticillium agaricinum, Ca. On Agaricus ostreatus, Ampthill, 1887, per Mr. Ferraby (W.B.G.) Melasmia acerina, Lev. Ampthill, common on sycamore leaves (W.B.G.) Ptychogaster albus, Ca. Common in pine woods (W.B.G.) Bedford, etc., 1887 Southill, etc., 1887 9 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Morchella esculenta, L. Ampthill and Mucor fusiger, Lk. On Agaricus fusipes Sandy W.B.G.) — crassipes, P. Ampthill, 1877 and since; Sporodinia grandis, Lk. ) Growing on Lac- frequent (W.B.G.) Syzygites megalocarpus, is from Sandy Peziza badia, P. Pavenham (W.G.S.) Ehr. (W.B.G.) — vesiculosa, Bull. Kempston, etc.(W.G.S.) Reticularia umbrina, Fr. Ampthill, 1888 — calycina, Schum. On larch twigs (W.B.G.) (W.B.G.) Didymium squamulosum, A.et S. On Pol. Tuber estivum, Vitt. Ampthill, Flitwick ; fumosus, Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) common, per Mr. Ferraby Tubulina cylindrica, Bull. Sandy, 1887 Xylaria polymorpha, Grev. Ampthill, 1887 (W.B.G.) (W.B.G.) Trichia varia, P., var. genuina. Ampthill, — Hypoxylon, Grev. Common (W.B.G.) 1887 (W.B.G.) Mr. Grove adds: As bearing on the subject of the Bedford Fungus Flora, it may be mentioned that, in the later volumes of the English Fungi, Sowerby figures two other Bedford species which he received from Abbot: t.242. Ag. tremulus, Schoeff. t. 437. Xylaria pendunculata, Fr. as well as (t. 362) 4g. planus, which is probably a form of Ag. crustulini- formis, and (t. 369, f. 8) Peziza migra and (t. 389, f. 8) Peziza Abbotiana, which are, perhaps, both unrecognizable. In Cooke’s Handbook there are two records of Bedfordshire Fungi : p. 253. Boletusrubinus,Sm. Near Dunstable p. 748. Geneahispidula, B. Bedfordshire And in his I//ustrations two more are figured : t. 876. Paxillus atrotomentosus, Fr. Woburn t. 922. MHygrophorus puniceus, Fr. Bed- fordshire (W.B.G.) MYCETOZOA OR MYXOMYCETES’ The curious group of organisms usually known as the Mycetozoa forms one of the numerous links that connect the animal and the vege- table kingdoms. They frequently occur as denizens of damp woods, where they creep about on rotten tree roots or fallen branches, during one stage of their existence. They are also to be found on decaying heaps of leaves or straw, especially if such accumulations have been undisturbed for several months. In these situations they are occasionally to be met with in immense quantities,so much so that portions of the heap appear as though covered with hoar frost from the numerous calcareous spor- angia that have been formed on them. In the following list of the species that have been recorded for Bedfordshire, the most noteworthy are Badbamia ovispora, Fuligo ellip- sospora, Diachea subsessilis, Chondrioderma testaceum, and Lycogala flavo- Suscum. It is also worthy of remark that out of the two hundred species that are catalogued for the whole world in Mr. A. Lister’s Monograph which was issued by the British Museum authorities, upwards of ninety have been found within ten miles of Luton. The most prolific district 1 By James Saunders, Luton. 66 BOTANY in Bedfordshire for these organisms is the parish of Flitwick, for which at least sixty species have been recorded (see ‘ Mycetozoa of the South Midlands,’ J. Saunders, ‘fourn. Bot. xxviii. 83).' Ceratiomyxa mucida, Schroed. Badhamia hyalina, Berk. var. papaveracea — utricularis, Berk. — nitens, Berk. — macrocarpa, Rost. — panicea, Rost. — lilacina, Rost. — rubiginosa, Rost. — ovispora, Racib. — foliicola, Lister Physarum leucopus, Link — citrinum, Schum. — viride, Pers, — nutans, Pers. var. violascens var. leucophaum — calidris, Lister — compressum, Alb. and Schw. — straminipes, Lister. Sp. nov. — didermoides, Rost. var. lividum — cinereum, Pers. — vernum, Somm. (E. Saunders) — bivalve, Pers. — diderma, Rost. — contextum, Pers. — conglomeratum, Rost. Fuligo septica, Gmel. — ellipsospora, Lister. record Craterium pedunculatum, Trent. — leucocephalum, Ditm. — mutabile, Fries Leocarpus vernicosus, Link Chondrioderma spumaroides, Rost. — testaceum, Rost. — Michelii, Rost. — reticulatum, Rost. — niveum, Rost. — radiatum, Rost. Diachza elegans, Fries — subsessilis, Peck. First European record Didymium difforme, Duby — serpula, Fries — clavus, Rost. — farinaceum, Schrad. — nigripes, Fries — effusum, Link — Trochus, Lister. Spumaria alba, DC. Lepidodermatigrinum, Rost. (Miss G. Lister) First British record First European Sp. nov. Stemonitis fusca, Roth. var. confluens — splendens, Rost. — ferruginea, Ehrenb. — Smithii, Macbride Comatricha obtusata, Preuss. — typhoides, Rost. — Persoonii, Rost. — rubens, Lister Enerthenema elegans, Bowen Lamproderma physaroides, Rost. — irideum, Massee — violaceum, Rost. Brefeldia maxima, Rost. Lindbladia tubulina, Fries Cribraria argillacea, Pers. — aurantiaca, Schrad. Dictydium umbilicatum, Schrad. Licea flexuosa, Pers. Tubulina fragiformis, Pers. Dictydizthalium plumbeum, Rost. Enteridium olivaceum, Ehrenb. Reticularia Lycoperdon, Bull — lobata, Lister Trichia affinis, de Bary — persimilis, Karst. — scabra, Rost. — varia, Pers. — contorta, Rost. var. inconspicua — fallax, Pers. — Botrytis, Pers. var. munda, Lister Hemitrichia rubiformis, Lister var. Neesiana — intorta, Lister — clavata, Rost. Arcyria ferruginea, Sauter — albida, Pers. var. pomiformis — punicea, Pers. — incarnata, Pers. — flava, Pers. Perichena depressa, Libert. — populina, Fries — variabilis, Rost. Margarita metallica, Lister (Miss Crouch) Prototrichia flagellifera, Rost. Lycogala flavo-fuscum, Rost. First British record (C. Crouch) — miniatum, Pers. 1 All records have been verified by A. Lister, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. ZOOLOGY MOLLUSCS Although the physical features of Bedfordshire are such as to favour molluscan life, students of the mollusca are conspicuous by their absence, and only one paper, that by Mr. J. Saunders, Midland Naturalist (1888), xi. 152, has been published on the conchology of the area. From this and the Records of the Conchological Society, supplemented from the observations of Mr. Cox and the Rev. C. McN. Rushforth the following list has been compiled. Only 74 species out of the 139 known to exist in the British Islands have thus been actually found; but the names of fourteen others pre- ceded by an asterisk [*] have been included in the list, because judging from the records of neighbouring counties they must certainly exist in the area. So far as our opinion can be formed from such scanty material this molluscan fauna is of the average British type. A notable inhabitant is the Roman snail (Helix pomatia), which however was living in England before the advent of the Romans. It is a very local species, and in this county is found near Luton. A. GASTROPODA I. PULMONATA Arion ater (Linn.) — hortensis, Fér. a. STYLOMMATOPHORA : : — circumscriptus, John. Limax maximus, Linn. *— subfuscus (Drap.) — flavus, Linn. Punctum pygmeum (Drap.) Bromham ; Agriolimax agrestis (Linn.) Woburn *— levis (Mill.). Pyramidula rotundata (Mull.) *Amalia sowerbii (Fér.) Helicella virgata (Da C.) *— gagates (Drap.) — itala (Linn.) Vitrina pellucida (Mull.) — caperata (Mont.) Vitrea crystallina (Mull.) — cantiana (Mont.) — alliaria (Miller). Woburn Sands ; *Hygromia fusca (Mont.) Ampthill — granulata (Ald.) — glabra (Brit. Auct.) Woburn Sands; — hispida (Linn.) Luton; Sharnbrook — rufescens (Penn.) — cellaria (Mull.) Acanthinula aculeata (Mull.) — nitidula (Drap.) Vallonia pulchella (Mull.) — pura (Ald. F Helicigona lapicida (Linn.) — eee Pasay mcaihil — arbustorum (Linn.) — nitida (Mull.) Helix aspersa, Mull. — fulva (Mull.) — pomatia, Linn. Near Luton 69 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Helix nemorals, Linn. Limnea auricularia (Linn.) — hortensis, Mull. — pereger (Mull.) Buliminus obscurus (Mull.) — palustris (Mull.) Cochhicopa lubrica (MUll.) — truncatula (Mull.) Azeca tridens (Pult.) Near Luton; near — stagnalis (Linn.) Bedford ; Barton-le-Clay ; Ampthill Planorbis corneus (Linn.) Celtanella acicula (Mull.) — albus, Mull. Pupa cylindracea (Da C.) — nautileus (Linn.) — muscorum (Linn.) — carinatus, Mull. R. Ivel Sphyradium edentulum (Drap.) Local and — marginatus, Drap. rare — vortex (Linn.) Limbury Vertigo antivertigo(Drap.) Near Ampthill; *— sfirorbis, Mull. Tottenhoe — contortus (Linn.) —— substriata (Jeff.) Near Ampthill — fontanus (Lightf.) Limbury — pygmea (Drap.) Physa fontinalis (Linn.) * Balea perversa (Linn.) *— hypnorum (Linn.) esi ree roa anmaaes II. PROSOBRANCHIATA Succinea putris (Linn.) Bithynia tentaculata (Linn.) — elegans, Risso *— leachii (Shepp.) *Vivipara contecta (Millett) bs BASOMMANORHORA *Valvata piscinalis (Miull.) Carychium minimum, Mull. *— cristata, Mull. Ancylus fluviatilis, Mull. . Pomatias elegans (Mull.) Velletia lacustris (Linn.) j Diary Neritina fluviatilis (Linn.) Great Barford B. PELECYPODA * Dreissensia polymorpha (Pall.) Pisidium pusillum (Gmel.) Unio pictorum (Linn.) — nitidium, Jenyns. Limbury — tumidus, Retz. — fontinale (Drap.) and the variety P. Anodonta cygnea (Linn.) henslowianum Spherium corneum (Linn.) — milum (Held.) Biscot * Pisidium amnicum (Mull.) 7o INSECTS The county of Bedford cannot be said to rank high in regard to the number of its species of insects in various groups. The paucity of its insect fauna may in great part be attributed to high farming, as well as to the nature of its soil. Yet the admixture of its clay with the great oolite and the more sandy formation towards Woburn furnishes a varia- tion of soil which is favourable to insect life, and it is very possible that further investigation—especially by a larger number of workers—may add considerably to the list of species found in the county up to the present time. The only orders which appear to have been studied in the county are the Coleoptera (beetles) and the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) : of the former order from seven to eight hundred species have been recorded ; of the latter over six hundred. COLEOPTERA The records of Coleoptera from Bedfordshire have hitherto been very few and far between, and the county has evidently never been worked by any of the older collectors, except perhaps for an odd day or two. Hydroporus marginatus, indeed, was first taken in Britain near Woburn by the Rev. Hamlet Clark, and Harpalus discoideus used to be regarded as a great prize when it was found near Sandy more than half a century ago, but these instances are quite exceptional, and at first it appeared hopeless to attempt to draw up any list at all. Mr. H. Willoughby Ellis of Knowle near Birmingham, however, has been kindly collecting during the past summer with a view to this list, and I am much indebted to him for the large number of species which he has recorded, and for all the trouble he has taken in the matter. I must also express my thanks to Mr. Herbert Studman of the School House, Woburn, for a few interesting records. It will probably be found in time that Bedfordshire contains a large number of good species. The banks of the Ouse will certainly furnish many, and there are woods and parks which cannot but contain a fair proportion of the rarer species which occur in the adjacent counties. Most of the species mentioned below are common, but there are a few very interesting insects among them. Among these may be men- tioned : Homeusa acuminata, Ischnoglossa corticina, several good species of Homalota, Megacronus inclinans, Asemum striatum, Euplectus piceus, and last but not least Bagous cylindrus, which was found by Mr. Ellis in numbers a short time ago. Most of the insects mentioned in the list have been taken by 71 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Mr. Ellis within about ten miles of Leighton Buzzard. Dr. Power lived in Bedford during the last years of his life ; if he had been younger and able to collect, even for a few weeks, our knowledge of the beetles of the county would be very much enlarged, for he always seemed to know intuitively where to find the scarcest species. CIcINDELIDZ Cicindela campestris, L. CARABIDE Cychrus rostratus, L. Carabus catenulatus, Scop. — nemoralis, Mull. — violaceus, L. — granulatus, L. Notiophilus biguttatus, F. — aquaticus, L. Leistus spinibarbis, F. — fulvibarbis, Dej. — ferrugineus, L. Nebria brevicollis, F. Elaphrus riparius, L. — cupreus, Duft. Loricera pilicornis, F. Clivina fossor, L. Dyschirius globosus, Herbst Broscus cephalotes, L. Dawson (Geod. Brit. p- 114) has the following note on this species: ‘It is not, as has been commonly supposed, exclusively a coast species, for it has been taken by T. V. Wollaston, Esq., on a sandy common near Twigmoor in the north of Lincolnshire, forty miles from the sea; and I myself have captured specimens near /Voburn in Bedford- shire, more than double that distance from the coast’ Badister bipustulatus, F. Acupalpus meridianus, L. Bradycellus distinctus, Dej. — verbasci, Duft. — harpalinus, Dej. Harpalus rufibarbis, F. — ruficornis, F. — eneus, F. — rubripes, Duft. — discoideus, F. Woburn; also recorded by Dawson from Sandy — latus, L. — tardus, Panz. Stomis pumicatus, Panz. Platyderus ruficollis, Marsh. Pterostichus cupreus, L. — versicolor, Sturm — madidus, F. — niger, Schall. — vulgaris, L. — nigrita, F. — minor, Gyll. 72 CarABID (continued) Pterostichus strenuus, Panz. — diligens, Sturm — picimanus, Duft. Woburn — vernalis, Gyll. — striola, F. Amara fulva, Dej. — apricaria, Sturm — ovata, F. — similata, Gyll. — lunicollis, Schiddte — familiaris, Duft. — trivialis, Gyll. — communis, Panz. — plebeia, Gyll. Calathus cisteloides, Panz. — flavipes, Fourc. — mollis, Marsh. — melanocephalus, L. var. nubigena, Hal. — piceus, Marsh. Pristonychus terricola, Herbst Anchomenus angusticollis, F. — dorsalis, Mull. — albipes, F. — oblongus, Sturm — marginatus, L. — parumpunctatus, F. — viduus, Panz. var. moestus, Duft. — micans, Nic. — fuliginosus, Panz. — gracilis, Gyll. — piceus, L. — thoreyi, De}. Olisthopus rotundatus, Payk. Bembidium rufescens, Gueér. — obtusum, Sturm — guttula, F. — mannerheimi, Sahlb. — biguttatum, F. — riparium, Ol. — ezneum, Germ. — articulatum, Panz. — lampros, Herbst var. velox, Er. — decorum, Panz. — nitidulum, Marsh. — quadriguttatum, F. — quadrimaculatum, Gyll. — femoratum, Sturm — littorale, OL. — flammulatum, Clairv. INSECTS CaRABID& (continued) Tachypus flavipes, L. Trechus discus, F. Dawson — micros, Herbst — minutus, F. — secalis, Payk. Patrobus excavatus, Payk. Demetrias atricapillus, L. Dromius linearis, Ol. — agilis, F. — meridionalis, Dej. — quadrimaculatus, L. — quadrinotatus, Panz. — melanocephalus, Dej. Blechrus maurus, Sturm Metabletus foveola, Gyll. — truncatellus, L. HaipPlipz Brychius elevatus, Panz. Haliplus flavicollis, Sturm — ruficollis, De G. — lineatocollis, Marsh. Dytiscip# Noterus sparsus, Marsh. Laccophilus interruptus, Panz. — obscurus, Panz. Coelambus versicolor, Schall. — inzqualis, F. Deronectes assimilis, Payk. — depressus, F. Hydroporus pictus, F. — rivalis, Gyll. — lineatus, F. — angustatus, Sturm — gyllenhali, Schiddte — palustris, L. — erythrocephalus, L. — nigrita, F. — pubescens, Gyll. — planus, F. — marginatus, Duft. First taken in Britain at Woburn by the Rev. Hamlet Clark Agabus guttatus, Payk. — nebulosus, Forst — chalconotus, Panz. — bipustulatus, L. Platambus maculatus, L. Ilybius fuliginosus, F. — ater, De G. Colymbetes fuscus, L. Dytiscus marginalis, L. Acilius sulcatus, L. Gyrinus natator, Scop. — marinus, Gyll. var. opacus, Sahl. Orectochilus villosus, Mull. Islands of the Ouse, HypDrRoPHILIDZ Hydrobius fuscipes, L. HyprRopHILip& (continued) Laccobius sinuatus, Mots. Limnebius truncatellus, Thoms. Cheetarthria seminulum, Herbst Helophorus nubilus, F. — aquaticus, L. var. zqualis, Thoms. — eneipennis, Thoms. — brevipalpis, Bedel Hydrochus elongatus, Schall. Octhebius pygmzus, F. Hydrezna nigrita, Germ. Sphezridium scarabzoides, F, — bipustulatum, F. var. marginatum, F, Cercyon hemorrhous, Gyll. — hemorrhoidalis, Herbst — obsoletus, Gyll. — flavipes, F. — lateralis, Marsh. — melanocephalus, L. — unipunctatus, L. — nigriceps, Marsh. — analis, Payk. — granarius, ‘Thoms. — minutus, Muls. Megasternum boletophagum, Marsh. Cryptopleurum atomarium, Muls. STAPHYLINIDZ Homceusa acuminata, Maerk. Woburn Aleochara fuscipes, F. — bipunctata, Ol. — lanuginosa, Grav. — meesta, Grav. — nitida, Grav. — morion, Grav. Microglossa suturalis, Mann. — nidicola, Fairm. Oxypoda opaca, Grav. — alternans, Grav. — longiuscula, Er. Ischnoglossa prolixa, Grav. — corticina, Er. Woburn Park Ocyusa incrassata, Kr. Woburn ; Leighton Buzzard Phloeopora reptans, Grav. Ocalea castanea, Er. — badia, Er. Chilopora longitarsis, Er. Myrmedonia humeralis, Grav. Astilbus canaliculatus, F. Thamiarea cinnamomea, Grav. Alianta incana, Er. Homalota gregaria, Er. — eximia, Sharp* — fragilis, Kr.* — longula, Heer * 1 These three species were taken by Mr. Ellis Anaccena globulus, Payk. amongst sand and shingle on the margin of a — limbata, F. brook near Leighton Buzzard. I 73 10 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE STAPHYLINIDE (continued) Homalota luridipennis, Mann. gyllenhali, Thoms. elongatula, Grav. silvicola, Fuss. Woburn vicina, Steph. graminicola, Gyll. fungivora, Thoms. nigella, Er. zequata, Er. pilicornis, Thoms. Heath near Leighton circellaris, Grav. immersa, Er, cuspidata, Er. analis, Grav. depressa, Gyll. aquatica, Thoms. zneicollis, Sharp xanthoptera, Steph. trinotata, Kr. fungicola, Thoms. boletobia, Thoms. nigricornis, Thoms palustris, Kies. autumnalis, Er. sericea, Muls. atricolor, Sharp nigra, Kr. sordidula, Er. cauta, Er. villosula, Kr. cinnamoptera, Thoms. atramentaria, Gyll. longicornis, Grav. sordida, Marsh. testudinea, Er. aterrima, Grav. pygmeza, Grav. laticollis, Steph. — fungi, Grav. Gnypeta labilis, Er. Tachyusa constricta, Er. Falagria sulcata, Payk. — obscura, Grav. Autalia impressa, Ol. — rivularis, Grav. Encephalus complicans, Westw. Gyrophzna affinis, Mann. — nana, Payk. — minima, Er. — levipennis, Kr. Bolitochara lucida, Grav. Hygronoma dimidiata, Grav. Oligota inflata, Mann. — pusillima, Grav. Myllena dubia, Grav. — intermedia, Er. — elongata, Matth. — gracilis, Matth. — brevicornis, Matth. Bedford 74 STAPHYLINIDE (continued) Hypocyptus longicornis, Payk. Conosoma littoreum, L. — pubescens, Grav. — lividum, Er. Tachyporus obtusus, L. — chrysomelinus, L. — humerosus, Er. — hypnorum, F. — pusillus, Grav. — brunneus, F. Cilea silphoides, L. Tachinus humeralis, Grav. — rufipes, L. — subterraneus, L. — marginellus, F. — laticollis, Grav. Megacronus cingulatus, Mann. — analis, F. — inclinans, Grav. Heath near Leighton Bolitobius lunulatus, L. — trinotatus, Er. — exoletus, Er. — pygmeus, F. Mycetoporus splendens, Marsh. — lepidus, Grav. Heterothops previa, Er. Quedius mesomelinus, Marsh. fulgidus, F. cruentus, Ol. cinctus, Payk. (impressus, Panz.) fuliginosus, Grav. molochinus, Grav. picipes, Mann. maurorufus, Grav. rufipes, Grav. boops, Grav. Creophilus maxillosus, L. Leistotrophus nebulosus, F. Ocypus olens, Mill. — brunnipes, F. — morio, Grav. Philonthus splendens, F. laminatus, Creutz. zeneus, Rossi proximus, Kr. addendus, Sharp. Buzzard politus, F. varius, Gyll. marginatus, F. albipes, Grav. cephalotes, Grav. sanguinolentus, Grav. varians, Payk. micans, Grav. trossulus, Nord. Xantholinus glabratus, Grav. — punctulatus, Payk. — linearis, Ol. In moss, Leighton STAPHYLINID# (continued) Xantholinus longiventris, Heer Baptolinus alternans, Grav. Othius fulvipennis, F. — melanocephalus, Grav. Lathrobium elongatum,. L. — boreale, Hoch. — fulvipenne, Grav. — brunnipes, F. — terminatum, Grav. var. immaculatum, Fowler — multipunctum, Grav. Stilicus rufipes, Germ. — orbiculatus, Er. INSECTS STAPHYLINID (continued) Homalium pusillum, Grav. — punctipenne, Thoms, — rufipes, Fourc. — planum, Payk. — concinnum, Marsh. — deplanatum, Gyll. Anthobium torquatum, Marsh. Proteinus ovalis, Steph. — brachypterus, F. Megarthrus denticollis, Beck. Phlceobium clypeatum, Mull. SILPHIDE Clambus pubescens, Redt. — similis, Er. Heath near Leighton — minutus, Sturm — affinis, Er. Medon melanocephalus, F. Sunius angustatus, Payk. Pzderus littoralis, Grav. Dianous ccerulescens, Gyll. Stenus guttula, Mull. — bimaculatus, Gyll. — Juno, F. — speculator, Er. — providus, var. Rogeri, Kr. — buphthalmus, Grav. — atratulus, Er. — exiguus, Er. — brunnipes, Steph. — impressus, Germ. — pallipes, Grav. — flavipes, Steph. — pubescens, Steph. — binotatus, Ljungh. — bifoveolatus, Gyll. — cicindeloides, Grav. — similis, Herbst. — tarsalis, Ljungh. — paganus, Er. — latifrons, Er. Oxyporus rufus, L. Bledius fracticornis, Payk. Platystethus arenarius, Fourc. Oxytelus rugosus, Grav. — insecatus, Grav. — sculptus, Grav. — sculpturatus, Grav. — tetracarinatus, Block Haploderus ccelatus, Grav. Trogophlceus bilineatus, Steph. — elongatulus, Er. Syntomium zneum, Mull. Lesteva longelytrata, Goeze — pubescens, Mann. Olophrum piceum, Gyll. Lathrimzum atrocephalum, Gyll. — unicolor, Steph. Homalium rivulare, Payk. — excavatum, Steph. -— cesum, Grav. Agathidium seminulum, L. — levigatum, Er. Amphicyllis globus, F. Woburn Liodes humeralis, Kug. Necrophorus humator, Goeze — mortuorum, F. — vestigator, Hersch. — vespillo, L. Silpha thoracica, L. — rugosa, L. — sinuata, F. — atrata, L. var. brunnea, Herbst Choleva angustata, F. — cisteloides, Frdhl. — spadicea, Sturm. Billington — velox, Spence — nigricans, Spence — grandicollis, Er. — nigrita, Er. — tristis, Panz. — chrysomeloides, Panz, —— fumata, Spence Catops sericeus, F. Colon brunneum, Latr. Brekhill ScyDMZNIDEZ Scydmezenus collaris, Mull. Eumicrus tarsatus, Mull. PsELAPHIDE Pselaphus Heisei, Herbst Bythinus validus, Aubé Bryaxis fossulata, Reich. — juncorum, Leach Euplectus signatus, Reich. — piceus, Mots. PHALACRIDZ Stilbus testaceus, Panz. CoccINELLID& Anisosticta 19-punctata, L, Adalia bipunctata, L. Mysia oblongoguttata, L. Coccinella 10-punctata, L. — hieroglyphica, L. — I1-punctata, L. — 7-punctata, L, A HISTORY CoccinELLip# (continued) Halyzia 14-guttata, L. — 22-punctata, L. Scymnus capitatus, F, Chilocorus bipustulatus, L. Coccidula rufa, Herbst ERoryLip& Dacne rufifrons, F. CoLyDIIpz& Cerylon histeroides, F. HisTERIDA Hister cadaverinus, Hoff. — succicola, Thoms. — carbonarius, IIl. — bimaculatus, L. Saprinus nitidulus, Payk. NITIDULIDZ Epurza ezstiva, L. — florea, Er, — deleta, Er. — obsoleta, F. Nitidula bipustulata, L. Soronia grisea, L. Omosita depressa, L. Meligethes rufipes, Gyll. — eneus, F. — viridescens, F, — picipes, Sturm Ips quadripunctata, Herbst Pityophagus ferrugineus, F, Woburn Rhizophagus depressus, F. — ferrugineus, Payk. — dispar, Gyll. MonoTomMip& Monotoma picipes, Herbst — longicollis, Gyll. LaTHRIDIIDAZ Lathridius lardarius, De G. Coninomus nodifer, Westw. Cartodere ruficollis, Marsh. Corticaria pubescens, Gyll. — denticulata, Gyll. — elongata, Humm. ByTuRiD#& Byturus tomentosus, F. CryPTOPHAGIDE Telmatophilus caricis, Ol. Cryptophagus lycoperdi, Herbst — scanicus, L. — dentatus, Herbst — cellaris, Scop. — affinis, Sturm Micrambe vini, Panz. Atomaria umbrina, Er. Heath near Woburn — elongatula, Er. Under bark, Woburn — nigripennis, Payk. — pusilla, Payk. — ruficornis, Marsh, SCAPHIDIIDE Scaphidium quadrimaculatum, Ol. OF BEDFORDSHIRE ScAPHIDIID# (continued) Scaphisoma agaricinum, L. MycrToPHAGID& Typhza fumata, L. Triphyllus punctatus, F. Mycetophagus quadripustulatus, L, DERMESTIDE Dermestes murinus, L. — lardarius, L. ByrRHIDE Byrrhus pilula, L. Cytilus varius, F. Simplocaria semistriata, F. PaRNIDz Limnius tuberculatus, Mull. HETEROCERIDEZ Heterocerus marginatus, F, — levigatus, Panz. LucaNIpz& Lucanus cervus, L. Mr. Studman found a number of females in a willow tree near Little Drakelow Pond, Woburn, but could not find a male Sinodendron cylindricum, L. SCARABAIDE Onthophagus ovatus, L. — nuchicornis, L. Aphodius erraticus, L. — subterraneus, L. — fossor, L. — hemorrhoidalis, L. — fimetarius, L. — ater, De G. — merdarius, F. — inquinatus, F, — punctato-sulcatus, Sturm — prodromus, Brahm. — contaminatus, Herbst — rufipes, L. Geotrupes typhzus, L. — spiniger, Marsh. — stercorarius, L. — vernalis, L. Serica brunnea, L. Rhizotrogus solstitialis, L. Melolontha vulgaris, F. Phyllopertha horticola, L. ELATERIDE Lacon murinus, L. Cryptohypnus riparius, F, Melanotus rufipes, Herbst Athous niger, L. — longicollis, Ol. — hemorrhoidalis, F. Adrastus limbatus, F. Agriotes sputator, L. — obscurus, L. — lineatus, L. — sobrinus, Kies. Dolopius marginatus, L, 76 INSECTS ELATERIDA (continued ) Corymbites tessellatus, F. — quercus, Gyll. Campylus linearis, L. DasciLupz& Helodes minuta, L. Microcara livida, F. Cyphon coarctatus, Payk. — variabilis, Thunb. Scirtes hemisphericus, L. LampyRrIDz Lampyris noctiluca, L. Very plentiful near Little Brickhill, and probably general "TELEPHORIDE Telephorus rusticus, Fall. — lividus, L. — nigricans, Mull. — lituratus, Fall. — figuratus, Mann. Rhagonycha fuscicornis, Ol. — fulva, Scop. — testacea, L. — limbata, Thoms. Malthinus punctatus, Fourc. Malthodes marginatus, Latr. — pellucidus, Kies. MELyRIDz Malachius bipustulatus, L. Dasytes zrosus, Kies. CLERIDE Necrobia ruficollis, F. — violacea, L. PTINIDZ Ptinus fur, L. Niptus hololeucus, Fald. ANOBIIDE Anobium domesticum, Fourc. Ptilinus pectinicornis, L. CissIDZ Cis boleti, Scop. — bidentatus, Ol. — fuscatus, Mell. Octotemnus glabriculus, Gyll. CERAMBYCIDA Aromia moschata, L. Asemum striatum, L. In stumps of Scotch fir, Woburn Callidium violaceum, L. Clytus arietis, L. Rhagium inquisitor, F. — bifasciatum, F. Toxotus meridianus, Panz. Strangalia armata, Herbst Grammoptera ruficornis, F. BRUCcHIDE Bruchus pectinicornis, L. Leighton — rufimanus, Boh. In granary, 77 Europa Donacia limbata, Panz. (lemnz, F.) — simplex, F. — semicuprea, Panz. — sericea, L. Lema lichenis, Vet. Crioceris asparagi, L. CAMPTOSOMATA Cryptocephalus aureolus, Suffr. — labiatus, L. Cyciica Timarcha violacea-nigra, De G. Chrysomela staphylea, L. — polita, L. Phytodecta olivacea, Forst. Gastroidea polygoni, L. Phzdon tumidulus, Germ. — armoraciz, L. — cochlearie, F. Phyllodecta vitelline, L. Hydrothassa marginella, L. Prasocuris phellandrii, L. Luperus rufipes, Scop. Lochmza capree, L. —- suturalis, Thoms. Galerucella tenella, L. Longitarsus melanocephalus, All, Haltica oleracea, L. Phyllotreta undulata, Kuts. — nemorum, L. — exclamationis, Thunb. Sphzroderma testaceum, F. Crepidodera transversa, Marsh. — ferruginea, Scop. — aurata, Marsh. Plectroscelis concinna, Marsh. Psylliodes chrysocephala, L. CryPTOSOMATA Cassida flaveola, Thunb. (obsoleta, III.) — viridis, F. ‘TENEBRIONIDZ Tenebrio molitor, L. — obscurus, F. Tribolium ferrugineum, F. Helops striatus, Fourc. Lacrip& Lagria hirta, L. CisTELIDE Cistela marina, L. PyTHIDE Rhinosimus planirostris, F. CEDEMERIDE Cédemera lurida, Marsh. PyRocHRoIDz Pyrochroa serraticornis, Scop. MorbDELLIDZ Anaspis frontalis, L. — ruficollis, F. ANTHICIDA Notoxus monoceros, L. A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ANTHICIDE (continued) Anthicus floralis, L. — antherinus, L. MELoID# Meloé proscarabzeus, L. CuRCULIONID Apoderus coryli, L. Attelabus curculionoides, L. Rhynchites minutus, Herbst (germanicus, auct.) Deporatis betulz, L. Apion pomone, F. — miniatum, Germ. —— hzmatodes, Kirby — vicia, Payk. — apricans, Herbst — eneum, F. — carduorum, Kirby — virens, Herbst — ethiops, Herbst — vorax, Herbst —- violaceum, Kirby — hydrolapathi, Kirby Otiorrhynchus ligneus, Ol. — picipes, F. — sulcatus, F. Strophosomus coryli, F. — capitatus, De G. —— lateralis, Payk. Exomias araneiformis, Schr. Sciaphilus muricatus, F. Polydrusus tereticollis, De G. (undatus, F.) — cervinus, L. Phyllobius oblongus, L. — urtice, De G. (alneti, F.) — pyri, L. —— argentatus, L. —— maculicornis, Germ. --— viridizeris, Laich. (uniformis, Marsh.) Barynotus obscurus, F. Sitones griseus, F. -- regensteinensis, Herbst —— tibialis, Herbst — humeralis, Steph. CuRCULIONID (continued) Sitones lineatus, L. — sulcifrons, Thunb. Hypera rumicis, L. — nigrirostris, F. Liosoma ovatulum, Clairv. Orchestes quercus, L. — alni, L. — rusci, Herbst — salicis, L. Grypidius equiseti, F. Erirrhinus acridulus, L. Dorytomus vorax, F. — maculatus, Marsh. Bagous cylindrus, Payk.? Anoplus plantaris, Naez. Miccotrogus picirostris, F. Gymnetron pascuorum, Gyll. Anthonomus ulmi, De G. — pomorum, L. Cionus blattariz, F. Cceliodes rubicundus, Herbst — quadrimaculatus, L. Poophagus sisymbrii, F. Ceuthorrhynchus assimilis, Payk. — contractus, Marsh. — quadridens, Panz. — pollinarius, Forst. — litura, F. Ceuthorrhynchidius floralis, Payk. —— melanarius, Steph. — troglodytes, F. Rhinoncus pericarpius, L. Calandra granaria, L. Magdalis pruni, L. ScoLYTIDA Scolytus destructor, Ol. — multistriatus, Marsh. Hylastes ater, Payk. Myelophilus piniperda, L. Recorded by Mr. Studman as doing serious damage to pine woods near Woburn Dryocetes villosus, F. LEPIDOPTERA For the means of furnishing any really passable catalogue of the Lepidoptera of the county of Bedford I am indebted in a very great degree to the kindness of Mr. A. E. Gibbs of St. Albans, whose large acquaintance with this county has been of the greatest assistance in drawing together the available information. Mainly through his help, valuable lists have been received of the larger Lepidoptera for Bedford 1 Mr. Ellis tells me that this very interesting species occurs in a small boggy place near Leighton, and that he has taken it in hundreds. The bog often dries up in summer, and the insects congregate under the matted grass in one spot about ten yards square; although the bog covers some acres he has never found a specimen outside this small area. 78 INSECTS and the adjoining district from the Rev. O. W. Harries and Dr. W. G. Nash, and of these and also the smaller groups from Mr. J. Sharpin. Mr. W. Bond-Smith has furnished a useful list of the larger species found at Potton, and Mr. Herbert Studman a list of a few species at Woburn. At Luton excellent work was done by Mr. J. A. Saunders, now unhappily deceased, and to documents left by him, and obligingly lent by his father Mr. Jas. Saunders, A.S.S., to Mr. A. E. Gibbs, I am indebted for the extensive list of species both of Macro- and Micro- Lepidoptera supplied for that district. RHOPALOCERA Aporia crategi, Linn.(Black-veined White But- terfly) Reported by Mr. H. Studman to have formerly occurred near Woburn Pieris brassice, Linn., rape, Linn., napi, Linn. (White Butterflies) © Abundant everywhere Anthocharis cardamines, Linn. (Orange-tip) Generally distributed Colias hyale, Linn. (Pale Clouded Yellow) Bedford, Woburn ; plentiful in 1900 and 1901 — edusa, Linn. (Clouded Yellow) Bedford, Potton ; abundant in the year 1900 Gonepteryx rhamni, Linn. (Brimstone But- terfly) Bedford, Luton, Potton; fre- quent in clover fields Chrysophanus phlaas, Linn. (Small Copper) Generally distributed Polyommatus arion, Linn. (Large Blue) Haworth in 1803 says: ‘Taken in Bedfordshire and sent to me by my friend Dr. Abbot’; Professor West- wood (1849) adds that it was taken in the ‘Mouse’s pasture’ near Bedford, and that Mr. J. C. Dale took it there again in 1819; further that it was taken on commons near Bromham — agestis, Hb., medon, Esp. (Brown Argus) Bedford, on hillsides — alexis, Hb., icarus, Rott. (Common Blue) Generally common -— adonis, Hb., bellargus, Rott. (Clifden Blue) On chalk hillsides near Bedford -— corydon, Scop. (Chalk-hill Blue) On chalk hillsides near Bedford — alsus, Schiff. (Bedford Blue) Hills and railway banks around Bedford and Luton — argiolus, Linn. (Holly Blue) Bedford Thecla quercts, Linn. (Purple Hairstreak) Generally about oaks in woods — betule, Linn. (Brown Hairstreak) Re- ported near Woburn by Mr. H. Stud- man — pruni, Haw. (Black Hairstreak) near Bedford by Dr. Nash Found Thecla w-album, Knoch. (White Letter Hairstreak) Bedford and Woburn about wych elm Apatura iris, Linn. Recorded at Clapham Park Woods by Professor Westwood (1849) on the authority of the Rev. W. T. Bree Vanessa polychloros, Linn. (Large Tortoise- shell) This fine butterfly seems to be well distributed over the county — urtice, Linn. (Small Tortoiseshell) Abun- dant everywhere — io, Linn. (Peacock Butterfly) All — atalanta, Linn, (Red Admiral) } generally — cardui, Linn. (Painted Lady) } distributed Argynnis paphia, Linn. (Silver-washed Fritillary) Generally distributed in woods — adippe, Linn. (High Brown Fritillary) Recorded near Bedford by Dr. Nash, and near Woburn by Mr. McKay — euphrosyne, Linn. (Large Pearl-border) Bedford district, in woods — selene, Schiff. (Small Pearl-border) Com- mon in woods about Woburn Melitza athalia, Esp. (Heath Fritillary) Re- corded in Aspley Woods, fifty years ago, by Westwood — artemis, Hb. (Greasy Fritillary) Park Woods ; Prof. Westwood Melanargia galathea, Linn. (Marbled White) On chalk hills near Bedford Pararge egeria, Linn. (Speckled Wood But- terfly) Bedford, in lanes and wood borders — megzra, Linn. Generally distributed Epinephile janira, Linn. (Meadow Brown) Generally common Clapham — tithonus, Linn. (Gatekeeper) Generally common — hyperanthus, Linn. (Ringlet) Plentiful in woods Coenonympha pamphilus, Linn. Common in every grass field Syrichthus malvae, Linn., alveolus, Bedford, Luton, Potton Hb. 79 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Hesperia linea, Fab., thaumas, St.C. Bed- ford, Luton ; in marshy places — lineola, Ochs. This species, of recent discovery as British, has been found by Dr. Nash and Rev. O. W. Harries in woods and lanes near Bedford — sylvanus, Esp. Generally common Cyclopides paniscus, Fab., palemon, St. C. Recorded by the late Professor West- wood at Clapham Park Woods and near Luton i Nisoniades tages, Linn. Bedford, Luton ; on hillsides and railway banks HETEROCERA Smerinthus ocellatus, Linn. (Eyed Hawk Moth) Bedford, Potton, common at Woburn — populi, Linn. (Poplar Hawk) distributed, on poplars — tilia, Linn. (Lime Hawk) Widely dis- tributed, about limes and elms Acherontia atropos, Linn. (Death’s Head) Occasionally found; larva in potato fields Sphinx convolvuli, Linn. an occasional visitor — ligustri, Linn. (Privet Hawk) Generally distributed ; larva on privet hedges Cherocampa celerio, Linn. Dr. Nash re- ports : ‘ A specimen is said to have been taken in Bedford twenty years ago’ Generally Bedford, Potton ; — elpenor, Linn. (Elephant Hawk) Bed- ford, Woburn — porcellus, Linn. (Small Elephant) Bed- ford, Potton ; among ladies’ bedstraw Macroglossa stellatarum, Linn. (Humming- bird Hawk) Generally distributed ; to be seen occasionally in gardens, hovering at tubular flowers — fuciformis, Linn. (Broad-bordered Bee Hawk) Dr. Nash records this species in woods near Bedford — bombyliformis, Esp. (Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk) Dr. Nash also records this species in woods near Bedford Sesia tipuliformis, Linn. Generally common about currant bushes ~- myopzformis, Bkh. ‘Taken by Mr. W. Bond-Smith at Potton -—— cynipiformis, Esp. Recorded by West- wood in Clapham Park Woods Sphzcia bembeciformis, Hb. Bedford — apiformis, Linn. (Hornet Clearwing) Bedford, Woburn ; on poplars Procris statices, Linn. Luton Zygena trifolii, Esp. (Five-spot Burnet) Found by Mr. H.Studman near Woburn — filipendule, Linn. (Six-spot Burnet) Bed- ford, Luton, Potton ; common Zeuzera zsculi, Linn., pyrina, St. C. (Wood Leopard) Bedford, Woburn, Potton ; not plentiful Cossus ligniperda, Fab. (Goat Moth) Gener- ally distributed Hepialus hectus, Ochs. Bedford, Luton; in woods — lupulinus, Linn. Generally abundant in meadows — sylvinus, Linn, Bedford, Luton — velleda, Esp. oy ” Generally common humuli, Linn. (Ghost) Halias prasinana, Linn. ; P ae Taken in woods — quercana, Schiff. Earias chlorana, Hb. around agian, Sarrothripa revayana, W. V. Found by Mr. J. Sharpin near Bedford Nola cucullatella, Linn. Bedford, Luton ; among fruit trees Calligenia miniata, Forst. Bedford, Luton Lithosia complana, Linn. Taken near Potton by Mr. W. Bond-Smith — complanula, Bdv., lurideola, St. C. Taken at lamps near Bedford and Luton — griseola, Hb. Bedford Euchelia jacobez, Linn. (Cinnabar) Gener- ally common among ragwort and groundsel Deiopeia pulchella, Linn. One specimen taken near County School by Dr. Nash, July 1894 Arctia caia, Linn. (Common Tiger) where common — villica, Linn. (Cream-Spot Tiger) Re- ported by Mr. W. Bond-Smith at Potton Phragmatobia fuliginosa, Linn. Bedford, Potton Spilosoma mendica, Linn. (Muslin) Bedford, Potton — lubricepeda, Linn. — menthastri, Schiff. + - Porthesia chrysorrhea, Linn. Reported at Bedford by the Rev. W. O. Harries, and at Woburn by Mr. H. Studman — auriflua, Fab., similis, St. C. Generally common on hawthorn hedges Liparis salicis, Linn.. Bedford, Potton ; about willow or poplar Dasychira pudibunda, Linn. Bedford, Potton — fascelina, Linn. Taken near Bedford by Dr. W. G. Nash Orgyia antiqua, Linn. (Vapourer) Common everywhere, and conspicuous in the autumn by its lively dancing flight, about roads and shrubberies, in the sunshine Every- Common everywhere 80 INSECTS Demas coryli, Linn. Luton at light’ Poecilocampa populi, Linn. Bedford, Luton, Potton ; sometimes to be seen flying around gas-lamps in December Trichiura crategi, Linn. Bedford, Luton, Potton ; but scarce The large silken habi- Eriogaster lanestris, |tations of the larve of Linn. these two species are not Clisiocampa neustria,|uncommon on _ haw- Linn. thorn hedges and fruit trees Lasiocampa trifolii, Esp. Dr. W. G. Nash reports that he has reared this species at Bedford — quercus, Linn. Generally distributed Odonestis potatoria, Linn. Gastropacha quercifolia, Linn. burn, Potton Saturnia carpini, Schiff., pavonia, St.C. Bed- ford, Woburn, Potton Cilix spinula, Schiff., glaucata, St.C. Gener- ally distributed about hawthorn Cerura furcula, Linn. (Kitten) Luton ; about sallow — bifida, Hb. Recorded at Bedford by Dr. W. G. Nash — vinula, Linn. (Puss Moth) distributed among willow Notodonta dictea, Linn., tremula, St. C. Bedford, Luton ; among poplar — ziczac, Linn. Bedford Bedford, also taken at Bedford, Wo- Bedford, Generally — dromedarius, Linn. Luton Lophopteryx camelina, Linn. Bedford, Luton Pterostoma palpina, Linn. Bedford, Potten ; among poplar Petasia cassinea, Schiff. Bedford 'Pygzra bucephala, Linn. Generally common Diloba ceruleocephala, Linn. ,, Gonophora derasa, Linn. Bedford, in woods Cymatophora duplaris, Linn. ,, — ocularis, Linn. Bedford, taken at ‘ ‘sugar,’ and the pupa dug up from roots of oplar Asphalia diluta, Schiff. Luton Acronycta aceris, Linn. Bedford, Potton ; about sycamore — megacephala, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; on poplars — tridens, Schiff. Larve taken at Potton psi, Linn. Generally common rumicis, Linn. Bedford — ligustri, Schiff. Potton Apeous suffusa, Hb. Bedford, Luton — saucia, Hb. — segetum, Schiff. Everywhere abundant ; very injurious in turnip fields — puta, Hb. Bedford ; not very common I 81 Agrotis exclamationis, Linn. Most abundant, and mischievous to growing turnips — nigricans, Linn. Luton — porphyrea, Hb. — ravida, Hb. Bedford, very local Axylia putris, Linn. Generally distributed Triphena fimbria, Linn. Bedford, in woods — janthina, Esp. Bedford, Potton ; in gar- dens and woods — interjecta, Hb. Bedford, Luton ; in woods and hedges — orbona, Fab. Everywhere abundant — pronuba, Linn. Noctua augur, Fab. plecta, Linn. ie re c-nigrum, Linn. Bedford, Luton, Potton triangulum, Tr. Bedford, Luton; in woods ” » Bedford, Luton — festiva, Hb. 53 a ss — rubi, Viewig. 3 a —— xanthographa, Fab. Everywhere abun- dant Eurois adusta, Esp. Luton, in woods Chareas graminis, Linn. Bedford Heliophobus popularis, Fab. Luton, Bedford, Potton — cespitis, Fab. Potton Aplecta advena, Fab. Bedford — nebulosa, Hufn. " Hadena thalassina, Rott. ,, — pisi, Linn. Bedford, Potton — oleracea, Linn. Common in gardens everywhere — dentina, Esp. Bedford — chenopodii, Fab., trifolii, St. C. Generally distributed Mamestra brassice, Linn. Universally abun- dant, and mischievous in gardens — persicarie, Linn. Bedford, Luton, Potton Hecatera serena, Fab. Bedford, Luton; a very pretty object on a tree trunk Dianthecia carpophaga, Bkh. Luton — cucubali, Fuessl. Luton — capsincola, Hb. Potton -— conspersa, Esp. Luton Polia flavicincta, Fab. Bedford, Luton, Potton — chi, Linn. Bedford; usually a northern species Dryobota protea, Bkh. Chariptera aprilina, Linn. Potton; about oaks Miselia oxyacanthe, Linn. Bedford, Potton ; its dark variety, capucina, occasionally Luperina testacea, Hb. Generally abundant Cerigo cytherea, Fab., matura, St.C. Bedford Hama anceps, Hb., sordida, St. C. Luton Xylophasia lithoxylea, Fab. Generally com- mon — sublustris, Esp. Bedford, very local — polyodon, Linn., monoglypha, St. C. Universally abundant Bedford Bedford, Luton, II A HISTORY OF Xylophasia hepatica, Hb. Luton — rurea, Fab. 5 Apamea basilinea, Fab. Luton, Bedford — gemina, Hb. Bedford — oculea, Gn., didyma, St. C. Abundant everywhere Miana strigilis, Clerck. Generally common — fasciuncula, Haw. Bedford — furuncula, Tr., bicoloria, 5t.C. Bedford, Luton Eremobia ochroleuca, Esp. Recorded in Bed- fordshire, Westwood and Humphrey, ii. 228 Dipterygia pinastri, Linn., scabriuscula, St. C. Bedford Euplexia lucipara, Linn. Generally common Phlogophora meticulosa, Linn. | Common everywhere Hydrecia nictitans, Bkh. Bedford — micacea, Esp. Bedford, Luton Gortyna flavago, Esp., ochracea, St.C. Bed- ford, Luton Tapinostola fulva, Hb. Luton Leucania conigera, Fab. Bedford, Luton — lithargyria, Esp. Bedford; probably everywhere — impura, Hb. Everywhere abundant — pallens, Linn. ae 5 — straminea, Tr. Reported at Bedford by Mr. A. Sharpin — comma, Linn. Bedford Taniocampa gothica, Linn. Generally com- mon at sallow bloom — cruda, Tr., pulverulenta, St. C. Abundant about sallows — stabilis, View. Abundant about sallows — instabilis, Esp., incerta, St. C. Common about sallows — gracilis, Fab. Bedford, Luton Pachnobia rubricosa, Fab. Bedford Rusina tenebrosa, Hb. Bedford, Luton Mania maura, Linn. Generally distributed Nenia typica, Linn. Common everywhere Amphipyra pyramidea, Linn. Bedford, in woods — tragopogonis, Linn. Generally common, often coming into houses Hydrilla arcuosa, Haw. Luton, in fields Stilbia anomala, Haw. Bedford Caradrina morpheus, Tr. Generally com- mon in gardens — alsines, Bkh. Bedford, Luton — blanda, Tr., taraxaci, St. C. Generally distributed — cubicularis, Bkh., quadripunctata, St. C. Abundant everywhere Grammesia trilinea, Bkh., trigrammica, St. C. In all woods Calymnia trapezina, Linn. woods Common in BEDFORDSHIRE Calymnia diffinis, Linn. Bedford, among elm — affinis, Linn. ‘3 s Orthosia ferruginea, Schiff., circellaris, St. C. Generally common pistacina, Schiff. Generally common litura, Linn. Bedford, Potton lunosa, Haw. Bedford lota, Linn. 5 — macilenta, Hb. ,, Xanthia citrago, Linn. Bedford, among lime — cerago, Schiff., fulvago, St. C. Bedford, Luton — silago, Hb., flavago, St. C. Bedford, Luton — aurago, Schiff. Taken at Potton by Mr. W. Bond-Smith — gilvago, Esp. Bedford, not rare Cerastis vaccinii, L. Generally common — ligula, Esp., spadicea, Stn. Bedford, Luton, Potton Scopelosoma satellitia, Linn. Bedford, Luton Xylina semibrunnea, Haw. Bedford, Potton, at ivy bloom Xylocampa lithoriza, Bkh., areola, St. C. Bedford Calocampa exoleta, Linn. — vetusta, Hb. 35 Cucullia verbasci, Linn. Bedford, Potton; larvze on Verbascum and Scrophularia — umbratica, Linn. Bedford, Luton; at flowers in gardens in the evening Plusia chrysitis, Linn. Generally distributed —— pulchrina, Haw. Luton —- iota, Linn, Luton, Bedford, Potton —- gamma, Linn. Everywhere abundant, buzzing about flowers Habrostola urtice, Hb., tripartita, St. C. Potton, Luton, Bedford — triplasia, Linn. Bedford, Potton Heliothis marginata, Fab., umbra, St. C. Taken near Bedford by Rev. O. W. Harries Heliodes arbuti, Fab., tenebrata, St. C. Bed- ford, in meadows Acontia luctuosa, Esp. Bedford, a very local species Bryophila perla, Fab. Generally common on walls Gonoptera libatrix, Linn. Generally distri- buted. Fond of hiding in cellars dur- ing the winter Catocala nupta, Linn. Generally distributed, sitting on trunks of willows Euclidia mi, Clerck. Bedford, Luton, Woburn — glyphica, Linn. Bedford Herminia barbalis, Linn. Luton, among sallow — tarsipennalis, Tr. Luton — grisealis, Hb. Bedford Hypena rostralis, Linn, — proboscidalis, Linn. nettles Bedford ” Everywhere among 82 INSECTS Rivula sericealis, Scop. Luton Brephos parthenias, Linn. Bedford Ourapteryx sambucata, Linn. } Generally Rumia cratagata, Linn. common Angerona prunaria, Linn. Woods near Bed- ford Venilia maculata, Linn. ton Cabera pusaria, Linn. Generally common in woods; the var. rotundaria has been found near Bedford by Mr. J. Sharpin — exanthemaria, Scop. Generally distri- buted Bapta temerata, Schiff. Bedford, at the mar- gins of woods — taminata, Schiff. Potton, Bedford ; at the edges of woods Macaria liturata, Linn. among Scotch fir Halia wavaria, Linn. Everywhere in gardens among currant bushes Panagra petraria, Hb. Near Bedford, among brake-fern Strenia clathrata, Linn. Bedford, Potton, Luton ; common among clover Fidonia atomaria, Linn. Luton, common on heaths — piniaria, Linn. Plentiful in all fir woods Odontoptera bidentata, Linn. Generally dis- tributed Ennomos alniaria, Linn., tiliaria, Stn. ford, Luton ; among alder — fuscantaria, Haw. Potton, among ash — angularia, Schiff., quercinaria, St.C. Bed- ford Crocallis elinguaria, Linn. buted, on hedge banks Himera pennaria, Linn. common in woods Selenia illunaria, Hb., bilunaria, St. C. Generally common in lanes — illustraria, Hb., tetralunaria, St. C. Re- corded at Bedford by the Rev. O. W. Harries Pericallia syringaria, Linn. Bedford Epione apiciaria, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; in lanes among sallow Metrocampa margaritata, Linn. common in woods Ellopia fasciaria, Linn., prosapiaria, St. C. Luton, among Scotch fir Biston hirtarius, Linn. Bedford, Luton — prodromarius, Schiff. _,, — betularius, Linn. Generally distributed Phigalia pilosaria, Schiff., pedaria, St.C. Zu- ton, Potton Cleora lichenaria, Schiff. Luton Tephrosia biundularia, Esp., crepuscularia, Schiff. Bedford, on tree trunks — punctularia, Schiff. Luton Woods near Lu- Luton, Bedford ; Bed- Generally distri- Bedford, Luton; Generally Boarmia repandaria, Linn. probably everywhere — rhomboidaria, Schiff., gemmaria, St. C. Generally distributed Hemerophila abruptaria, Thunb. Bedford, Luton Hibernia rupicapraria, Schiff. — leucophezaria, Schiff. Luton — progemmaria, Hb., marginaria, Everywhere abundant — defoliaria, Linn. Generally distributed in woods Anisopteryx zscularia, Schiff. Bedford, Luton Abraxas grossulariata, Linn. Abundant in gardens everywhere — ulmata, Fab., sylvata, St. C. Bedford dis- trict, in woods Ligdia adustata, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; among spindle Lomaspilis marginata, Linn. Bedford, Luton ; among sallow Pseudoterpna cytisaria, Schiff, pruinata, St. C. Generally distributed Geometra papilionaria, Linn. Bedford district Todis vernaria, Linn. 35 a — lactearia, Linn. 5% *% Nemoria viridata, Linn. Recorded at Bed- ford by Mr. J. Sharpin Phorodesma. bajularia, Schiff., pustulata, St. C. Recorded at Potton by Mr. W. Bond- Smith Hemithea thymiaria, Linn., strigata, St. C. Bedford, Luton Ephyra porata, Linn. — _ punctaria, Linn. — trilinearia, Bkh. Taga. St. C. Bedford district, among beech —_ giiieronaria. Schiff, annulata, St. C. Bedford district, among maple — pendularia, Linn. Bedford, among birch Acidalia scutulata, Schiff., dimidiata, St. C. Generally common bisetata, Bkh. Common in woods dilutaria, Hb., osseata, St. Man. Bedford incanaria, Hb., virgularia, St.C. Gener- ally common in gardens immutata, Linn. Luton promutata, Gn., marginepunctata, St. C. remutata, Hb. Bedford, Potton; prob- ably in all woods aversata, Linn. Generally distributed Timandra imitaria, Hb. Bedford, Luton Bradyepetes amataria, Linn. ,, $9 Ania emarginata, Linn. 55 Melanippe subtristata, Haw., sociaca, St. C. Common everywhere Melanthia rubiginata, Schiff., bicolorata, St. C. Luton — ocellata, Linn. Generally distributed — albicillata, Linn. Bedford, Woburn — unangulata, Haw. Luton Bedford, Luton ; »” >” St. C. Bedford, among oak 83 A HISTORY OF Anticlea badiata, Schiff. Bedford, Potton — derivata, Schiff, nigrofasciaria, St. C. Bedford, Potton, Luton Coremia montanata, Schiff. Abundant in all woods fluctuata, Linn. Abundant in all gardens ferrugata, Linn. Everywhere common unidentaria, Haw. Generally distributed quadrifasciaria, Linn. Bedford, Luton pectinitaria, Fuessl., viridaria, St.C. Luton didymata, Linn. Bedford, Luton ; prob- ably everywhere Asthena luteata, Schiff. Bedford, Potton, Luton — candidata, Schiff. Bedford, Luton Emmelesia affinitata, Steph. Luton, among Lychnis — alchemillata, Linn. opsis — albulata, Schiff. Luton, in meadows among yellow-rattle — decolorata, Hb. Bedford, among Lychnis Cidaria miata, Linn. Bedford, Potton, Luton corylata, Thunb. Luton, in woods russata, Schiff. truncata, St. C. rally abundant suffumata, Schiff. Luton prunata, Linn. Luton, in gardens dotata, Linn, associata, St. C. Bedford, Potton, Luton ; in gardens fulvata, Forst. Bedford, Luton pyraliata, Bkh., dotata, St. C. Luton testata, Linn. Scotosia vetulata, Schiff. Bedford, Clematis vitalba — rhamnata, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; among Clematis vitalba — dubitata, Linn. Bedford, Luton, Potton ; comes to ‘ light’ — certata, Hb. Luton, Potton ; among Ber- beris and Mahonia Camptogramma bilineata, Linn. in every hedge Phibalapteryx lignata, Hb., vittata, St. C. Luton, in damp meadows — vitalbata, Schiff. Bedford, Potton, Luton ; among Clematis vitalba — tersata, Schiff. Luton, among Clematis vitalba Thera variata, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; among fir Hypsipetes impluviata, Schiff., trifasciata, St. C. Bedford, among alder — elutata, Schiff., sordidata, St. C. Gener- ally abundant Oporabia dilutata, Schiff. Generally distri- Luton, among Gale- ”» among Abundant buted Cheimatobia brumata, Linn. Everywhere abundant Chesias spartiata, Schiff. Potton, among broom Gene- BEDFORDSHIRE Chesias obliquaria, Schiff, rufata, St. C. Potton, among broom Anaitis plagiata, Linn, Generally distributed Eubolia palumbaria, Schiff., plumbaria, St. C. Bedford, Luton — bipunctaria, Schift. Luton, on chalk hills — cervinata, Schiff. Luton, Potton ; among mallow — mensuraria, Schiff, Generally common Eupithecia venosata, Fab. among Silene inflata centaureata, Schiff., oblongata, St. C. Common in gardens succenturiata, Linn. Potton subfulvata, Haw. Bedford, Luton satyrata, Hb. Bedford castigata, Haw. Generally common nanata, Hb. Luton subnotata, Hb. Bedford vulgata, Haw. Common everywhere tenuiata, Hb. Bedford, among sallow sobrinata, Hb. Luton, among juniper coronata, Hb. Bedford, Luton rectangulata, Linn, Generally common in orchards Herbula cespitalis, Schiff. Bedford, Luton Botys urticalis, Linn. Everywhere among nettles — forficalis, Linn. gardens — verticalis, Schiff., ruralis, Scop. Generally distributed among nettles Scopula olivalis, Schiff. } Generally common — prunalis, Schiff. in hedges — lutealis, Haw. Luton, among thistles — ferrugalis, Hb. Luton, in hedges Ebulea crocealis, Tr. Bedford, among flea- bane — sambucalis, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; prob- ably everywhere Cataclysta lemnalis, Linn. ) Bedford, about Paraponyx stratiotalis, Linn. } water-plants Hydrocampa nymphzalis, Linn. — stagnalis, Don, Aglossa pinguinalis, Linn. mon about stables Pyralis costalis, Fab., fimbrialis, Schiff. Bed- ford — farinalis, Linn. Generally common in houses and corn stores — glaucinalis, Linn. Luton Nomophila hybridalis, Hb. mon Scoparia cembra, Haw. Luton — ambigualis, Tr. Generally common on tree trunks , — dubitalis, Curt. — mercuralis, Linn, St. C. limitata, Bedford, Potton ; Frequent everywhere in Bedford, Luton ; about water Generally com- Generally com- Bedford, Luton Bedford 84 INSECTS Platyptilus gonodactylus, Schiff. Bedford, among coltsfoot Mimeesioptilus pterodactylus, Linn., fuscus, Retz. Bedford, Luton C&dematophorus lithodactylus, Tr. Bedford, among fleabane Pterophorus monodactylus, Linn. Luton, probably everywhere Aciptilia pentadactyla, Linn. oburn Orneodes polydactyla, Hb. Bedford, Luton Crambus pratellus, Linn. Everywhere abun- dant among grass — pinetellus, Linn. Bedford, Luton — perlellus, Scop. Bedford — tristellus, Schiff. Common everywhere among grass — geniculeus, Haw. Luton — culmellus, Linn. Everywhere abundant among grass — hortuellus, Hb. Everywhere among grass Ephestia elutella, Hb. Bedford Nephopteryx spissicella, Fab. ,, Rhodophza consociella, Hb. ,, — tumidella, Zk. Hypochalcia ahenella, Schiff. at Luton Aphomia sociella, Linn. Bedford, Luton Tortrix podana, Scop. Generally distributed — xylosteana, Linn. 9 sorbiana, Hb. Bedford, Luton rosana, Linn. Abundant everywhere diversana, Tr. Recorded at Luton by the late Mr. J. A. Saunders heparana, Schiff. Generally distributed ribeana, Hb. Generally common corylana, Hb. Bedford, Luton unifasciana, Dup. Generally common ministrana, Linn. Luton costana, Schiff. 3 forsterana, Fab, Generally distributed — viridana, Linn. Abundant among oaks Siders achatana, Schiff. Bedford, among haw- thorn Dichelia grotiana, Fab. Bedford Leptogramma literana, Linn. ,, Peronea sponsana, Fab. Luton, among beech — cristana, Schiff. Bedford — variegana, Schiff. Generally common — ferrugana, Tr. Bedford, in woods — comparana, Hb. Luton Teras contaminana, Hb. Common in every hawthorn hedge — caudana, Fab. Luton Dictyopteryx loeflingiana, Linn. Luton, about oaks — holmiana, Linn. Luton, Bedford — bergmanniana, Linn. Abundant every- where among rose ~— forskaliana, Linn, Luton, among maple Bedford, Luton, Taken at ‘light’ Argyrotoza conwayana, Fab. Bedford, Luton, among ash Ptycholoma lecheana, Linn. Generally dis- tributed Penthina capreana, Hb. Luton, among sal- low — pruniana, Hb. Generally abundant among sloe — variegana, Hb., cynosbatella, Linn. Everywhere common — gentianana, Hb. Bedford, Luton; reared from heads of teazle Hedya ocellana, Schiff. Bedford — dealbana, Frol. Bedford, Luton — aceriana, Mann. Luton, on poplars Spilonota suffusana, Koll. Bedford, Luton, about hawthorn — roszcolana, Dbld. in gardens — roborana, Schiff. Generally common among wild rose Pardia tripunctana, Schiff. Generally com- mon among wild rose Aspis udmanniana, Linn. among bramble Sericoris bifasciana, Haw. Bedford —- lacunana, Schiff. Everywhere common Roxana arcuana, Linn. Woods near Bedford Orthotznia striana, Schiff. Bedford, Luton Cnephasia musculana, Hb. Generally dis- tributed Sciaphila nubilana, Hb, hawthorn — subjectana, Gn. Abundant everywhere — virgaureana, Tr. 35 3 — pascuana, Hb. Bedford — chrysantheana, Dup. ,, — communana, HS. _,, — hybridana, Hb. ‘3 Bactra lanceolana, Hub. rushes Phoxopteryx unguicella, heaths — biarcuana, Steph. by Mr. Sharpin — lundana, Fab. where — mitterbacheriana, Schiff. Bedford, among oaks Grapholitha ramella, Linn. Bedford — nisella, Linn, Bedford, Luton nigromaculana, Haw. » trimaculana, Don. Generally common among elm penkleriana, Schiff. Generally common among alder nevana, Hb. Generally common among holly and fruit trees Hypermecia cruciana, Linn. mon among sallow Bedford, among roses Bedford, Luton; Bedford, among Luton Everywhere among Linn. Bedford, on Recorded at Bedford Among clover every- Generally com- 85 A HISTORY OF Batodes angustiorana, Haw. Generally com- mon among privet and fruit trees Poedisca corticana, Schiff. Generally common among oak — solandriana, Linn. Luton, in hedges Semasia janthinana, Dup. hawthorn Halonota cirsiana, Zell. Luton — brunnichiana, Schiff. Luton, among colt’s- foot Coccyx strobilella, Linn. spruce fir pygmezana, Hb. Bedford district, among fir Bedford, among — tadella, Linn. spruce fir — splendidulana, Gn. argyrana, Hb. Hemimene fimbriana, Steph. oak Retinia buoliana, Schiff. Bedford, en fir — pinivorana, Zell. Carpocapsa splendana, Hb. Bedford, among oak — pomonana, Linn. Everywhere among apple trees Stigmonota compositella, Linn. Luton; among clover — regiana, Zell. Bedford, Luton ; on syca- more trunks Dicrorampha politana, Schiff. Bedford, among yarrow — petiverella, Linn. Generally common Catoptria ulicetana, Haw. Everywhere abun- dant among furze Bedford district, among Luton, among oak »» on oak trunks Bedford, among Bedford, — hypericana, Hb. Luton, among St. John’s wort — fulvana, Steph. Bedford, Luton; among knapweed — scopoliana, Haw. Luton, among black knapweed Phtheocroa rugosana, Hb. Luton, Bryonia dioica Aphelia pratana, Hb., osseana, St. C. Bed- ford, Luton Tortricodes hyemana, Hb. Bedford, Luton ; among oak Lobesia permixtana, Hb., reliquana, Stn. M. Bedford Eucelis aurana, Fab., mediana, Schiff. Luton Hemerosia rhediella, Linn. Luton, among among hawthorn Eupeecilia nana, Haw. Luton, among birch — angustana, Hb. — ciliella,) Hb. Luton, among Primula Conchylis francillana, Fab. Bedford, among wild carrot Argyrolepia sub-baumanniana, Dbld. among Scabiosa columbaria — zephyrana, Tr. On railway banks near Luton Luton, Bedford, about. BEDFORDSHIRE Argyrolepia cnicana, Dbld. marsh thistles Xanthosetia hamana, Linn. among knapweed Luton, among Bedford, Luton ; — zoegana, Linn. Bedford, Luton; among knapweed Simaethis fabriciana, Linn. Over nettles everywhere Dasystoma salicella, Hb. Bedford Diurnea fagella, Schiff’ On tree trunks generally Epigraphia steinkellneriana, Schiff. Bedford, Luton Taleporia pseudo-bombycella, Ochs. Bedford Scardia cloacella, Haw. Bedford, Luton — arcella, Fab. Luton Tinea imella, Hb. Recorded at Bedford by Mr. Sharpin — ferruginella, Hb. Bedford — rusticella, Hb. 6 — tapetzella, Linn. Everywhere in harness rooms and houses — pellionella, Linn. (The common clothes- moth.) In houses everywhere fuscipunctella, Haw. Bedford, Luton pallescentella, Stt. — lapella, Stt. Bedford, atin Tineola biselliella, Hemm. Bedford, in houses Lampronia quadripunctella, Fab. Luton — luzella, Hb. Bedford Incurvaria masculella, common Nemophora swammerdammella, Linn. ford, in woods — schwarziella, Zell. Bedford, Luton — metaxella, Hb. Bedford, in marshy places Adela degeerella, Linn. Bedford, in woods Schiff. Generally Bed- — viridella, T.inn. Generally common in woods Swammerdamia apicella, Don. Luton, about blackthorn — spiniella, Zell. Luton, Bedford ; about blackthorn — oxyacanthella, Zell. Bedford, about haw- thorn — pyrella, Vill. Luton, Bedford; about fruit trees Scythropia crategella, Linn. Bedford Hyponomeuta pedella, Linn. Common every- where in hawthorn hedges Prays curtisella, Don. Bedford, among ash Plutella cruciferarum, Zell. Abundant every- where — porrectella, Linn. peris matronalis Cerostoma radiatella, Don. woods — costella, Fab. Woods near Bedford Ypsolopha alpella, Schiff. Bedford Harpipteryx scabrella, Linn. ,, Bedford, among Hes- Common in all 86 INSECTS Harpipteryx xylostella, Schiff. | Common about honeysuckle Phibalocera quercana, Fab. Bedford, Luton ; in oak woods Depressaria costosa, Haw. mon among furze — liturella, Schiff. Bedford, Luton ; among Centaurea umbellana, Steph. Bedford, Luton ; among furze scopariella, Zell. Luton arenella, Schiff. Generally common propinquella, Tr. Bedford subpropinquella, Stn. Bedford, Luton alstroemeriana, Linn. purpurea, Haw. conterminella, Zell. yeatiana, Fab. ‘5 applana, Fab. Abundant everywhere weirella, Stn. Bedford cherophylli, Dbld. Luton nervosa, Haw. Bedford badiella, Hub. Bedford, Luton — heracliana, De Geer.,, _,, Gelechia peliella, Zett. Bedford, taken by Mr. Sharpin — diffinis, Haw. Bedford Ceratophora rufescens, Haw. Luton Brachmia mouffetella, Schiff. Bedford Bryotropha terrella, Schiff. Abundant every- where — domestica, Haw. Luton Lita maculea, Haw. Bedford, Luton — tricolorella, Haw. Bedford — hubneri, Haw. Recorded at Bedford by Mr. Sharpin Teleia notatella, Hub. Bedford -—~ humeralis, Zell. — vulgella, Hub. Bedford, Luton — dodecella, Linn. Bedford — triparella, Zell. 5 Peecilia gemmella, Linn. — albiceps, Zell. Nannodia hermannella, Fab. Bedford Tachyptilia populella, Linn. Luton Brachycrassata cinerella, Linn. Bedford Parasia lappella, Linn. Bedford Chelaria hubnerella, Don. Luton Harpella geoffrella, Linn. Bedford Dasycera sulphurella, Fab. Common every- where among decayed wood CEcophora minutella, Linn. Luton lunaris, Haw. Bedford — unitella, Stt. ss flavifrontella, Hub, Luton fuscescens, Haw. Bedford pseudospretella, Stt. Generally too com- mon Endrosis fenestrella, Scop. common in houses Generally com- ” ”» ” Bedford ”» Generally too Glyphipteryx fuscoviridella, Haw. Bedford — thrasonella, Scop. Bedford, doubtless among rushes everywhere — equitella, Scop. Luton, in gardens about stonecrop — fischerella, Zell. where Heliozela sericeella, Haw. Bedford Argyresthia ephippella, Fab. Bedford, about cherry trees — nitidella, Fab. Common in hedges every- where conjugella, Zell. ash semifusca, Haw. Bedford andereggiella, Fisch. Reported at Bedford by Mr. Sharpin curvella, Linn. Bedford, in orchards albistria, Haw. Luton, in hedges goedartella, Linn. Bedford, among alders brockeella, Hb. pygmeella, Hb. low Cedestis farinatella, among fir Gracilaria swederella, among oak — syringella, Fab. Bedford, Luton ; in gar- dens — tringipennella, Zell. wort plantain Luton, probably every- Luton, among mountain »” ” ” Bedford, among sal- Zell. Bedford, Luton ; Thunb. Bedford, Luton, among rib- Coriscium brongniardellum, Fab. Bedford, among oak Ornix avellanella, Stt. Luton, Bedford ; among hazel — anglicella, Stt. Luton, Bedford; among hawthorn — betula, Stt. — torquillella, Stt. thorn — guttea, Haw. Bedford, among apple Coleophora albitarsella, Zell. Luton, among ground ivy — laricella, Hub. Bedford, upon larch murinipennella, Fisch. Bedford nigricella, Steph. Bedford, probably every- where siccifolia, Stt. Bedford, Luton viminetella, Zell. ,, — lutipennella, Zell. ,, Chauliodus chzrophyllellus. Bedford, among birch Bedford, among black- Bedford, among Umbelliferz Laverna fulvescens, Haw. Bedford, among Epilobium — ochraceella, Curt. Luton, among Epilo- bium — hellerella, Dup. Bedford, Luton Asychna modestella, Dup. Luton Chrysocorys festaliella, Hb. Luton, among bramble 87 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Chrysoclista flavicaput, Haw. Luton, in hedges Elachista albifrontella, Hb. Bedford, Luton — luticomella, Zell. Luton — nigrella, Hb. Luton, probably every- where — megerlella, Zell. Bedford — triatomea, Haw. ss — rufocinerea, Haw. Common everywhere — cygnipennella, Hb. Bedford, Luton Tischeria complanella, Hb. Bedford — marginea, Haw. 3 Lithocolletis hortella, Fab. oy — sorbi, Frey. — quercifoliella, Fisch. Everywhere abun- dant among oak — cramerella, Fab, Everywhere common among oak Lithocolletiscoryli, Nicelli. Luton, among hazel — emberizepennella, Bouch. Luton, among honeysuckle Lyonetia clerckella, Linn. Bedford Cemiostoma laburnella, Heyd. Luton Bucculatrix crategi, Zell. Luton, about haw- thorn — aurimaculella, Stt. daisy Nepticula floslactella, Haw. Luton — aurella, Fab. Luton, among bramble Eriocrania calthella, Linn. Bedford, Luton ; among Caltha — seppella, Fab. Bedford, Luton; on Ver- onica chameedrys Micropteryx subpurpurella, Haw. Bedford, Luton ; among oak Luton, among ox-eye ARACHNIDA Spiders, etc. Scarcely any collections of the members of this order have been made in the county of Bedford, though there is no reason to suppose that it should prove less prolific in species than other neighbouring counties. Several species however have been observed in the neigh- bourhood of Woburn Abbey by Lord Tavistock, and others have been taken by Mr. F. P. Smith—thirty-five species only, all told. ARANEA ARACHNOMORPHE DYSDERIDE Spiders with six eyes and two pairs ot stigmatic openings, situated close together on the genital rima ; the anterior pair communicating with lung books, the posterior with tracheal tubes. ‘Tarsal claws, two in Dysdera, three in Harpactes and Segestria, 1. Segestria senoculata (Linnzus). Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) ; Luton (F.P.S.) DRASSID/ZE Spiders with eight eyes, situated in two transverse rows. The tracheal openings lie immediately in front of the spinners. The tarsal claws are two in number, but the anterior pair of spinners are set wide apart at their base, and the maxille are more or less impressed across the middle. 2. Drassodes lapidosus (Walckenaer) Luton (F.P.S.) CLUBIONIDE Spiders with eight eyes, situated in two transverse rows. ‘The tracheal openings lie immediately in front of the spinners. ‘The tarsal claws are two in number, but the anterior pair of spinners are set close together at their base, and the maxille are convex and not impressed across the middle. 3. Clubiona pallidula (Clerck) Luton (F.P.S.) ss SPIDERS THOMISID Spiders with eight eyes, situated in two transverse rows, two tarsal claws and anterior spinners close together at their base. Maxillz not impressed. ‘The crab-like shape and side- long movements of these spiders are their chief characteristics, enabling them to be easily distinguished from the more elongate Drasside and Clubionide. 4. Xysticus cristatus (Clerck) 6. Tibellus oblongus (Walckenaer) Luton (F.P.S.). Luton (F.P.S.) 5. Philodromus aureolus (Clerck) Luton (F.P.S.) ATTIDA The spiders of this family may be recognized in a general way by their mode of pro- gression, consisting of a series of leaps. More particularly they may be known by the square shape of the cephalic region and the fact that the eyes are arranged in three rows of 4, 2, 2, the centrals of the anterior row being much the largest. Otherwise the spiders are simply specialized Clubionids with two tarsal claws and other minor characters possessed in common with other members of this family. 7. Salticus scenicus (Clerck) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) ; Luton (F.P.S.) PISAURIDA Spiders with eight eyes in three rows of 4,2, 2; the small anterior eyes being sometimes in a straight line, sometimes recurved and sometimes procurved. Those of the other two rows are situated in the form of a rectangle of various proportions and are much larger than the eyes of the anterior row. The tarsal claws are three in number. Pisaura runs freely over the herbage, carrying its egg-sac beneath the sternum ; while Dolomedes isa dweller in marshes and swamps. 8. Pisaura mirabilis (Clerck) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) ; Luton (F.P.S.) Known also as Dolomedes, or Ocyale, mirabilis. LYCOSIDZE The members of this family are to be found running freely over the ground, and carry- ing the egg-sac attached to the spinners. Many of the larger species make a short burrow in the soil and there keep guard over the egg-sac. Eyes and tarsal claws as in the Pisaurida, with slight differences. 9. Lycosa ruricola (De Geer) 11. Pardosa lugubris (Walckenaer) Luton (F.P.S.) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) ; Luton (F.P.S.) 10. Pardosa amentata (Clerck) 12. Pardosa annulata (Thorell) Luton (F.P.S.) Luton (F.P.S.) AGELENIDZ Spiders with eight eyes, situated in two straight or more or less curved transverse rows. Tarsal claws, three. The species of this family spin a large sheet-like web, and construct a tubular retreat at the back of it, which leads to some crevice amongst the rocks or in the herbage, or in the chinks in the walls of outhouses and barns, wherever the various species may happen to be found. The habits of Argyroneta, the water spider, are however quite different. ‘The posterior pair of spinners is much longer than the others in the more typical genera of this family. 13. Tegenaria parietina (Fourcroy) 14. Tegenaria derhami (Scopoli) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) Luton (F.P.S.) Abundant in the London district. Known A very common species everywhere. also as I. guyonii and I. domestica. I 89 12 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 15. Agelena labyrinthica (Clerck) Abundant, forming large sheet-like webs Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock); Luton 0” the herbage, with a funnel-shaped tubular (F.P.S.) retreat. ARGIOPID/i The spiders included in this family have eight eyes, situated in two rows, the lateral eyes of both rows being usually adjacent, if not in actual contact, while the central eyes form a quadrangle. The tarsal claws are three, often with other supernumerary claws. ‘The web is either an orbicular snare, as in the case of the ‘common garden spider,’ or consists of a sheet of webbing, beneath which the spider hangs and captures its prey as it falls upon the sheet. This immense family includes those usually separated under the names Epeiride and Linyphide. 16. Meta segmentata (Clerck) 23. Araneus diadematus, Clerck Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) ; Luton Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) ; Luton (F.P.S.) (F.P.S.) and Leighton Buzzard. 17. Meta meriane (Scopoli) 24. Araneus umbraticus, Clerck Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) 18. Tetragnatha extensa (Linneus) 25. Linyphia triangularis (Clerck) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) Luton (F.P.S.) 19. Pachygnatha clerckit, Sundevall 26. Stemonyphantes lineatus (Linnzus) Lautoe: EES) Luton (F.P.S.) 20. Cyclosa conica (Pallas) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) 21. Zilla x - notata (Clerck) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) 27. Lepthyphantes minutus (Blackwall) Luton (F.P.S.) 28. Centromesus sylvaticus (Blackwall) Luton (F.P.S.) 22. Araneus cucurbitinus, Clerck ; Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock); Luton 79: Kulexynskiellum fuscum (Blackwall) (F.P.S.) Luton (F.P.S.) THERIDIIDA The members of this family have eight eyes, situated very much like those of the Argio- pide ; but the mandibles are usually weak, the maxillz are inclined over the labium, and the posterior legs have a comb of stiff curved spines beneath the tarsi. ‘The web consists of a tangle of crossing lines, and the spider often constructs a tent-like retreat wherein the egg-sac is hung up. ‘The tarsal claws are three in number. 30. Theridion tepidariorum, C. L. Koch 32. Theridion lineatum (Clerck) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) Luton (F.P.S.) 31. Theridion denticulatum (Walckenaer) 33. Steatoda bipunctata (Linnzus) Luton (F.P.S.) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) DICTYNIDZE The spiders belonging to this family possess three tarsal claws, and the eyes, eight in number, situated in two transverse rows, the laterals being in contact. The cribellum (or extra pair of spinning organs) and the calamistrum (a row of curving bristles on the protarsi of the fourth pair of legs) are present in all members of the family. They construct a tubular retreat with an outer sheet of webbing, which is covered with a flocculent silk made with the calamistrum from threads furnished by the cribellum. 34. Amaurobius similis (Blackwall) 35+ Amaurobius ferox (Walckenaer) Luton (F.P.S.) Woburn Abbey (Lord Tavistock) Common. Known also under the name Common. Known also under the name Ciniflo. Ciniflo, go CRUSTACEANS The latter half of the nineteenth century was a period the most stirring and the most fruitful for natural history that the world has ever known. To promote the study of it clubs, societies, associations either sprang up afresh or were quickened into renewed and more vigorous activity over a wide area. A persistent and varied industry was thus excited, the results of which, after being orally explained and discussed within a small circle, were afterwards in many cases with more or less com- pleteness printed and published. Though no doubt this was often done only to gratify an author or a little coterie of friends, the unintended con- sequences were not unimportant. The collected reports were frequently to a high degree miscellaneous. There was little editorial sifting of wheat from chaff. The circulation was usually very limited. Hence it has come to pass that on science is laid a twofold burden ; first the task of searching for publications often far from easy to meet with, and then the task of discovering whether there are any useful facts or opinions to be gleaned from them on any particular theme out of the wilderness of all possible themes which they are capable of embracing. The Abstract of Proceedings and Transactions of the Bedfordshire Natural History Society and Field Club, beginning with the year 1876, is very much a case in point. A perusal of these records at the library of the National Museum in Cromwell Road is a pleasant enough study in itself, but in regard to the crustaceans of the county the information to be derived from it is scanty in the extreme. In a way the carcinologist is debarred from complaining, seeing that a far more popular subject is exposed to equal neglect. For Mr. W. B. Graham exclaims in this very abstract : ‘ Multitudinous, however, as the insect fauna of Bedford- shire unquestionably is, yet in the entomological world the county is almost wholly ignored.’* In words to precisely the same effect it may be declared that, multitudinous as the crustacean fauna of Bedfordshire unquestionably is, yet in the carcinological world the county is almost wholly ignored. Of the higher Malacostraca only one species is here to be expected, and that by good hap satisfies expectation, since Mr. James Saunders, A.L.S., writing from Luton, January 19, 1902, kindly informs me that ‘crayfish are abundant in the river Lea south of Luton Hoo.’ This lobster-like macruran, Potamobius pallipes (Lereboullet), the river cray- fish, should certainly not be neglected. Professor Huxley, taking its 1 Abs. Proc. Trans. Beds Nat. Hist. Soc. and Field Club for the year 1876-7 (Jan. 1, 1878), p. 127. ® Lysons, Magna Britannia (1806), i. 21, mentions it ‘among the fish of the Ouse,’ gI A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE vernacular name as the title of a book at once wonderfully learned and lucid, has shown how this common, clean and hardy species can be made as it were a compendium of all zoology; how the consideration of its structure and vital powers, its birth and breeding, its distribution and alliances will lead the inquiring disciple onward step by step through all the philosophy of life. For those who are content to learn from it the general plan which with endless modifications runs through crabs, lob- sters, shrimps, woodlice and all the other Malacostraca, there is scarcely a species more convenient than the crayfish. Its stalked eyes, its two pairs of antennae, its lips, stomach and intestine, its carapace, the six pairs of jaws, its five pairs of trunk-legs, its jointed pleon and the pleo- pods, its tail-fan, and within the body the liver-like gland, the heart, the brain and ventral nerve-chain, and all the arrangement of the muscles are easy for the most part to distinguish in specimens prepared for the table or otherwise preserved. Its behaviour alive in the aquarium is not without interest. The shedding of the skin, known as ecdysis or exuvia- tion, is worth observing by those who can secure the chance. Those who can study the creature in its native haunts have ever the opportunity not only of amusing themselves, but of instructing others. For of any complex living organism all the efforts of all the zoologists can seldom or never so exhaust the interest that true lovers of nature need despair of discovering some new charm or wonder in the creature or its ways. The sessile-eyed Malacostraca are constructed on the same general plan as the stalk-eyed Decapoda or ten-footed crustaceans, to the macru- ran or long-tailed division of which the crayfishes belong. In some full- grown crabs and in some larval forms of lobster-like and shrimp-like species the stalked eyes attain a quite exorbitant length. With respect to the crabs, it is true, the epithet may not quite literally apply, because the orbits are usually as long as the eyes ; but when these stilted organs are raised out of their sockets they present a remarkable appearance. In the crayfish however, as in the common crab, there is no great length of stalk to attract attention, and therefore little regard is in general paid to the substantial difference in ophthalmic structure which separates such forms from the Isopoda and Amphipoda. These latter groups have the eyes seated in the head, without stalks either long or short. They are not ten-footed, but fourteen-footed. Their branchial or respiratory apparatus is not, as in crabs and shrimps, concealed by the carapace. Their size in all the British land and freshwater species is limited to a low standard. In their general appearance the fondest admirer would scarcely claim any high degree of dignity and grace. They are not by any means warmly esteemed, except by those who have learned to appre- ciate modest merit and neglected virtue. Man the omnivorous does not even pay them the compliment of eating them, though there is little doubt that they all have a good shrimp-like flavour. But in spite of all prejudices on our part and dissimilarities on theirs, and in the teeth of such contemptuous designations as woodlice, slaters and pill-bugs, the terrestrial Isopoda are as truly malacostracan crustacea as the lobster and 92 CRUSTACEANS the crayfish. The species of woodlice in England amount to more than a score. Many of them are so generally distributed that it will be no exaggerated estimate to credit Bedfordshire with half a score of them. Mr. James Saunders assures me that he often meets with them when he is hunting for mycetozoa, and certainly in that or any similar research Philoscia muscorum (Scopoli) could not well fail to be met with. Oniscus asellus, Linn., Porcellio scaber, Latreille, and Armadillidium vulgare (Latreille) make themselves familiar everywhere. But none, even of these the commonest of the common, appear to have been specially recorded for this county. The two sessile-eyed groups agree in the character of the eyes. They agree in having seven segments of the middle body freely movable, and not as in the Decapoda covered by the carapace. They agree also to a great extent in the distribution of their appendages, for they follow up the two pairs of antenne, not by six pairs of jaws and five pairs of trunk-legs, but by four pairs of jaws and seven pairs of trunk-legs. But these features of agreement do not exclude strongly-marked differences. The Isopoda, whether terrestrial or aquatic, being usually flattened from above downward, are fitted for walking; whereas the Amphipoda, being as a rule laterally compressed, in clumsy attempts at an upright gait commonly fall over on one side and have to slidder. A more important distinction depends on the position of the breathing organs. ‘These in the Amphipoda are sacs or vesicles, simple or pleated or twisted, attached to some or all of the trunk-legs except the first pair. In the Isopoda they are not in the trunk or middle body at all, but in the tail part, otherwise known as abdomen or pleon. Some of the appendages of this pleon, the thin-skinned flattened pleopods, are respiratory. The equi- valent appendages in the pleon of the Amphipoda have no such function, although they may be considered in some measure auxiliaries to it. That the Amphipoda are represented in Bedfordshire does not rest upon conjecture, for early in February, 1902, Mr. James Saunders very oblig- ingly collected from the river Lea near Luton some specimens which he packed in damp moss and dispatched by post. They reached me the following day, languid but still alive, and proved to be, as Mr. Saunders supposed, the wide-ranging Gammarus pulex (Linn.). This may be taken as a typical representative of the Amphipoda at large, but especially of the Gammaridea, the most extensive of the three sections into which the whole group has been divided. Just as nature has been at the pains to distribute Ase//us aguaticus (Linn.) over all parts of England as if with intent to provide a type of water-breathing isopods, so has Gammarus pulex in the companion group been made everywhere available. At all events no English naturalist can excuse an utter ignorance of sessile-eyed crustacea on plea or pretence that specimens are not procurable for investigation. The beginner will soon find his wits well exercised if he attempts to compare the common freshwater gammarus with two other species that are common on the seashore, namely G. Jocusta and G. marinus. He might at first impatiently refuse to believe that the three species 93 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE were distinct one from another, but he would not easily persuade the latter two to live in fresh water, in which the first finds itself happy and at home. Without going into every detail, it may be pointed out that the sides of the head project angularly in G. /ocusta, but are rotund in G. pulex, and that the accessory branch of the upper antenne is more numerously jointed and longer in the former than in the latter. At the other extremity of the organism the last appendages, known as the third uropods, pretty well agree in these two species by having two elongate branches ; but in G. marinus the inner branch, instead of being only a little shorter than the outer, is scarcely a third of its length. In the Isapoda the appendages of the pleon form five pairs of pleopods (swim- ming feet) and one pair of uropods (tail feet). In the gammaridean Amphipoda there are three pairs of pleopods and three of uropods. In these pleopods each appendage consists of a stem with two many-jointed flexible setose branches, and this description, though admitting of some exceptions, applies with extraordinary uniformity throughout the group. When the animal is alive in its own element its natatory limbs are in tolerably constant motion, and that even when the body is stationary. The purpose of this is to keep a current of water continually bathing the branchial sacs, and when there are eggs in the mother’s pouch to give them also the benefit of the invigorating stream. ‘The maternal marsupium is formed by membranaceous laminz which, like the respira- tory vesicles, are attached to several of the trunk-legs at the upper part. In contrast to the pleopods the uropods have branches which are not flexible. ‘They seem to be purely locomotive, enabling the animal to make leaps or to jerk itself along, or in tube-building species to execute manceuvres which may best be described as turning head over heels. In almost every marine province the Malacostraca form a demon- strative portion of the fauna. It is only in specially favoured regions that they are conspicuous as occupants of fresh water. The other half of the crustacean class, upon which O. F. Miiller, towards the close of the eighteenth century, bestowed the designation Entomostraca, is rather differently situated. For, though these so-called ‘insects covered by a shell’ are extremely abundant in the sea, they also inhabit inland waters, not only with surprising diversity of form and ubiquity of range, but with no sort of regard for Malthusian prudence in their rate of prolifera- tion. In regard to this division of the subject there is fortunately some- thing to be gleaned from existing records. One quotation indeed might have been earlier given as applying not to a part of the class, but to the whole. The statement is of a character rather elementary, yet with certain reserves useful to be borne in mind. Ina paper on ‘ Antenna,’ Mr. H. J. Sheppard begins by saying : ‘Antenne are horn-like members placed on the head, peculiar to insects and crustaceans; the former generally have two, the latter more than two.’’ To this it might be objected that horns are usually stiff and antenne usually flexible; and 1 Abs. Proc. Trans. Beds Nat. Hist. Soc. and Field Club for the years 1877-81 (Oct. 1, 1882), p- 20, 94 CRUSTACEANS again that myriapods, without being either insects or crustaceans, are possessed of antenne. But the point that chiefly concerns our present subject is the fact that crustaceans are distinguished alike from myriapods and insects by having the pairs of antenne twofold. It cannot be said however that they always make quite as much of this distinction as they might. In the woodlice the first pair of antenne are exceedingly small and often hidden away as if these isopods were ashamed of them. Also in Talitrus, the sandhopper, a genus of semi-terrestrial amphipods, a similar diminution occurs. In many of the Entomostraca likewise the first antenne are small and inconspicuous, and that is the case with more than one of the species presently to be mentioned. The Entomostraca are at present divided into three principal sec- tions—Branchiopoda (branchial-footed), Ostracoda (shelly), Copepoda (oar-footed). Not much of the nature in each case can be explained by the mere meaning of the name. The Ostracoda are called shelly because, like some mollusca or shellfish, they have the body capable of a complete enclosure between two valves. But some of the Branchiopoda have a similar bivalvular security, entitling them to boast equally with the Ostracoda that the carapace is their castle. ‘The Copepoda use their feet for locomotion in the water, but so far as that is concerned there are some of the stately phyllopods to which the name of oar-footed would as well or even better apply. The Branchiopoda are divided into Phyllopoda (the leaf-footed), Cladocera (the antlered), Branchiura (the branchial-tailed). The last is by far the smallest of the three divisions, and has in England only a solitary representative, Argulus foliaceus (Linn.). It so happens however that this is among the very few recorded crustaceans of Bedfordshire, yet it comes into the list by what sportsmen would probably call a fluke, for the mention of it is not in any discussion of its own class, but only as incidental to ichthyology. In a paper on ‘The Fish of the River Ouse, Mr. A. R. Thompson observes that ‘the Argulus foliace (or roach louse) is also found upon roach and other coarse fish: it is a small crustacean of a disc-shape and attaches itself by means of two suckers on the underside.’ It is a vicious little parasite, varying in length when adult from an eighth to nearly a third of an inch. Fishes that would seek revenge by swallowing their foe are soon glad to give it up again. Scientifically it is interesting as belonging to a very small yet distinct and widely-dispersed group. It was at one time placed not in the Branchio- poda but among the parasitic Copepoda. Its mouth organs are con- siderably modified from any normal standard, the first pair of maxille being evanescent or lost, while the second pair are metamorphosed into suckers. These, as above mentioned, are the organs of adhesion. For sucking the juices of its victim its uses, not the suckers, but its mouth, an efficient apparatus being formed by the sharp glandular organ called the stimulus, and by a combination of the lips and mandibles. 1 Abs. Proc. Trans. Beds Nat. Hist. Soc. and Field Club for the years 1882-3, 1883-4 (May, 1885), Pp. 93. 95 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE To Mr. James Saunders I am again indebted for a reference to the circumstance that at a microscopical meeting of the Bedfordshire Natural History Society on January 20, 1880, among other objects of pond life ‘ Daphne vetula’ was exhibited. The use of this name carries the mind back to 1776, when the species intended was actually so called by O. F. Miiller. The conspicuously-branched second antenne, to which the name Cladocera is due, and which all the Cladocera possess except the females of a single genus, are also responsible for the name Daphne. Miiller avowedly chose it in allusion to the shrubby antennz, but after- wards exchanged it for Daphnia, in order that his shrubby genus in zoology might not be confounded with the botanical shrub. At the same time he changed the specific name from vetw/a, ‘a little old woman,’ to sima, ‘snub-nosed.’ Eventually his genus Daphnia was found to be too comprehensive, and this particular species was assigned to a new genus, Stmocephalus, by Schoedler, who restored the original specific name, so that the Cladocera of Bedfordshire are now represented by Szmocephalus vetulus (Miiller). In Daphmia the head is carinate above; in Simocephalus the head is convex and blunt. This genus is also devoid of the sharp angle or the more or less prolonged spine into which the species of Daphnia almost always have the valves produced behind. Like the rest of the Daphniide, Simocephalus has one branch three-jointed and the other four-jointed in the large second antenne, which are its swimming organs. For definitely assigning Ostracoda to the county I can rely on the sure authority of Mr. D. J. Scourfield. In 1896 the presence of Candona pubescens (Koch) ‘at Pavenham, Bedfordshire,’ was noted by Brady and Norman in an appendix to their ‘ Monograph of the Marine and Fresh- water Ostracoda of the North Atlantic and of North-Western Europe.’ But whereas they expressly attribute this record to Mr. Scourfield, he himself in 1898 states that the only known British locality for the species in question is Wanstead Park in Essex, ‘as the reference to Pavenham in Brady and Norman’s “Monograph” . . . was made under a misunderstanding.” To compensate for this disappointment he has lately informed me by letter that he has received from his cousin two other nearly related species, Candona candida (O. F. Miiller) and Erpeto- cypris strigata (O. F. Miiller), the locality for both of them being Paven- ham. Both belong to the family Cypride in the section Podocopa. The generic name Erfetocypris means the creeping Cypris, and in the definition Brady and Norman say that ‘the power of swimming is lost, and the habits of the animals, which creep along the bottom, are thus very different from those of Cypris.’* In the same way however Baird, in defining Candona, remarks that ‘the animal creeps at the bottom or upon aquatic plants, instead of swimming freely through the water.’ But Candona, though similar in habit to Erpetocypris, is distinguished from it, as also from Cypris, by having no branchial plate on the second maxille. Erpetocypris strigata has the lower margin of the shell nearly 1 Trans. R. Dublin Soc. (1896), ser. 2, v. 729. 2 The Essex Naturalist (1898), x. 322. 8 Trans. R. Dublin Soc. (1889), ser. 2, iv. 84. * British Entomostraca, Ray Society (1850), p. 159. 96 CRUSTACEANS straight, the surface smooth, variously banded with pale yellow and green.’ In Candona candida the lower margin is sinuated, especially in old examples and adult males, and the surface of the shell is smooth, pearly or yellowish white, with darker yellow cloudings towards the dorsal margin.” Of the Copepoda, Dr. Brady in his Revision of the British Species of Freshwater Cyclopide and Calanida attributes to Bedfordshire two species, both from Pavenham and both on Mr. Scourfield’s authority. They are both extensively distributed species, Cyclops bicuspidatus, Claus., and Diaptomus castor (Jurine), the former assigned by Brady to the family Cyclopidz, the latter to the Calanidz.? The genus Diaptomus, Westwood, should rather be included in a family Diaptomide, of which it is the earliest and apparently the most extensive genus, comprising three or four scores of species. The range of D. castor is stated to be the whole of Europe, its occurrence in North America also having been reported, but not thoroughly ascertained. The length of a specimen varies from a twelfth of an inch to an eighth or even a seventh. Cyclops bicuspidatus is smaller still, as it reaches its upper limit in a twelfth of an inch, while starting from a nineteenth. In Diaptomus the first antenne are twenty-five jointed ; in Cyc/ops the number of joints in these appendages varies from six to eighteen, reaching seventeen in C. dicuspidatus. According to Mr. A. R. Thompson’s paper above quoted many species of fish frequent the waters of the river Ouse. The supposition therefore is well warranted that in the same waters parasitic Copepoda frequent those fishes. It is indeed quite certain that the hitherto unre- corded crustaceans of Bedfordshire would fill a far longer catalogue than can be composed of those which have as yet been publicly noticed. 1 Trans. R. Dublin Soc. ser. 2, iv. 85. 2 Brady, Trans. Linn. Soc. (London, 1870), xxvi. 383. 3 Nat. Hist. Trans. Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1891), vol. xi. pt. 1, pp. 799 94- FISHES The river Ouse, which runs through this county, and the Ivel, which joins it at Tempsford, together with the Lea, which rises in Bedfordshire, are tenanted by many species of freshwater fish which may be considered indigenous; other species have been introduced, some of which have multiplied to a certain extent, but have not yet become common. It is probable that salmon in very early times were found in the Ouse, although the rivers of England west of a dividing line running from Portland to the Humber may be considered as salmon rivers rather than those east of that line. The alteration of the course of the Ouse in the fen districts by the cutting of the ‘ Hundred Foot’ and the erec- tion of the tidal Denver Sluice, together with the obstruction of the numerous water-mills and weirs, have probably tended to prevent the free passage of salmon up the river from its mouth at King’s Lynn in Norfolk. The Ouse from Bedford to its mouth is roughly a hundred miles long, and the water at Bedford Bridge is nearly 100 feet higher than at Lynn ; the fall therefore being about 1 foot per mile makes the river better adapted for coarse fish than for the Sa/monida. There are however three authentic records of salmon having been captured in this county within the past sixty years. One was taken in the eel trap at Cardington Mill about the year 1840 or 1841, weighing about 6 Ib., and was exhibited by a fishmonger at Bedford. Mr. George Street of Maulden, who rented Cardington Mill from 1852 to 1862, informs me that a salmon, weighing about 10 Ib., in fine condition, was taken in his eel trap at the time of a very high flood in July (probably 1853), and was sent by him to a fishmonger at Bedford for inspection, and afterwards presented to the late Mr. S. C. Whitbread, the lord of the manor. Owing to the excessive rainfall in 1852-3 the river Ouse was more or less in flood throughout the winter and spring, which would therefore facilitate the passage of salmon in spite of the obstructions of the sluices and weirs previously referred to. A male salmon weighing 9§ lb. was caught in the eel trap at Kempston Mill, December 22, 1880. The introduction of trout into the Ivel took place several years ago, with the result that many good specimens have been taken and are still found in that river, which appears to be well adapted to their growth and development. A cast of one (Sa/mo fario) taken by the late Frank Buckland, weighing upwards of g lb., was in the possession of Mr. 98 FISHES Beaumont of Astwick ; and the stock has been frequently replenished by fry artificially hatched. Mr. Pope of Biggleswade formed an association for stocking the Ivel with trout about twenty years or more ago, which hatched out several thousands of fry annually. It was found that the fish thrived well and grew to a good size—he himself took one spinning of 82 lb.—but owing to the fact that they would not rise to the fly, having so much other natural food, the enterprise was abandoned about fourteen years ago. A trout was taken at Stopford Mill, weighing exactly 8 lb., in 1899. Preserved by J. H. Wright of Clifton. 22 April, 1899. A man caught a trout in my meadows this day just 2 feet long ; he had taken two previously, one 2 lb., the other 34 lb. The former we guessed at 5 lb. Jostan Kino of Langford. A trout of 34 lb. was taken in the eel trap at Cardington Mill, February 18, 1880. The Bedford Angling Club also attempted the introduction of trout into the Ouse in the year 1875, when 3,000 young fry were placed in the river at Biddenham, and again in 1881-2, when 600 yearling trout (Sa/mo fario), varying from 4 to 7 inches in length, were turned in at Kempston and Renhold ; but, probably owing to the abundance of pike, the attempt was not attended with much success. Two trout were taken in the eel trap at Milton Mill in April, 1896, weighing between 2 and 3 lb. each. One of 5 lb., length 224 inches, is in the possession of Mr. George of Tempsford, taken August 22, 1892, below Roxton Sluice. Trout were common in the stream flowing from Luton Hoo, where they were strictly preserved, as well as in the river Lea more or less generally. Barbel have also been introduced into the Ouse by the Bedford Angling Club. In the year 1876 thirty-one fish, weighing from 1 Ib. to 5 lb. each, from the Thames, presented by the Maidenhead Associa- tion, were put in at Kempston ; and again in 1888 thirty-eight barbel from the Trent, varying in weight from 3 lb. to 10 lb., were put in at Clapham and Renhold. These fish appear to have bred and distributed themselves both above and below Bedford. One was taken at Sharn- ‘brook in 1898 weighing 12 lb. Others have been taken as far below Bedford as St. Neots; and on October 4, 1go01, a barbel of 6§ Ib., captured by an otter, was found on the bank of the Ouse at St. Neots. A barbel weighing 6 lb. was taken at Sharnbrook, May, 1881. A few tench of the golden variety were presented to the Bedford Angling Club by the Duke of Bedford in 1874, and were placed in a pond at Clapham Park by permission of the late James Howard, Esgq., M.P., in the hope that they would breed; in 1876 they were found in their original number and put into the Ouse, but there was no appearance of any young fry. Carp from ponds in the county have also been put into the Ouse, 99 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE but have not since been met with. A crucian carp was taken some years ago by Mr. F. Newbery in the eel trap at Milton Mill. From the following list it will be seen that there are only eighteen different forms of freshwater fishes which may be considered indigenous to the county, TELEOSTEANS ACANTHOPTERYGII 1. Perch. Perca fluviatilis, Linn. Plentiful in the Ouse in all parts, especially near the places where the water lily abounds. It attains a weight of 4 lb. and upwards. One was taken at Willington in 1900 weighing 2 lb. 10 oz.; one at Clapham in the same year of 3} lb.; one taken by Mr. P. Addington with an artificial minnow from under Tempsford Bridge weighing 4} lb.; and one was caught in Southill Lake a few years ago by my son weighing 44 lb. Three were taken by Mr. George at Tempsford about 1882 in the course of an hour, weigh- ing 2 lb., 24 Ib. and 24 lb.; and I took three at Clapham in 1899 in less than half an hour in one spot, each weighing close upon 2 |b. 2. Ruff (commonly Pope). Linn. Locally, Joey Ruff. Usually found at the bottom of the river up to about 5 inches in length. 3. Miller’s Thumb or Bullhead. Cottus gobio, Linn. Found under stones in the gravelly parts of the river and in small streams that are not sluggish. Acerina cernua, HEMIBRANCHII 4. Three-spined Stickleback. Gastrosteus acu- leatus, Linn. Davis’s History of Luton. 5. Ten-spined Stickleback. Gastrosteus pungi- tius, Linn. These are more frequently found in the various brooks and ponds rather than in the rivers. HAPLOMI 6. Pike (commonly Jack). sox ductus, Linn. This fish is abundant in all parts of the Ouse and in various lakes in the county, and grows to a large size. The largest I have seen taken from the Ouse weighed 284 Ib., and was caught at Kempston many years ago by the late Mr. W. Bailey, surgeon, of Bed- ford. The head of a pike of 36 Ib. was in the possession of the late Mr. C. Palgrave of Bedford, and the fish was said to have been left on the meadows near Bedford after a heavy flood and there captured. One of 214 lb. was taken at Clapham in the Ouse in 1893, and I took one in the Ouse at Oak- ley in February, 1878, a female fish measur- ing 40 inches in length and weighing 20 Ib. A pike of 30 lb., taken at Luton Hoo by H.R.H. the then Princess of Wales, now Queen Alexandra, is preserved in the ‘ fish house’ there ; also one taken by Mr. Forbes in 1875, length 474 inches, weight 36 lb. In August, 1894, there was an accidental influx of sewage from the sewage farm at Luton into the lake, which killed a great number of pike. There is a photograph showing about sixty pike killed at the time, all very large fish, About 500 in all were destroyed. At Southill Lake in June, 1897, when the lake was accidentally run off, a female pike 464 inches long, and weighing 324 lb., and a male 45 inches long weighing 26 lb., were taken and presented to Mr. J. Steele-Elliott, who has them preserved. OSTARIOPHYSI 7. Gudgeon. Gobio fluviatilis, Flem. Found in all parts of the shallow gravelly bed of the river up to about 5 inches in length. 8. Chub. Leuciscus cephalus, Linn. Found commonly in the deep pools in the Ouse near the rapid parts of the stream, and weighing up to nearly 6 lb. One was taken by myself a few years ago at Milton Mill of 54 lb., and one of 5} lb. taken at Blunham about 1882 is in the possession of Mr. George of Tempsford. They are frequently taken with the fly or minnow up to 3 and 4 lb. The chub appears to preserve its ‘ habitat ’ to a great extent, and keeps constantly to its selected parts of the river. g. Roach. Leuctscus rutilus, Linn. A very common and gregarious fish in all parts of the river. One 3 Ib. 6 0z., taken at Luton Hoo about 1891, and another 2 |b. 10 0z., caught about the same time, are pre- T1090 FISHES served in the ‘fish house’ there. I took one in the Ouse at Clapham in July, 1900, weighing over 2 lb. One of 2 lb. 2 oz. and one of 1? lb. were taken by Mr. A. R. Lindley at Great Barford, June 23, 1898. A roach weighing 34 lb. was caught in the Ouse at Bedford, September 2, 1872, by Mr. J. Savage. 10. Rudd. Leuciscus erythrophthalmus, Linn. This fish is not nearly so common as the roach. It is occasionally met with up to 13 lb. I took one of that weight a few years ago at Clapham. One 2 |b. weight was caught, March, 1901, near Sandy, by Mr. A. Rylett (Field, March 16, 1901). A rudd weighing 2 lb. 6 oz. was taken in the Ouse by Mr. H. Thody, September, 1875: length 154 inches, girth 12 inches. 11. Dace. Leuciscus dobula, Linn. It frequents the clear and rapid waters of the river and swiftly running brooks, and is a gregarious fish, varying in weight to about 3 Ib. 12. Bleak. Leuciscus alburnus, Linn. Found in all parts of the river in large numbers near the surface. 13. Minnow. Leuciscus phoxinus, Linn. Found in shoals in most of the shallow gravelly parts of the river and in the various brooks. It appears to be plentiful at times in certain parts of the river, and then to change its locality, appearing again in other parts where it was formerly comparatively scarce. This is probably caused by the frequent changes in the scour of the sandy beds of the stream produced by heavy floods. A minnow 4 inches in length, girth 24 inches, was caught at Clapham Ford, May 3, 1881. 14. Tench. Tinca vulgaris, Cuv. Although more frequently found in lakes and ponds, it is present in the Ouse in the deep parts of the river. It attains a weight of 44 lb. to 5 lb. One was taken by myself of 44 lb. at Blunham Mill in the Ivel in June, 1897, and two were taken in Southill lake in June, 1897, weighing § lb. and 42 lb., and are in the possession of Mr. J. Steele- Elliott. 15. Bream. mann. Evidently not so numerous as the last species. Owing to the difficulty of dis- tinguishing these two terns upon the wing— even at close quarters—records based on obser- vation alone are unsatisfactory. Five which were brought to Mr. A. Covington during one week, were shot near the Common Bridge over the river just above Bedford about August 1866. ‘The last he set up was one from Bletsoe 19 September 1894. An adult was shot near Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, in August 1885 (Lilford, Birds of Northamp- tonshire and Neighbourhood). The water keeper at Luton Hoo has one which was killed at the lake there in May 1899. 133 A HISTORY OF 190. Little Tern. Sterna minuta, Linn. By far the least plentiful of the four terns that visit us. In thirty-seven years of taxi- dermy Mr. A. Covington can remember re- ceiving but five local specimens; they came from Fenlake, Willington and Harrold, and in every instance appeared during their spring migration northwards. In addition he men- tions a male and female that were shot near Willington church in the month of June about 1865. Mr. R. J. Cawse has one, he says, in his possession which he shot on the Ivel at Biggleswade in 1883. I saw a single bird on 11 May 1899 at Newnham, which was resting upon a small patch of ground in one of the flooded parts of the farm. 191. Black-headed Gull. Linn. Perhaps the commonest of the sea-gulls that one may so frequently observe as far inland as Bedfordshire. It evidently seems to be a regular migrant, journeying to and from its nesting colonies during the spring and autumn, but more particularly, I think, during the latter period. Often driven inland after heavy gales. Larus ridibundus, 192. Common Gull. Carus canus, Linn. This is one of the least common of the gulls which occur with us. Apparently it does not appear in the county with any regu- larity in the spring or autumn like several others of the gull family, but this may be more easily accounted for by the total absence of breeding stations in England; their visits seem therefore more particularly in the nature of winter records, and at this season evidently under conditions of stormy weather only. Adult plumaged birds are nearly always ob- tained. One I have seen was shot at Blun- ham in 1836; another was killed near Bed- ford on 7 September 1892 and one at the Newnham farm on 31 December of the same year. On 21 January 1893 one was picked up dead at Ravensden, and in February 1900 one was obtained at Keysoe. During the winter 1900-1 one was killed at Barton and set up by Mr. J. Cole, who remarks that it is the only one of this species he has ever had that had been obtained locally. 193. Herring-Gull. Gmelin. Evidently utilizes the valley of the Ouse very regularly during its migratory periods of the year, and often at no inconsiderable height, but in these overland movements it seldom alights again before reaching the coast. Dur- ing April and early May we may frequently Larus argentatus, J. F. BEDFORDSHIRE see this bird either singly or in small parties ; greater numbers are seen throughout August and September, the majority being immature birds. ‘Throughout the winter months soli- tary birds not infrequently appear. 194. Lesser Black-backed Gull. Larus fuscus, Linn. Like the last species it is more frequent with us during its local migrations in the autumn, but it is frequently met with all through the winter, and whilst on its return journeys overland in spring. Immature birds comprise by far the greater proportion of those obtained. 195. Great Black-backed Gull. Larus mar- inus, Linn. Very rare. Mr. G. B. Clarke records an adult shot in the spring of 1849 at Hockliffe (Naturalist, 1851). ‘Three have been received by Mr. A. Covington, the last of which was shot from near the New Cut at Goldington in the winter 1892-3. 196. Kittiwake. Rissa tridactyla (Linn.) Almost as plentiful a species locally as the black-headed gull, but, unlike that bird, not particularly noticeable during any migratory season of the year, though appearing freely from November until the following February. It generally occurs inland in the wake of every storm that beats upon our coasts, very fre- quently reaching us in an exhausted condition, as numbers of them are picked up dead, and often in localities far removed from any water. The birds seen are usually solitary, but occa- sionally two or three may be observed together. 197. Pomatorhine Skua. Stercorarius pomato- rbinus (Temminck) On 18 October 1879 a male bird of this species, which has since passed into my posses- sion, was taken by a countryman to Mr. A. Covington. It had been shot by the man from a ploughed field at Ravensden. When skinned it was found in very poor condition and the stomach quite empty (see also Zoo/o- gist). 198. Razorbill. Ada torda, Linn. The only local record that can at present be given is that of an old stuffed specimen mounted in company with a green wood-. pecker, which Mr, A. Covington purchased at a local sale. The label on back of case stated, ©Razorbill from Fenlake.’ 199. Guillemot. Uria troile (Linn.) A very rare species, and probably never 134 BIRDS found in this county except when driven under the stress of severe weather, for when pro- cured they are generally picked up dead, or in a very exhausted condition and unable to fly. An old specimen came into the hands of Mr. A. Covington some years ago that had been shot close to Milton Mill. One was picked up at Renhold 26 November 1893 ; others have been obtained at Sharnbrook, Goldington, and two in addition at Milton, one in November 1893, and an adult speci- men in 1894. 200. Little Auk. Mergulus alle (Linn.) There are many instances of this little arc- tic visitor being storm driven into our county. The earliest noted is one that was picked up near Bedford in the winter 1861-2, which, although not actually seen by Mr. A. Covington, was sufficiently described to him to leave little doubt as to its being correctly named. Davis (History of Luton, 1874, ed. 2) refers to four having been taken near Luton in the last thirty years ; particu- lars of only two are given, one of which was obtained in Hertfordshire and the other found at Barton in January 1870. The late Mr. T. Cane also mentioned to me one having been received by him from Caddington in the last week of January 1895, and he had a second during that winter. In the Field one is recorded by Mr. Allen as having been picked up dead after severe gales on 8 December 1878, upon the allotment gardens at Hus- borne Crawley. Again in the same journal Mr. W. F. Higgins sends particulars of one killed at Turvey on 22 November 1882. One in the possession of Mr. J. Day of Rox- ton was picked up dead on 21 November 1894 near Colmworth Woods. In the ex- ceptionally severe weather at the end of Janu- ary 1895 two came into the hands of Mr. J. S. Wright, one found on 20 January at Hinxworth in Hertfordshire, and another, which is now in my possession, was picked up on 2 February, almost dead, in Haynes Park. The most recent was one, a male, picked up near Hanger’s Wood, Stagsden, on 19 February 1901; when found it was still alive, but in a very exhausted condition. 201. Puffin. Fratercula arctica (Linn.) The very few obtained are probably storm- driven birds, occurring more particularly with us during their spring and autumnal move- ments. Several have been received by Mr. A. Covington, but have generally been found dead or nearly so. One he mentions was picked up in the middle of Clapham Wood, and he has received others from near Castle Mills, Willington, Turvey and Harrold, the most recent from Kempston at the latter end of March rgor after a westerly gale. A uniform cream-coloured specimen was sent to him in the autumn of 1880 which had been picked up at Girtford. On 5 January 1895 a female was caught at Marston, and a male in the same parish two or three days later. Colonel H. Barclay has one in_ his possession which was picked up dead in Tin- grith Park in November 1893, driven in by the great storm at that time. 202. Great Northern Diver. Colymbus gla- cialis, Linn. A very rare winter visitor. Morris! refers to one being met with in Bedfordshire on the river Ouse 4 February 1830, which is evidently the same bird now in the possession of Mr. J. F. Day of Kettering, who kindly informs me that one was shot by Mr. William Francis, his grandfather, during that year and month. It was shot on the ice on the Ouse near Cardington Mill. Another which was purchased by Mr. A. Covington in the flesh in December 1876 had been shot on the river at Cox’s Pits, Biddenham, after being hunted and fired at several times before being secured. 203. Red-throated Diver. trionalis, Linn. Colymbus septen- The local specimens handled in the flesh by Mr. A. Covington have not shown any trace of the red neck of its summer plumage, and all have been extremely fat. One was killed at Kempston about 1890 near the Hill Grounds, another at Pavenham in January 1898, and the last received by him was killed near Felmersham in January 1897 ; in its gullet there were nine roach, each from 3 to 4 inches long. Another, a male, was also shot at Felmersham in January 1886 by Mr. A. W. Saunders, who informed me when I examined the specimen in his posses- sion that when killed it was absurdly tame and never attempted to escape by either diving any distance or attempting to get upon the wing. One was shot by Major Duberly on the Ouse by his house at Fenlake on 18 November 1891, and another was obtained by Mr. Hassall close to the railway bridge over the river at Cardington on 17 November 1893. 204. Great Crested Grebe. tus (Linn.) Until a few years ago known only as a winter visitant, occurring not uncommonly Podicipes crista- 1 British Birds, by F. O. Morris (1860). 135 A HISTORY OF upon the Ouse and Ivel from September on- wards until the following February. Mr. J. King, who was formerly resident at Southill for many years, has no knowledge of their having attempted to breed there until 1894, when in company together we found them so doing. But it is evident from conversations I had with the keepers that the birds had first frequented the lake one or two years pre- viously, and as they remained throughout the greater part of the year probably nested. On 18 May of that year we found a pair had a nest and eggs and the old bird was evi- dently sitting ; a previous laying of three eggs had been destroyed on 23 April, close to where the present nest was situated. When visiting the pool again in August of that year, I found that the second laying had been fully successful, the old birds being then accom- panied about the pool by their young. On 17 April 1895 two pairs were upon this sheet of water; but, not visiting Southill again in that year, I am unable to say with what results. Subsequently on 3 April 1899 one pair were present, and on 12 May following three grebe were observed. On3 May 1901 three pairs and one odd one were upon the pool, of which two pairs at least remained and nested there. Her Grace the Duchess of Bedford has been kind enough to favour me with particulars of this species on the pools at Woburn. It was first observed there in 1894, when a pair nested and reared three young. Four of the five left in the autumn, one staying until the hard frost set in during that winter, and one returned immediately when the weather opened. When visiting the various pools within Woburn Park on 15 May 1901 seven of these grebe were upon the pools, one pair of which were accompanied by their three young, and another had a nest containing two recently laid eggs, to which a third was eventually added. The numbers observed on these pools on this occasion may be possibly accounted for by Battlesden Lake having been drained and left dry. I visited Battlesden Pool on 16 May 1899 and five adult birds were then present; two pairs were evidently nesting, one nest of which could be inspected from the side, and con- tained a single egg. In Mr. C. F. Wood's experience of Woburn and Battlesden from 1849-72 he never knew or heard of this grebe in either locality. At the larger pool in Tingrith Park, Colonel H. Barclay says that to his knowledge they nested only in 1899, the eggs being successfully hatched and the young reared; but the year following only a single bird returned to the pool, remain- ing some little time before departing again ; BEDFORDSHIRE since then they have not reappeared in that particular locality. 205. Red-necked Grebe. (Boddaert) A rare winter visitant. In February 1863 one was shot by a farmer on a pond at Ren- hold ; the bird was skinned and eaten, but Mr. A. Covington was, fortunately enough, enabled to obtain the mutilated remains and identify the species. Another, a female, is in the possession of the writer; it was picked up alive on 11 February 1870, during hard weather, in the farmyard of the Hill farm at Wilden (see also Zoo/ogist). A third which I have also examined is in the posses- sion of Mr. J. Lund of Bedford, and was killed on the small reservoir above the Clap- ham road on 8 November 1885. A red- necked grebe recorded in the Field, 1880, proves upon examination to be but a specimen of the great crested grebe. Grebe. Podicipes griseigena 206. Slavonian Podicipes aquritus (Linn.) Another winter visitant, but seems to occur far oftener than the previous species. About a dozen have been received by Mr. A. Cov- ington in the flesh, nearly always in February or March during their return movements north, and invariably in the winter plumage. Blun- ham, Willington, Pavenham, Milton, Harrold, Odell, and by the ash-plantation along the river at Clapham are localities where they have been obtained. The most recent was one found at the edge of a pond along the Kimbolton road about 1890, apparently ex- hausted and frozen to death. Several have been received by Mr. J. S. Wright at various times. One which I have seen in the possession of Mr. J. Cole of Leagrave was shot at Luton Hoo, and others have also been received by him from around that neighbourhood. One in the possession of Mr. J. King was shot on 27 March 1865 at Southill Lake. That recorded by Mr. C. M. Prior in the Zoodogist, shot near Bedford during the last week in February 1879, is very probably the specimen now in my possession, which was shot by Mr. J. Bennett on the overflows at Fenlake about that year. Another in my collection was obtained near the bridge at Felmersham on 2 February 1895. 207. Little Grebe. Podicipes fluviatilis (Tun- stall) Locally, Dabchick, Didchick, Diadobber. Still plentiful as a winter visitor on all our larger streams, and with the exception of within a few miles from Bedford—where its 136 BIRDS numbers are less frequent owing to its being too freely harassed—it occurs commonly throughout the whole course of the Ouse and Ivel, particularly on the former river between Willington and St. Neots. During continued frosts they suffer considerably, often allowing themselves to be caught with the hand, and being occasionally even picked up in the streets of Bedford. Until about 1885 they nested regularly on several ballast-holes close to the town of Bedford, one locality in particular being the ballast-hole along the Hitchen line at Elstow, close to the London and North- Western Railway station, and onceat least, some years previously, in the lime-pit holes at Cox’s Pits. At that time Mr. A. Covington frequently received specimens during the spring in the full summer dress, most of them having been killed against the telegraph wires. At another ballast-hole close to Biggleswade station several pairs used to nest, as witnessed by Mr. J. King, but we failed to find them continuing to do so in 1895 or since. Again several nests have been found by him alongside the Ivel at Langford; and at Southill, on the small Basin Pool, one or more pairs nested regularly formerly, but had ceased to do so about 1890. They have nested also at Woburn, Ravensden, Tingrith and Luton Hoo. 208. Storm-Petrel. Procellaria pelagica, Linn. Occasionally found, and generally during the autumn. The following have been recorded : One picked up near the Ashburnham Road, Bedford, on 30 October 1879 ; one shot by Mr. G. Steadman at Ridgmount on 13 October 1880, as reported at the time in the Field; another during the same month of that year, caught in the old tanyard at Shefford ; one found in the Midland Road, Bedford, on 7 October 1889; one caught whilst fluttering against the windows of the old Borough Police Station in Silver Street, Bedford, on 20 October 1890; and one caught by Mr. J. Bennett in his garden in Peel Street, Bedford, on 5 December 1893. Major Brooks sent me word in 1894 that one had been taken at Toddington a few years previously. Another was picked up dead near Colmworth Wood in 1894, and one in Novem- ber, 1878, at Staplow, both of which were seen by Dr. Sprigge. 209. Leach’s Fork-tailed Petrel. droma leucorrhoa (Vieillot) Mr. F. J. Thynne informs me that one was picked up in Wilstead Park on 16 November, 1877, and is still in his possession at Haynes ; and during the last week of December 1878 a male was picked up alive under one of the street lamp-posts near the Grove, in the town of Bedford (see also the Zoolgist), On 2 November 1880 a flock of seven of these birds was said to have been observed along the river at Goldington, and Mr. Covington, from the description given at the time, thinks they were undoubtedly of this species ; two days afterwards one was sent him from Fenlake, the adjoining parish. Oceano- 210. Manx Shearwater. (Temminck) Occasionally driven inland by storm. One in the collection of Mr. T. Cane of Luton was taken at Stopsley, some two miles north of that town, and another in my collec- tion was picked up alive at Cotton End near Haynes in the autumn of 1885. Puffinus anglorum 211. Fulmar. Fulmarus glacialis (Linn.) The only occurrence on record is an adult bird picked up at Goldington on 1 October 1888, which was placed upon a pond where it survived a few days. It was eventually taken to Mr. A. Covington, and when skinned was found to be extremely emaciated. ADDENDA White Wagtail. Motacilla alba, Linn. One picked up under telegraph wires at Turvey in the spring of 1902, and an adult male obtained at Newnham in September of that year, were verified by Mr. A. S. Coving- ton (see also Beds Times). Great Skua. Aegalestris catarrbactes (Linn.) One that is in the writer’s possession was caught alive by Mr. J. Cole on 11 May 1902 on Bankey Park pond near Leagrave. It had a large sea fishing-hook it its throat, to which cord and two pieces of wood with lettering thereon were attached. Black-throated Diver. Colymbus arcticus, Linn. On 20 February 1897 one was reported by Mr. Tomalin as having been seen ona fishmonger’s stall at Northampton said to have been shot at Wootton, Beds (Fourn. Northants Nat. Hist. Soc. and Field Club). I 137 18 MAMMALS In compiling the record of mammals the same difficulty has been experienced as in the case of the vertebrata generally. With the excep- tion of a local list given by Davis in his History of Luton (1855), there is no trace of any other work upon the subject. A work of a century ago would now be invaluable for reference to many species already exter- minated, whose local history has all but passed away. Unfortunately there seems to be no one resident in the county who has specially studied the local mammalia, and this accounts for the omission of many little known mammals from this list. During the past century the marten and the black rat have disappeared, and the polecat may now also be considered extinct in the county. Amongst those species as yet un- recorded within Bedfordshire, and which would in all probability on careful investigation be found, are the lesser shrew (Sorex minutus) and several of the Cheiroptera. CHEIROPTERA 1. Long-eared Bat. Plecotus auritus, Linn. Abundant. 2. Barbastelle. Barbastella barbastellus, Schre- ber. Bell—Barbastellus daubentonii. Evidently uncommon, and personally I have never seen a local specimen. One was taken in 1868 in the bedroom of a house in the Clapham road, another a few years after was knocked down by a boy with his cap near Brickhill farm, and a third found dead in Fos- terhill Road in Bedford about the same year. The most recent was one picked up alive also in that road by Mr. A. Covington in August 1901, which he retained for a time before liberating. 3- Great or White’s Bat (Noctule). trellus noctula, Schreber. Bell—Scotophilus noctula. White—Vespertilio altivolans, Common, haunting more particularly the neighbourhood of our rivers and larger pools, where not infrequently they may be observed in company with swifts (Cypse/us apus), with which they seem equally adept when upon the wing at taking the Mayflies and other aquatic insects. At times I have observed this bat capture the larger beetles also. They Pipis- sleep in the holes of trees, frequently in colonies. On 3 August 1897 I took exactly fifty from an old beech tree at Warden Warren, and I have heard of about as many being taken in other localities. A matutinal flight seems often to be taken by this as well as some of the other species. 4. Pipistrelle. Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Schre- ber. Bell—Scotophilus pipistrellus. Very common. They sleep in buildings, especially in churches, 5. Daubenton’s Bat. Leisler. Bell—Vespertiio daubentonii. The first occurrence of this species recorded in the county is given in the Zoologist 1893, when two were obtained on g August from several flying by the river close to Cardington Mill. I have since observed this species in many other sheltered haunts along the Ouse and over the lake at Southill, 6. Natterer’s Bat. Myotis nattereri, Leisler. Probably not very uncommon within the county, although seemingly local. It is first recorded in the Zoologist 1903, when several were observed during August in that year at Turvey and one obtained. Myotis daubentoni, 138 MAMMALS INSECTIVORA 7. Hedgehog. Erinaceus europeus, Linn. Fairly abundant generally, particularly in the northern half of the county. An albino female was taken in a trap at Wrest Park, Silsoe, in December 1878 (Field, also Zoolo- gist). 8. Mole. Talpa europea, Linn. Very common. Varieties are occasionally obtained. One, orange-coloured, with a reddish stripe down the belly and a few black stripes across the back, was taken 17 February 1877 (Zoologist). Mr. A. Covington has also received three others of a pale fawn colour, one of which was trapped at Bromham ; and one of a uniform bright salmon colour which showed a delicate pink next the skin when the fur was blown aside. Pale silvery grey specimens have been received by him in some ten or more instances; one at Goldington about 1895, and two dingy white varieties from Stevington, as well as occasional pied varia- tions, but in the latter the spots and blotches were always restricted to the under parts. In addition to the mole being rather a favourite prey of the weasel I have not infre- quently found their remains either in the nest or among the pellets of the tawny owl. g- Common Shrew. Sorex araneus, Linn, Locally, Hog Mouse. Very common generally. In many small spinneys during the spring months I have at times noticed considerable numbers together running about the undergrowth. 10. Water Shrew. Neomys fodiens, Pallas. Bell—Crossopus fodiens. Not very abundant and somewhat locally distributed. A favourite haunt is the stream flowing through the ‘ Green’ at Goldington ; it also occurs more or less commonly at Ravensden, Stagsden, Harrowden and Ren- hold. TI once procured it at Biddenham near Kempston Mill. Mr. A. Covington refers to its being formerly abundant in the ditch along the Kimbolton road near Gipsy Lane, but having now entirely disappeared from that locality. One in his possession was taken by him in 1861 when a schoolboy in the old spring at Clapham. CARNIVORA 11. Fox. Vulpes vulpes, Linn. Bell—Vulpes vulgaris. Fairly abundant throughout the county, but its numbers naturally depend upon the protection afforded. The head keeper at Southill informed me that once during a very heavy thunderstorm, when the young pheasants were knocked off their roosting perches by the gale, he found as many as seventy-six that had been killed by foxes during the night. Mr. P. Addington assures me that in one instance he found a litter of no less than ten cubs. 12. Pine Marten. Mustela martes, Linn. Bell—Martes abietum. Locally, Marten Cat. During the early years of the last century the pine marten was still in evidence in our county, but was more particularly confined to the larger woodlands, A rapid extermination must have however followed soon afterwards, as records of a more recent date seem entirely absent, and at the present time I do not sup- pose there is any one living who has any local knowledge of the marten except from hearsay. Davis, in his History of Luton (1855), refers to it as ‘rare,’ and in his second edition (1874), ‘almost extinct,’ whereas there seems little doubt that it had been exterminated even long before his first edition. Mr. A. Covington remarks that he has heard his uncle speak of having occasionally obtained it around his home at Bolnhurst, and his mother when a girl had a cape made of marten cat skins and a muff of polecat skins. The animals had been caught by her father and brother in the locality. The last two that he ever heard of were one trapped in a fir tree at Sandy, and of more recent date one seen by a Mr. Ruff. It had been trapped at Keysoe Wood (then of far greater acreage than now) and sus- pended to a hazel in one of the ridings. He also adds that keepers generally used to sell the skins of both these and polecats to the furriers. In a conversation I had some years ago with an old keeper, named Franklin, he assured me his father once killed a marten cat at Haynes about 1840, and he had heard of it being obtained at Wootton. In the Field (1859) is to be found an interesting account of the capture in Odell Wood of a pine marten and four kittens by an old game- keeper in about the year 1819. The old cat brought up the kittens successfully in con- finement, and although the mother was never 139 A HISTORY OF tamed the young became as docile as domestic cats. 13. Polecat. Putorius putorius, Linn. Bell—Mustela putorius. Until about the middle of last century the polecat was still fairly common, more partic- ularly in the well wooded districts. Many of the old inhabitants, especially gamekeepers and woodmen, have told me they were familiar with this species in their early days, but nowadays almost the only evidence that remains are the few stuffed specimens that one may occasionally come across. At Ren- hold Wood four or five were killed by Good- liff, who was keeper there many years ago. They were not uncommon in the woods around Bolnhurst, and in Clapham Woods as many as six or seven are stated to have been taken in one week; at Stanford and Newnham they have occurred, and in more recent years were comparatively well known around Wootton, Maulden and Melchbourne. Major Brooks remarks on its occurrence formerly at Flitwick and Mr. Rouse Orlebar around Hinwick. About 1850 one was seen by Mr. J. King at Southill Fields and another in Southill Park about 1870; one obtained at Sherhatch Wood about 1842, and another, a very beautiful old male, trapped in February about 1876 by the keeper at Wilshamstead Wood, are both now in the writer’s possession. One was found at Little Staughton in 1867, and a male, which had got its head through some palings and had been unable to extricate it- self at Warden in March 1873. Another male was trapped near Turvey Mill in April 1880, and about 1882 another, a large speci- men, was trapped under an old archway at Sharnbrook ; all four were mounted by Mr. A. Covington. During the winter 1878-9 a polecat was said to have been seen several times at Putnoe. One was killed at Chicksands Priory 28 March 1879 (Zoologist), a male trapped 11 March 1883 at Henlow Grange (Fie/d) and another trapped at Ickwell Bury 8 December 1883 (Fie/d). One which I have seen in the head-keeper’s possession at Woburn was killed in the park about 1886, and a fine old male, which I have also been able to examine, was trapped at Elstow Gorse 26 October 1898 and measured 22 inches when in the flesh. 14. Stoat (Ermine). Putorius ermineus, Linn. Bell—Mustela erminea. Fairly common wherever its numbers are not rigidly kept down by game-preserving. Specimens that have more or less assumed the BEDFORDSHIRE arctic winter dress are not at all uncommon, and many individuals that have undergone almost the complete change of dress have been obtained; upwards of a dozen of these have passed through the hands of Mr. A. Covington, and in every instance he adds they were large old males. A correspondent writing to the Field 1879, respecting a stoat’s nest and larder found by him on 26 May at Stratton Park, Biggleswade, mentioned that it contained four field mice, twenty-seven par- tridges’ eggs (not one of which was injured) and parts of several rabbits. ‘The female and eleven young were killed from the nest, a number considerably in excess of the usual litter of about six. 15. Weasel. Putorius nivalis, Linn. Bell—Muastela vulgaris. Common generally, in spite of game- keepers’ efforts to reduce its numbers. Several albinos have been obtained, one at Blunham and another at Great Barford, as I am informed by Dr. Sprigge. In the winter 1896-7 another was taken in a stable at Luton, and still more recently one is recorded in the Field shot 25 October 1898 by Mr. Rouse Orlebar on his lawn at Hinwick. ‘Two albinos at least have been received by Mr. A. Coving- ton, one from near Ravensden church in 1891 and another near the pond in Golding- ton village in 1889; in addition he mentions having had several varieties with the white chest and belly spotted with brown. 16. Badger. eles meles, Linn. Bell—Mekes taxus. Now rare, a few remaining in certain favoured haunts, whence those that are occas- ionally killed may have wandered. Until about the middle of last century it was fairly well known throughout the county, and badger-baiting at the local fairs was one of the attractions. Along the chalk-hill range, particularly in the neighbourhood between Sharpenhoe and Hexton, many have been killed in recent years, and in the former locality the remains of one were found by Mr. A. F. Crossman in June 1893 ; several bad- ger-earths have come under my personal ob- servation there, and from this locality they seem frequently to wander into the adjoining parishes. At Silsoe it has several times oc- curred. Davis (History of Luton, 1874) refers to one being caught at Barton some two or three years previously. A stuffed badger that I have seen in the boat-house at Luton Hoo was taken at Stockings Wood about 1887 and weighed 28 lb.; others I learnt have since been taken on that estate. Colonel Hanbury Barclay 140 MAMMALS states that in March rgor badgers had an earth at Tingrith, his keeper having seen a badger in the woods a week previously. In the spring of 1891 a mother with young was dug out of an earth at Harrold; the female was preserved and is in the possession of Mr. A. Covington, who had received onea few years previously from Carlton. A young one about six weeks old was sent to him from Harrold in 1890, and two others some three months old and another young one from the same neighbourhood in 1899. In 1895 a female that had been obtained at Ampthill was also preserved by Covington, and he mentions that in the ‘sixties’ two live cubs were brought to his shop that had been taken in the south of the county. A male weighing 18 lb. was trapped 26 October 1899 on Rowney Warren, and a female weighing 19 lb. on 19 April 1900 at Sutton Park. 17. Otter. Lutra lutra, Linn. Bell—Lutra vulgaris. The otter is by no means as rare in this county as is generally supposed, and probably more plentiful than formerly. It occurs throughout the whole course of the Ouse and the Ivel, and though the animal itself is not often seen its tracks are to be found on the land adjoining these streams. In one of Mr. J. King’s meadows at Langford there is a track which has been constantly used for years. This track cuts off a bend of the river and possesses a curious feature in that the banks at either end have never shown any trace of scoring. Mr. King assures me that he has seen otters leap upon the bank from the im- petus gained in swimming. This may account for the difficulty experienced in trapping this animal. Mr. A. Covington states that he has mounted upwards of twenty otters that have been obtained locally, and Mr. J. S. Wright more than a dozen. A former water keeper at Biggleswade informed me that he had trapped and shot seven in that neighbour- hood. The following records form but a small proportion of the full list which might be given if dates and other particulars had in all cases been preserved: A male otter weighing 26 lb. was shot at Milton Mill 17 April 1837 (Beacon and Beds Mercury). A young dog otter killed at its holt near Stev- ington church, and afterwards a female by Mr. Reeve’s hounds 18 May 1837 (Beds Mercury), On 28 December 1878 three young, apparenly less than a fortnight old, found in a nest of sedge and rushes in the reed beds near Castle Mill (Zoohgist). A female, weight 16 lb., trapped in the Ivel at Sandy 23 October 1879 (Field). An adult killed, weighing 21 lb., at Biggleswade 29 July 1883 (Fiedd). One about a third grown, killed at Langford 17 December 1883, and an old male in the same locality 1 April 1885. At Beeston one of 24 lb. weight was shot 25 December 1885 (Field). A male was shot at Langford 19 January 1886, another 26 September 1887, and others 18 December 1893 and 28 May 1895. An old one anda young killed at Bromham Hall on the same day in 1890. In January 1886 one of three young, about four weeks old, was killed at Odell ; and at the same place in February 1895 three young were found together on an old wooden bridge, evidently having been dis- lodged by the floods. A male weighing 30 Ib. obtained at Shefford 1894. Two young ones, taken below Bromham Bridge 1894, were reared by hand. An adult shot 10 February 1895 on the island adjoining Bed- ford old baths, and two days later two young ones, about three weeks old, were taken from under the boards at the back of the bathing sheds. A female shot, and two of three young taken from a bed of rushes on the canalized barge-way near Cardington 30 October 1898. Three half grown otters were seen by the writer 24 December 1900 on the islands near Roxton Bridge, and on 26 December one of about the same size was flushed on the Ouse at Blunham. During January 1902 one was frequently seen disporting itself in the even- ing in the river close to Bedford Bridge. On 24 January a male was caught and released again at Biddenham. In the same and follow- ing year during the months of June several were seen by the writer between Little Bar- ford and Great Barford. In the latter locality I found a much used holt, a large hole in the brickwork of the sluice at Old Mills some 18 inches above the usual water level. It con- tained a quantity of dry rushes, and the edges of brickwork were considerably polished by the pads of the animals. Dr. Sprigge mentions that some young found at Great Barford were suckled by a cat. The writer has come across specimens with yellowish buff spots and blotches on the under parts. RODENTIA 18, Squirrel. Sciurus leucourus, Kerr. Bell—Sciarus vulgaris. More or less abundant in the woodlands and well-timbered parks, and very common in the larger fir plantations. A variety in my possession obtained in November 1894 at 141 A HISTORY OF Rowney Warren has the white of the under parts considerably extended, white feet, and a white line along the upper part of the back. Dr. Sprigge mentions seeing one in the woods at Clophill in 1898, which appeared to him to be quite black, and Mr. A. Covington once had one sent him which had the tail pied black and white. 19. Dormouse. Muscardinus avellanarius, Linn. Bell—Myoxus avellanarius. In an article upon the range of dormice in England and Wales (Zoologist, 1885), Mr. J. F. Woods, who formerly lived at Woburn, states that in 1856 he found several in that parish, also at Great and Bow Brickhill and on the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire. Writing to me in reference to these particulars, he adds that the dormice were taken in Lowe’s Wood, Charle Wood, about half a mile from the shire oak, the county border, and that since then he had also heard of their being in Milton Wood at Milton Bryant. 20. Harvest Mouse. AZus minutus, Pallas. I have not yet met with this species in the county ; neither have I ever been able to trace any of its remains amongst the thou- sands of owls’ pellets that I have examined from various localities. My father neverthe- less mentions that it was not uncommon around his home at Blunham about 1830, and that he has found its nests there. Mr. J. King also assures me that when a resident at Southill about 1870 he found it tolerably common around there, but he never met with it elsewhere. 21. Wood Mouse or Long-tailed Field Mouse. Mus sylvaticus, Linn. Abundant everywhere, and at times a very destructive little animal, especially in the market gardening lands, where it feeds on cucumber and marrow seeds. During last year I was assured by one man that he had trapped over seventy of this species in a few days on a piece of land about an acre in extent, the traps being baited with the mar- row seeds only. 22. House Mouse. AZus musculus, Linn. Very abundant generally. Pied varieties have been occasionally met with. 23. Brown Rat. Aus decumanus, Pallas. Far too common. Two albinos in m possession were caught at Cockayne Hatley in May 1895, and two of the melanistic form were killed at Stotfold in December BEDFORDSHIRE 1896. Others which I have also been enabled to examine were killed—one in the neighbourhood of Luton about 1885, and another near Harlington in 1901. A male and female were killed at Astwick Mills 8 December 1896. One was obtained during the summer of the same year at Kempston, and several specimens have been received by Mr. A. Covington from other localities. 24. Black Rat. dus rattus, Linn. Probably at one time common enough ; the only information we have of its more recent existence is that Davis (History of Luton, 1855) records it then as rare in that neigh- bourhood ; it is not improbable that he may have mistaken the black form of the brown rat (AZus decumanus) for this species. 25. Field Vole. MJicrotus agrestis, Linn. Bell—Arvicola agrestis. Common generally. 26. Bank Vole. Evotomys glareolus, Schreber. Bell—Arvicola glareolus. Fairly abundant. Since this species was first recorded in Bedfordshire (Zoo/ogist, 1895) I have occasionally found it even exceeding the field vole in number. In some owls’ pellets recently examined from Sandy, Brom- ham, Clophill, Sharpenhoe and Rowney Warren, the remains of 155 mice (chiefly MZus sylvaticus), 2 rats, 9 field voles and 10 red bank voles were found, besides 38 finches and 8 insectivorous birds. 27. Water Vole. Microtus amphibius, Linn. Bell—Arvicola amphibius. Common in the immediate vicinity of all our waterways, streams and larger pools. I have sometimes noticed considerable damage to osier beds caused by this vole gnawing and felling the osiers in a similar way to the beaver felling trees, but for what purpose I fail to understand ; no portion of the felled osiers had apparently been used as food. An albino of a dingy-cream colour with pink eyes was shot at Henlow Park 23 March 1899. Several of the melanistic forms have been taken; one from a pond at Clapham Park in 1867 ; also two from near the river ford of that village, and two or more from Biddenham many years previously. 28. Common Hare. Lepus europaeus, Pallas. Bell—Lepus timidus. Not so generally numerous as formerly, depending for its existence on the amount of protection afforded it. A jack hare shot at 142 MAMMALS Ickwell Bury on 28 October 1886 had the fore part of the body pure white, as far as the top of the shoulder (Field). Mr. T. Cane has given me particulars of another that was shot at Dunstable ; it also had the fore parts white, including the shoulders and fore legs, one eye being normal in colour, the other white with a black pupil. One of a uniform pale grey colour was sent in to Mr. A. Covington from Sharnbrook about 1868 ; also 143 another, very similar but patched with white, from Wilshamstead shortly afterwards. 29. Rabbit. Lepus cuniculus, Linn. Common, but varying considerably in numbers in various localities, and on the whole by no means so abundant as in many other counties. On 4 May 1901 I saw two entirely white young ones in company with others on the Sharpenhoe downs. HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE PRE-HISTOR 52° | BBY 50' 20' 10' |e, a ‘The Edinburgh Grographuenl lustaite THE VICTORIA HISTORY OF Tk. hc REMAINS. fivon A ayitors ALcLon REFERENCE Settlements and Camps EO! | 10' ryt | 52° ® Interments — Palzolithic Implements a Or * Miscellaneous Finds, Neolithic implements, coins, &c. Bronze Implements SCALE 4 MILES TO AN INCH oO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 een ! 15’ Oo T.GBartholonew, rHE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND EARLY MAN HE prehistoric remains found in Bedfordshire are numerous and of considerable importance, and it is interesting to note that through the action of Mr. (now Sir) John Evans some of the earliest English discoveries of palzolithic implements were made in this county. Mr. Evans visited a gravel pit at Biddenham near Bed- ford in the expectation of finding paleolithic implements, and although he did not at the time succeed in finding any, the search was vigorously and successfully taken up by the late Mr. Wyatt of Bedford, who as long ago as the early part of 1861 discovered an important series, the chief specimens of which are now in the British Museum. In 1830 a palzolithic implement (fig. 1) was picked up at Dallow farm near Luton by a farmer, who, although ignorant of its real nature, was struck by its odd shape and preserved it among some other curious stones. It came at length into the possession of the writer. It may be added that a large number of paleolithic implements has been found zm | situ at Caddington in the same neighbourhood. As far as Bedfordshire is concerned there is reason to believe that man’s first appearance was made in the early part of the quaternary period, or the pleistocene age, as it is termed by geologists. This was after the deposit of the boulder clays and gravels belonging to the glacial period or periods, and before the deposition of the contorted drift. Paleolithic stone tools have been found near Bedford at Biddenham, at Kempston, Harrowden, Fenlake and Cardington ; at all these places the writer has discovered examples, especially at Kempston, in large numbers. The valley of the Ouzel at Bossington near Leighton Buzzard has also yielded specimens. Eight miles to the east of Bedford, at Tempsford, the Great Ouse is joined by the Ivel; at this place, and at eight miles to the south at Langford and Henlow, implements have been discovered. Palzolithic flakes and remains of the mammoth have been procured at Eaton Socon, three and a half miles to the north of Tempsford, and palzolithic flakes at Flitwick two miles to the south of Ampthill. Near Henlow the Ivel is joined by the Hiz, and at Ickleford, four miles south of Henlow on the border of Hertfordshire, similar discoveries have been made. I 145 19 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Paleolithic flakes and mammalian remains have also been discovered at Round Green and Ramridge End one mile north-east of Luton. Other localities are Houghton Regis one mile north of Dunstable, Stanbridge Ford two miles west of Dunstable, near Sewell and near the source of the Ver at Markyate Street at the extreme south of the county. The more remarkable discoveries are those made by the writer in the brick-earth and contorted drift on the hilltops south of the county, chiefly at and near Caddington, between Dunstable and Luton. The gravel pits at Bedford, in which paleolithic implements and the bones of Pleistocene mammalia occur, rest on Oxford Clay and the Corn- brash, the upper portion of the Lower Oolite. Resting on the Oxford Clay and capping the adjoining hills is the Upper Chalky Boulder Clay. The valley has been excavated through the Boulder Clay and Oxford Clay, and the implement-bearing gravel contains materials derived from these deposits. No paleolithic implements occur in the two clays, and it is obvious that the deposits in the valley are later in age than the deposits on the hills which have been cut through and exposed in section on the hillsides. The valley gravel near Bedford is about 13 feet thick. It consists of subangular flints, yellow, ochreous and brown in colour ; oolitic debris ; pebbles of quartz and sandstone ; new red sandstone conglomerates, and other old rocks derived from the Boulder Clay or other glacial deposits. Its fluviatile character isshown by the numerous shells of land and fresh- water mollusca. Two implements from the Bedford gravels are illustrated in figs. 2 and 3. A third, made from a large natural flake of flint, is shown in fig 4. One side of this implement, shown on the right, is plain, and, with the exception of one or two human touches, it is natural and covered with glacial striz. No strie occur on the portions worked by human 146 EARLY MAN hands ; therefore the implement is of post-glacial age, otherwise the human and non-human work would be equally striated. Excellent examples of Bedford implements with the original crust striated and the worked parts not striated may be seen in the British Museum. Implements of the largest size and greatest beauty have been found in the Bedford gravels. They vary greatly in age ; some of the newer are sharp and lustrous, and white or yellow in colour ; others and older, abraded, dull and brown. Some again are highly finished, others are very rude. It is remarkable that ovate or roundish implements are rare at Bedford, the prevailing type being pointed. In the south of the county, however, pointed implements are rare and ovate common. Bedford implements are commonly full of natural fractures made by the pressure of other stones in the gravel bed, so that they are frequently cracked through whilst still zz stv, and drop in pieces as soon as disturbed. Absolutely perfect examples are therefore not very common, whilst pieces such as butts, points or fragments from the bodies or sides of implements y : Wk \ ’ wt RN y “; RAN \ are quite common in the excavated heaps of gravel in the pits or by the roadsides, 147 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The accompanying illustrations are taken from characteristic imple- ments from the Bedford gravels :-— Fig. 5 shows an implement in an initial state, roughed out but never finished ; the point has been accidentally broken off. Fig. 6 shows an implement spoilt in manufacture and discarded. The blow, indicated by the arrow, has ruined the implement, and a large flake, in place of a small one as shown by the surface at a, has been dis- lodged. The dotted line indicates the form of implement the maker probably had in view. Fig. 7 shows a rude implement, made by flaking an ovoid nodule of flint to a point. It is a tool probably made in haste for some temporary purpose. In fig. 8 is shown an implement made from an outside piece of flint. It is only flaked on one side, the ou side being left almost unworked, 14 EARLY MAN Fig. 9 shows a typical Bedford implement, of ovate form, worked on both sides. Fig. ga shows a chisel or wedge-shaped implement of a somewhat uncommon form. Fig. 10 shows an implement resembling in shape a hafted dagger The stone from which it was made was obviously selected for its convenient natural handle. It was probably used for piercing and cutting. Fig. 11 shows an implement naturally perforated with a round hole at the base. The stone from which it was made was probably selected for this peculiarity. Fic. 11. In fig. 12 is shown a chopper-like implement, the natural crust of the flint being left at the base for convenience of handling. Fig. 13 shows an ovate, much abraded, dull, opaque brown im- plement, probably of the greatest palzolithic antiquity as regards Britain, but as no glacial strie are found on implements of this class in J, Ufo Fic. 13. Bedfordshire they are probably post-glacial. Pointed forms also occur. Implements and flakes of this age were sometimes reflaked or repointed by later races of palzolithic men. Fig. 14 shows an implement apparently suitable for hammering or smashing bones. In fig. 15 are given views of two scrapers, made as usual from flakes. The scraping edges are indicated at aa. The bulb of percussion is on 149 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the plain side, not illustrated, but seen on the edge views at BB. These were probably used for scraping flesh from bones, chiefly perhaps by the older folk who had no teeth equal to the task. Fig. 16 shows a peg-like tool made from a flake, the bulb of per- cussion being on the plain side at a. Many examples of tools of this nature, some more highly finished, have been found. They somewhat resemble the neolithic fabricator or strike-light. A fossil from the chalk named Coscinopora globularis is common in the Bedford gravels. These curious fossils are each about the size of a cherry, white in colour and furnished with a natural perforation. Collections of them have several times been found in company with implements and flakes, and it is possible that paleolithic people used them for personal decoration as beads. Many have been found with the natural orifice enlarged as if for more convenient insertion of a ligament. Examples from Bedford are in the British Museum. Until quite recent times it was customary to speak of paleolithic tools as river-drift implements because they were almost invariably found associated with beds of gravel, sand and clay, which had previously been laid down by our present rivers. ‘The implements nearest a river and on the lower terraces were considered to be the newer, and those on the higher terraces the older. From the first however certain implements found on certain high positions and more or less removed from the present rivers were suspected to be ofa still greater age, and to belong to the river drift of streams which, owing to the then different configuration of the country and a subsequent change in the valleys, did not run in the present river valleys. In some instances ancient afHluents of present rivers, as shown by the contours on maps, must have been dry long prior to neo- lithic times, because neolithic implements and flakes are now spread generally all over the dry surfaces. ‘There is a former affluent of the Lea of this class at No-man’s-land Common near Wheathampstead, Herts, and when the dry banks of this earlier rivulet are excavated paleolithic implements are found. A good paleolithic flake was found by the writer at Dunstable in 1884. This, with one or two minor finds of the same class, and the finding of implements at Dunstable later on, led him to search the hills, 150 EARLY MAN and in 1889 he found at Caddington the first ochreous abraded imple- ment 7” situ. The height was 595 feet above the ordnance datum, and 116 feet above the chalk valley. No river is in the neighbourhood, the nearest water, one and a half miles to the south, being a tiny brook, which becomes further southwards the river Ver, and still further south the Colne. There seems reason to believe that the living places of palzolithic men were not confined to river banks, but that they often extended their place of habitation to inland lakes, ponds and swamps, whether on hills or in valleys. It is however certain that when they lived on what are now the Caddington Hills in south Bedfordshire the present valleys had not been excavated. What are now hilltops were valleys in palzolithic times, surrounded by higher ground with upper chalk and red clay-with- flints. All the implements on the hills, new and old alike, are without exception newer than the Tertiary deposit. The newer men and the older lived on the same swampy ground surrounded by higher lands. The old watercourses no longer exist as such, but they are represented by shallow dry valleys which in their lowest parts still sometimes give rise to temporary drains or brooks. The first implements found by the writer at Caddington belonged to the older, ochreous and slightly abraded type, but it was subsequently found that under the layer of abraded implements was a series of strata of brick-earth, and upon each stratum were palzolithic implements and flakes. These implements were neither abraded nor ochreous. The lowest stratum was in some cases 40 feet below the present surface, as at Folly Pit near Caddington church, where, at this depth, implements rest direct on the chalk and are covered with brick-earth. The sharp-edged implements are the newer, and they are not confined to Caddington but occur in situ in brick-earth in different directions for several miles. In late paleolithic times the neighbourhood of Caddington was extensively peopled. That the people actually lived and made their tools there is proved by the fact that nearly 600 flakes have been replaced on imple- ments or on other flakes. Examples of these restorations are in the British Museum, University Museum, Oxford, and elsewhere. The men who lived on the paleolithic floors, chiefly of brick-earth, at Caddington, represented the latest of the paleolithic races. They were in the same stage of savagery or barbarism as the paleolithic men who lived in caves and under rock shelters. As the Caddington men had no homes of this kind they probably made rude shelters or huts of trees and branches. The tools they used were as a rule beautifully made and regular in shape. The ovate implement with a slightly thickened base prevailed as a type ; pointed tools were rare; and the scraper was well known. The flint for tool making and the pebbles of quartzite for the necessary hammers were close at hand in the Tertiary deposit, in the chalk-with-flints and the red clay- with-flints. A typical ovate example is shown in fig. 17 and a smaller specimen in fig. 18. The latter is now in the collection of Sir John Evans. 151 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE A chisel-ended example is illustrated in fig. 19, and four views of another beautiful example of the same class in fig. 20. In fig. 21 is represented a well-made acutely pointed implement, a rare form in south Bedfordshire, and in fig. 22 is asketch of a very rough specimen from the same deposits with the highly finished examples, showing that rudeness alone is no criterion of age. ‘This specimen was probably made by a beginner, or in some sudden emergency. Tools of this class do not indicate stages of evolution from lower to higher forms ; they are simply failures, make-shifts, attempts on intractable flints, or accidental abortions, made by the men 152 EARLY MAN who were capable of making and did make the finest and most regularly- shaped tools. In the brick-earth deposits scrapers are fairly common. A fine, elaborately worked example is shown in fig. 23 ; one with less work is illustrated in fig. 24. A few finely-worked, small implements and lance-like forms, some only 2 inches in length, have been found. Various forms of implements of erratic shape and some of uncertain use occur. One of these is illustrated in fig. 25. Flints of this class were possibly throw-stones or Fic. 25. missiles ; the one illustrated weighs 64 0z. Several other specimens and some more symmetrical have been found. A core from Caddington is shown in fig. 26 for comparison. At Caddington the surfaces upon which the palzolithic folk lived are at times clearly visible on the sides of excavations, sometimes merely as a line of somewhat different colour from the mass of brick-earth. On a line of this sort have been found several implements without flakes or any other stones. At other times there have been many flakes, with implements finished and unfinished, broken examples, failures, cores, flakes and blocks of selected flints approximating in shape, and suitable for implements, all in the position in which they were left by the implement makers. It was possible to see, by careful observation of the surrounding litter of flakes, the places which the tool makers actually occupied while manufacturing implements. Certain of the flakes had been trodden upon and broken, but I 153 20 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the broken pieces remained in juxtaposition. Before these positions could be seen it was necessary to remove from 10 feet to 40 feet of brick-earth. In fig. 27 is represented one edge and face of a large implement found at Caddington. In fig. 28 the back of this implement is shown, and on the right three conjoined flakes, which were found four years before the implement, in April and August 1890. These three flakes fit on to the back of the implement. Fig. 29 shows, on the left, the appear- ance of the left edge with flakes conjoined to the back and one flake to the front at a. On the right is shown the front of the implement with one flake re- attached at a, and conjoined flakes behind. Fig. 30 is a representa- tion of the back of the implement, as covered with re-united flakes, part of the tool itself being seen at A and s, and on the right, the right edge of the implement with flakes conjoined. With the flakes re-attached the implement weighed 2 1b. 9} oz. Palzolithic implements of apparently the greatest age occur in the 154 c “~ a) A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE surface deposit named contorted drift. They almost invariably lie too deep to be turned up by the plough, so are rarely found on the surface. This fact is of great importance, for there must needs be some doubt as to the age and origin of implements found on the surface. ‘The contorted drift at Caddington has usually the deep red colour and tenacity belonging to red clay-with-flints. Red clay-with-flints occurs m situ in the neigh- bourhood close. by, and it must have been extensively present, to- gether with chalk-with-flints before the contorted drift was deposited. In a disturbed or relaid state both red clay-with-flints and chalk- with- flints are apparently extensively but irregularly deposited over the hills of south Bedfordshire. The contorted drift in its passage over the old land surface of chalk, Tertiary deposit, chalk-with-flints and red clay-with-flints, brick-earth, and ancient gravels, necessarily incor- porated the materials of these deposits into its own substance, and as palzolithic implements, both older and newer, were resting on these deposits it follows that palzolithic implements of all ages are found in it. Such is the case, for a few implements with edges as sharp as knives have been found, together with others, which, from their general rudeness, peculiar colour and mineral condition are obviously very much older. The older palzolithic implements range in style from very rude tools to occasional implements of the highest finish and regularity of form. There is no abrupt line of demarcation between rude and finished forms. The ruder predominate, but every intermediate form occurs. ‘They vary in colour, according to the tint of the contorted drift in which they are found, from dark brown and liver colour to dark and pale red, and yellow. The progress is continuous throughout in workmanship, colour, mineral condition and abrasion. Notwithstanding these facts it is obvious that some of the older tools are very much older than others, but as no tools are glacially striated and no implements occur in the local and sometimes adjoining glacial deposits it seems desirable, with our present knowledge, to consider the oldest of the old tools as post-glacial in age. Every known form of palzolithic implement occurs amongst these older tools; pointed, ovate, chisel-edged, fabricator-like tools, missile-like nodules, scrapers, cores, flakes and all the erratic forms common to implement-bearing gravels. The majority of the older tools are a little abraded, in a few the abrasion is considerable. Amongst these remains are numerous pieces of tabular flint with edges sometimes artificially but more often naturally chipped or bruised. The chipped edges of these flints vary in colour in exactly the same manner as the chippings upon the finished implements. The chipping therefore may be classed as older or newer, whether artificial or natural, and it is evident that it belongs to the latest paleolithic period. In naturally broken flints it commonly happens that one part has a weak and thin edge. This thin edge is especially liable to become broken in a way that suggests a hollow scraper, but such natural stones must not be confounded with true hollow scrapers, which are amongst the latest, highly specialized stone tools. 156 EARLY MAN A skilfully made ochreous ovate and slightly abraded implement is illustrated in fig. 31. It is now in the collection of Sir John Evans. A more finished ochreous example, now in the British Museum, is shown in fig. 32. Specimens still ruder are frequent in the contorted drift. The same deposit at Caddington produced the original of fig. 33, an instrument of the highest possible finish. It is nearly perfect in shape, and its cutting edges are designedly incurved. Some of the flakes that were detached in its manufacture were minute and as thin as writing "Fic. 32. Fic. 33. paper. It is slightly abraded and chocolate-brown in colour. From the same deposit and close by in the same pit at Caddington an implement of the rudest class has been found, in precisely the same mineral con- dition, of precisely the same colour and abraded to precisely the same extent. The original of fig. 34, a pointed implement probably made in haste, by a few well directed blows, was also found in the same deposit as the last, and at the same place. The elaborate inplement was not, during the stay of primeval man in what is now Bedfordshire, evolved from the rude forms. Both were made at the same time, by men of the same race, and many examples by the same man. The original of fig. 33 seems to have been made with more care than was actually necessary for any work that a savage might have ever wished to execute. The rude tools had as much work ex- 157 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE pended upon them as was necessary. The man who made the original of fig. 34 could have made the original of fig. 33 had he felt so disposed. The rude specimen doubtlessly possesses primitive characters, but the man who made it was not more primitive than the man who made the elab- orately worked implement. An example of a scraper is illustrated in fig. 35; and a smaller, finer, and more elaborate specimen in fig. 36. Both these have a well marked bulb of percussion on the plain side. A rude and remarkable palzolithic implement, roughly hewn from a massive bulbed flake of Hertfordshire conglo- merate, is illustrated in fig. 37. It is faintly ochreous and lustrous, and very different in appearance as regards colour from newly broken conglomerate. It was found in an excavation of contorted drift on Caddington Common. It appears to be an attempt at an implement of the well known hump-backed form, rather {ZA a Z oe Z Fic. 37. than a finished tool, and perhaps owing to the highly intractable nature of the stone it was left in a roughly hewn state. A flake of Hertfordshire conglomerate, found in a field near by, is illustrated in fig. 38, and two other paleolithic flakes of the same material have been procured from Caddington.’ THE NEOLITHIC AGE There appears to have been a gap of unknown centuries between the departure of palzolithic man from Britain and the arrival of his Iberian, non-Aryan, neolithic successor. The lapse of time was sufh- ciently long to allow of the covering up of such of man’s implements 1 All the examples of palzolithic implements illustrated in this article, with the exception of one or two given to Sir John Evans, have been presented to the British Museum. 158 EARLY MAN as were left in limestone caves, by thick coatings of stalagmite, and for a considerable encroachment of the sea owing to the gradual depression of the land between Britain, France, Germany, Denmark and Scandi- navia. The paleolithic and neolithic ages were probably continuous in southern Europe, northern Africa and in Asia; the local break in Britain being caused by the depression of the land and its isolation from the continent of Europe. The general contour of the country and its river drainage was much the same in neolithic times as now. Neolithic man probably arrived in Britain across the Straits of Dover by means of rude canoes formed of tree trunks hollowed out by fire, or on rafts, but the actual date of his arrival is unknown. He came long before the introduction of bronze. Sir John Evans states that cutting tools of stone began to be superseded in this country 500 or 600 years B.c.. He probably migrated to this country from the east or south-east, from lands that were the native homes of some of the quadrupeds he brought with him, viz. from the central plateau of Asia. In this position domestic animals had been for long ages under the dominion of man. This conclusion as to the place from which neolithic man started is confirmed by the seeds he brought with him and planted, such as wheat, barley, culinary peas, etc. The land at the beginning of the neolithic period consisted of thick virgin forest, bush and bog ; there were probably few men and consequently no roads or trackways. The climate was wet, more hot in summer and more cold in winter than now. The exposed heights, such as the chalk hills of Bedfordshire, were probably covered with bush. The lowlands were forest and swamp. ‘The neolithic folk in course of time occupied all parts of Great Britain. They were Iberians, a long-headed race which dominated northern and western Spain and gave the ancient name of Iberia to what is now Spain and Portugal. They were the Silures of Tacitus, the men who erected cromlechs, made avenues or alignments of unhewn stones, threw up long tumuli or barrows, and in places where large stones occurred constructed chambered tumuli and erected circles of large stones. There is what appears to be a remarkable long barrow on Dunstable Downs near Pascombe Pit, but its age must remain uncertain till it has been opened and the contents examined. On the northern base of Dun- stable Downs and on the northern side of the Icknield Way a consider- able number of interments are reported to have been disturbed in 1784. These, at the time, were considered to be comparatively modern, and to represent the people of Dunstable who had died of the plague in 1603 and 1625. The remains of a long barrow standing east and west still exist in a mutilated state in Union Street, Dunstable. Fifty years ago this barrow was very distinct and was called Mill-bank, from its former use as a foundation for a windmill. Two hundred yards to the east was 1 Sir John Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, ed. 2, p. 147. 159 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE a large round barrow, and an ancient trackway could be traced from between these barrows to the chief entrance of the British camp named Maiden Bower. Flint flakes are abundant round the sites of both barrows. The people of the later stone and bronze ages lived chiefly in places where water was conveniently at hand, in camps protected by ramparts, ditches and palisades. They had look-out huts on all the high positions and in places bordering their trackways. ‘Their houses were huts or wigwams of sticks and skins. The chief neolithic weapons and tools were the axe and adze, often partly or wholly ground, the pick, lance, dagger, arrow, sling-stone, knife and scraper. There were also many minor tools, some of unknown use. These relics are generally distributed over Bedfordshire, being more commonly found in valleys, on plains, and near rivers and water- courses than on the hills. The newer stone implements are often called ‘surface implements,’ because they are commonly found on the surface of the ground. They are best seen in harrowed fields after showers of rain. They are con- stantly turned up by the plough, and are not uncommon on heaps of flints in fields, by the roadside and in cart ruts. They are often found in and near ancient camps, by water-courses, in sheltered places at hill bottoms, and in tumuli. It will be convenient to illustrate the neolithic and later surface weapons and tools of Bedfordshire at this place. Some examples are many years older than others, but none are so old as the palzolithic age. These implements are spread irregularly all over Bedfordshire. Strange as it may appear, centuries of field cultivation have made but little difference in the nature of their positions. ‘The interior of the camp called Maiden Bower near Dunstable contains, or has contained, many stone implements and flint flakes. For a certain number of yards outside the camp the same abundance prevails, but beyond a given cir- cuit both implements and flakes are rare. The camp and the adjoining fields have been under cultivation for centuries, yet the old average of worked and unworked stones still holds good. Under the turf on the top of the earthen bank which surrounds this camp, a group of several stone mullers was found, and at another time a collection of sling or throw- stones on the very spot where they were made and laid down for use. The same is true of the camp called Waulud’s Bank near Leagrave, Luton. A little more than a mile south of Dunstable there is a place named on the ordnance maps Mount Pleasant, a large, high, wind-swept, almost treeless hill. Immediately to the south of this place surface implements and flakes have been found in abundance, but always within a given circuit ; outside this region even flakes are rare. Mount Pleasant in ancient British times must have been a living place and a place of manu- facture of stone tools. A similar prolific place occurs at half a mile south- west of Dunstable, just east of the place named ‘California’ on the 160 EARLY MAN ordnance maps. Other places of the same sort occur between the base of Dunstable Downs and the Icknield Way. The celt, so named from its chisel-like cutting edge, is one of the best known of neolithic implements. It occurs in an unground, partly ground, or wholly ground state, and was used mounted in a handle or unmounted. One out of several known methods of mounting a celt is illustrated in fig. 39, where a wholly polished specimen is shown mounted as an axe. When the cutting edge is mounted in a horizontal position, the stone forms an adze. A common, wholly chipped form of celt from Mount Pleasant near Dunstable is illustrated in fig. 40. An unfinished specimen from Dunstable Downs is illustrated in fig. 41, where the left edge is finished and the right remains in a perfectly untouched state. . An almost wholly polished specimen from Dunstable is shown in fig. 42. : *A wholly polished example, found on a heap of stones in a field at Bedford, is illustrated in fig. 43. This specimen both from its peculiar form and material is evidently of Irish origin. It is made of dolerite and is now in the collection of Sir John Evans. A fine example of a partially ground celt, 8 inches long, has been I 161 21 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE found not far from Billington near Leighton Buzzard; another example, shorter, thicker and heavier, was found at Soulbury near the same place. Small celt-like implements, especially when one side is left flat, are commonly termed chisels or gouges. A specimen from Waulud’s Bank, Luton, is illustrated in fig. 44. Large attenuated examples have been described as picks, Fic. 45. Celts from Dunstable and Waulud’s Bank, Luton, Kempston and Pavenham are illustrated and described by Sir John Evans. Of perforated hammers but few Bedfordshire examples are recorded. A hammer made from a perforated quartzite pebble was found at Barton- in-the-Clay in 1903, and near by was found a small drilled bead-like pebble of translucent quartz. Hammer-stones unperforated tor handles, and sometimes in the form of pebbles, occasionally occur, but it is not easy to detect the marks of wear in every case. An example of a quartzite hammer-stone with both ends worn off by hammering, from Waulud’s Bank, Luton, is illustrated in fig. 45. 162 EARLY MAN Examples of an elongate form of hammer-stone made of flint are much more easily found, and these are of fairly frequent occurrence. A specimen from Caddington, abraded at both ends, is shown in fig. 46. Fic. 46. This is illustrated in a mounted state fixed in a stem of bent sallow and tied with leather thongs. Such an instrument could be used not only as a hammer but also as a weapon. Spherical hammer-stones, mullers, or pounders are frequent. These are usually abraded all over. They were probably used for bruising corn, breaking bones, and pounding pieces of flint into small fragments for use in clay for pottery. The example illustrated in fig. 47 is from the foot of Dunstable Downs. Such implements are common in camps in com- pany with flakes. They have been found close to Maiden Bower. One specimen in the writer’s collection was found close to the right hand of a contracted skeleton in a ruined tumulus on Dunstable Downs (see fig. 59). A class of tool most difficult to find is the polishing stone. These are pebbles of flint or quartzite, with one end rubbed flat by the final polishing of flint celts. A beautiful example from Maiden Bower, Dun- stable, is illustrated in fig. 48. It came from a hole into which broken pots, broken bones and flint flakes had been thrown in prehistoric times ; the upper abraded part is black, lustrous and finely striated. Another of somewhat larger size was also found at Maiden Bower. A larger example of quartzite from Waulud’s Bank, Luton, is illustrated in fig. 49. Sling-stones or throw-stones are frequent in Bedfordshire, especially in or near camps. They are remarkably uniform in size and make. They are about the size of a large walnut and usually chipped all over to a circular or ovoid form. They were probably used with a wooden or leathern sling, and perhaps often thrown with the hand. An example, 163 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE somewhat larger in size than usual, from Waulud’s Bank, Luton, is illus- trated in fig. 50. One is often asked why stones of this class were made when pebbles and broken flints are so common in the fields, but the fact is there are very few pebbles or broken flints of suitable shapes and sizes for slinging or throwing. The natural stones are too large or too small, too flat, too angular or too long; one has only to look over a stony field for suitable natural sling-stones to find that none are to be found. The evidence at Maiden Bower shows that these stones were kept in heaps on the rampart, ready for use. Slingers when on a slinging expedition probably carried a collection in a bag suspended at the waist. Simple flint flakes and the cores from which they have been struck are common in Bedfordshire. Many of the small implements now to be mentioned are made from flakes slightly trimmed. Some- times long flakes occur with one or both edges artificially serrated ; these are considered to be saws. Scrapers are amongst the commonest tools met with in neolithic positions; they are generally horseshoe-shaped, plain on one side and worked on the other. They are usually a little larger than a penny and about 2 inch in thickness; the upper edge was the part used = eas Fic. 51. for scraping. In the accompanying illustration, fig. 51, the two lower scrapers are from Dunstable Downs ; the oblong example a is larger and more angular than usual; the specimen B is typical; the smaller example c is under the average size. Flakes are sometimes neatly chipped into the form of borers, awls or drills, as illustrated in the three examples from Leagrave near Luton, fig. 52. These finely pointed little tools were probably used for boring holes in skins, bone needles, etc. Common in neolithic positions are little tools called knives or 164 EARLY MAN trimmed flakes. They vary greatly in shape, but are always made from thin flakes, with the edges trimmed to a somewhat even cutting edge. They are often oval, sometimes resembling lanceheads, but sometimes they are circular. Two common forms are illustrated in UWGus Gy ea ii ye = je 70 Ml ES ate at x X\ Ca RSS fig. 53. The one marked a is from Dunstable, and B is from Kempston, Bedford. Amongst the smaller antiquities in stone none are more beautiful than the spear-, lance-, javelin- and arrow-heads. As a rule these are all made from very thin flakes. As the finer articles are extremely delicate, and as Bedfordshire is a thoroughly agricultural county, it follows that many of the thinner and more highly finished examples are found in a broken state. Many javelin- and arrow-heads must have been lost by the 165 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE makers, owing to their being thrown and shot about in all directions. They are often found as isolated examples long distances from camps. The larger examples are termed spear-, lance- or javelin-heads; three are illustrated in fig. 54; those marked a and B are from Maiden Bower, Dunstable ; c is from Waulud’s Bank, Luton. It is probable that all the recognized forms of arrow-head occur in Bedfordshire. In fig. 55 four tanged examples are illustrated from Leagrave and Dunstable Downs. Two sub-triangular specimens are shown in fig. 56; a is from Cad- dington, B from Leagrave, Luton. Three examples of the leaf-shaped class are illustrated in fig. 57, all from Maiden Bower, Dunstable. A bracer or wrist-guard of stone, made for the protection of the arm of the bowman against the blow of the string in shooting, has been found at Sandy, and is now in the collection of Sir John Evans. Fabricators and flaking tools are the last to be mentioned. They may have been used as punches, flakers or rubbers, and in some instances perhaps as strike-lights. Whatever these tools may have been designed for they are common in Bedfordshire, especially in camps. Sometimes they are very long, at other times shorter ; some- times the ends are comparatively sharp, at other times they are very blunt and abraded. Three examples are illustrated in fig. 58 ; the first is from Maiden Bower, Dunstable, with ends very much abraded as if from constant striking on a pebble or block of iron pyrites for the production of fire; the next is from Dunstable Downs, and is comparatively sharp although attenuated. Other much more elongated examples occur. The third is from Mount Pleasant, Kensworth, and is unusually stumpy in form, but undoubtedly of the flaking or fabricating class. 166 5. 2: 3 7 PC eae ey eS = TART Fic. 5 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE THE BRONZE AGE The later Celtic Aryans or Celtz were a tall race, the males averaging in height 5 ft. 84 in., and the women were also tall. The skulls of the Celta were broad or round, as seen from above, with strongly developed brow ridges and powerful jaws. Their houses were bee-hive huts, of stone where procurable ; else- where, as in Bedfordshire, the houses were of hewn planks and clay, roofed with straw or fern. Pottery was made, but the potter's wheel was unknown. Dyers used dyes of various colours. The trades of the bronze- smith and bronze-founder were introduced. The husbandmen used sickles of bronze. A vast number of bronze articles were imported, and others were made in southern Britain where civilization was higher than in the north and the midlands. The people of the bronze age usually disposed of their dead by burning, but as bronze age customs progressed very slowly it is not un- common to find evidences of cremation and inhumation in one and the same round tumulus. Sometimes a central and older interment of a tumu- lus may represent inhumation, and subsequent interments round the circum- ference represent cremation, or cremations and inhumations may occur side by side round the circumference. In a cremation burial the small pieces of burnt bone were carefully collected and placed in a cinerary urn, which was then buried in the tumulus. In several instances on Dunstable Downs mere holes have been dug in the chalk near the circumference of the 168 EARLY MAN tumuli, and into them the pieces of burnt bone have been placed without urns and then covered with earth. The accompanying illustration, fig. 59, represents a contracted inter- ment in the circumference of a large round tumulus examined by the writer, which once existed on Dunstable Downs. The tumulus has now been levelled for agricultural purposes. Its position was one third of a mile south-east of the ‘ Five Knolls’ on Dunstable Downs, in the field on the east side of the road. The chief skeleton represents a woman, one of the bronze age dolichocephali, 4 ft. 11§ in. in height and from eighteen to twenty-five years of age ; the child clasped by the mother was about five years of age. Near the head of the woman were two broken pots, near the right hand a stone muller and a white pebble; else- where in the grave were two other mullers, two scrapers and two very rudely chipped celts. About 200 fossil Echini were found surrounding the skeleton as illustrated. ‘The owner of the land, Mr. F. T. Fossey, found an arrow-head in the excavated material but lost it again. Near by, in the same tumulus, the remains of a cremation were found buried in a small hole excavated in the chalk. Another tumulus, a little to the south of this, contained in its circumference the skeleton of a crouching boy about fourteen years of age; between the hands was a nodule of iron pyrites. Very few finds of bronze implements have been recorded from Bedfordshire, and the county is unrepresented in the bronze age collection of the British Museum. This is not because bronze antiquities have not been found in the county, but because they have not been preserved, and when found by field workmen have been lost again, or sold for old metal. The late Mr. Joseph Cooke, the former owner of Maiden Bower, the camp near Dunstable, once told the writer that when he was a boy his father had a quantity of bronze weapons in one of his barns at Sewell, but none are there now, and Mr. Cooke did not know what had become of them. There can be no doubt that the people of the bronze age were spread over the whole county, and further investigations may bring many remains of this age to light. Sir John Evans’ records the finding of two bronze spear-heads, 7? inches and 6 inches, near Toddington, and about sixty socketed celts at Wymington.” A socketed celt has been found at Toddington.® In fig. 60 is shown a piece of antler, from which a number of long narrow pieces have been sawn or cut out, as if for the manufacture of rude pins. In fig. 61 a bone is shown with the surface cut and end pointed with a knife to form a long bone peg. In fig. 62 two views of a bone are given, showing numerous axe marks which have been delivered by a polished stone or bronze celt. These 1 Ancient Bronze Implements, p. 321. 2 Op. cit. p. 113. 3 Man, the Primeval Savage, p. 316, fig. 230. I 169 22 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE objects are from Maiden Bower, including the one illustrated at a in fig. 63, part of the humerus of Bos primigenius broken for the extraction of the marrow for food. This is one of the rarest of bronze age animals ; part of a similar bone of the Celtic ox, B. longifrons, is shown at B to illustrate the difference in size of the two animals. These bones were found with many hundreds of others in a bronze age excavation in the chalk on the west side of Maiden Bower. Amongst the bones were two human teeth, a lower human jaw with teeth much worn, four pieces of a human skull, and a small piece of one of the long bones of a human leg. THE LATE CELTIC OR IRON AGE There is no definite separating line between the ages of the later stone, bronze and iron implements. Stone implements continued to be exten- sively made and used during the whole of the bronze age and during the age in which iron was known, and its use was continued during the Roman and part of the post-Roman times. In the form of ‘ flint and steel’ for tinder boxes and in gun flints the last feeble remnants of the stone age in Britain have lasted till modern times. Sir John Evans states that the bronze age practically ceased for cutting instruments in the third or fourth century B.c. and that in the southern parts of Britain iron was known in the fourth or fifth century B.c. Prehistoric iron weapons and tools are rarely found in Britain, owing to the rapid destruction of the metal in the soil, and the writer has no record of the finding of any in Bedfordshire. In the iron age be- tween 200 B.c. and 100 B.c. the first British coins appeared, many of which have been found in Bedfordshire. Two of the most important late Celtic antiquities found in this county are in the form of vases fashioned on the lathe in Kimmeridge shale. They were discovered in a sepulchral deposit at Warden,’ or Old Warden, and are now preserved in the Archzological Museum at Cam- bridge. As will be seen from the accompanying illustration of one of the pair (fig. 64), they are of elongated and remarkably elegant form, each being made in two separate pieces and about 14 inches high. No less than ten cordons are turned round the body of the vases. The bases are deeply moulded, and the necks are short but highly finished. The resemblance of these vases, in form although not in material, to some of the late Celtic pottery found at Aylesford, Kent, is remarkable, and has been pointed out by Dr. A. J. Evans, V.P.S.A. The traces of pre-historic huts are common in south Bedfordshire ; there is a large group on Blows Downs near Messrs. Forders’ lime works, Dunstable, with isolated examples distant from the group ; there are several isolated huts on Dunstable Downs, an extensive group on Tottern- hoe Hill, and many on the downs, on the east side of Valence-end farm, two and a half miles south-west of Dunstable ; others are on the Warden 1 Arche@ologia, \ii. 352. 170 at 4 BY ney Fic. 61. Fic. 63. SECTION OF BAND Fic. 64. 171 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Hills and on Gully Hill, Luton. Some occur in old pastures in the valleys, where the surface has never possibly been disturbed since Roman times. One such pasture with huts occurs in the second field on the west of Totternhoe church. The hut remains are often most difficult to see, and when they occur in flat pastures no eyes but those which are highly trained and experienced can detect the sites. Even on grassy hillsides these sites are very easily overlooked ; they are best seen in sunshine either early in the morning or late in the evening. Even the pathways used by the pre- historic inhabitants can under these conditions sometimes be made out. It is impossible to tell the age of a prehistoric hut without explor- ation. Externally it is a slight depression in the soil, about 12 feet in diameter. When on a hillside a slight drain-like depression in the direction of the bottom of the hill may sometimes be seen. This cutting was made by the hut dwellers for carrying away water in times of sudden flooding of the floor during heavy rain-storms, although provision was also often made against too much wet by a circular cutting round the hut. Several prehistoric huts in south Bedfordshire have been excavated. They were all of Celtic, iron age or Romano-British period. The original excavation of each was about 4 feet. When the floor was reached sometimes nothing was found. On one hut floor, near Messrs. Forders’ works on Blows Downs, there was a flint scraper, a fragment of a British pot, a metatarsal bone of a horse and a number of flint flakes. On the floor of an adjoining hut an extended human skeleton was found. The original owner of the bones was a little over 5 ft. ro in. high. The skull and chief part of the bones were unfortunately put into the lime kilns with chalk for lime. On this hut floor were seven flint flakes, part of a British pot and a block of iron pyrites. A hut, in the pasture already mentioned, on the west side of Tottern- hoe church, was uncovered by the late vicar, the Rev. S. A. Woolward, and a friend in 1899. On the floor of this hut were parts of two Roman . mill-stones or querns, seven flint flakes, two spindle-whorls, two sharpen- ing stones or hones, pieces of stag’s antler, three pieces of Roman pots and a piece of a thick Roman tile with the impression of the foot of a large dog. Outside the hut was a collection of thousands of shells of the common garden snail, He/x aspersa. These were used for pounding up and mixing with clay for Romano-British pots, as was shown by the pottery found close by. Sometimes there is no indication whatever above ground that a hut floor exists beneath. Such a floor was accidentally found at Buncer’s farm, Caddington, in 1895. A small shallow hole had been dug in this field on its southern boundary. On looking into this hole a thin hori- zontal line of flint flakes was seen a foot below the surface. Altogether 1,142 flint flakes were exposed on a restricted level floor of earth, which was perhaps one half of the original number, as many flints had been lost in the digging of the test hole, some slipped into an adjoining pool of water, and others were taken to fill in the ruts of a road. In addition to the flakes there were two celts, four scrapers, one arrow-head, several 172 EARLY MAN hammer-stones and waste pieces, several bones, a horse’s tooth, several pieces of Roman pottery and two corroded Roman coins. Many of the flakes were ultimately replaced on each other or on to the blocks from which they were originally struck. The position was the flint-working place of a Romano-Briton. ANCIENT BRITISH COINS Many ancient British coins in gold, silver, copper, brass and tin have been found in Bedfordshire,’ though it is difficult to say how many, if any, were struck within the county boundaries. Some of the inscrip- tions show that the coins were produced at Verulam. Only the unin- scribed coins can be included as possibly of prehistoric date. It was after the invasion of Julius Cesar that British coins bore inscriptions, so that inscribed British coins really overlap Roman history. Leagrave near Luton is a famous position for both uninscribed and inscribed British coins, but the chief place, though invariably given as Leagrave, is really Limbury, one and a half miles north-east of Leagrave. The coins are found on the east side of the Icknield Way south-east of the Bramingham road, half a mile north of Limbury on the top of a hilly field called ‘ Gooseberry-bush Hill’ or ‘ Muswell Hill,’ just north of a footpath and within the very small 400-feet contour marked on the 6-inch ordnance map, Bedfordshire, sheet xxx. N.E. UNINSCRIBED Leagrave, gold ; Shefford, gold ; Sandy, gold ; Leighton Buzzard, gold ; Girtford, gold, tin ; Stondon, copper ; Dunstable, copper, brass. INSCRIBED GOLD TASCIO RICON = Tascovian, Tasciovanus, whose capital was Verulam, father of Cuno- belinus B.c. 30-a.D. 5. Leagrave, Dunstable, Biggleswade. ADDEDOMAROS = perhaps to a prince of the Eceni. Leagrave. CVN =Cunobelinus, died a little before a.p. 43. Potton. CAMV ov.—CVN rev.=Camulodunum (Colchester)—Cunobelinus. Potton, Stondon, Shefford. SILVER TASC = Tasciovanus. Biggleswade. COPPER AND BRASS VERLAMIO = Verulam. Sandy. VER 55 Sandy, Arlesey. VIR - Upper Stondon, Arlesey. VIIR $5 Langford. TASC. Biggleswade. CVNOBELINVS REX o6v.—TASCIOVANVS rev. Arlesey, Sandy, Langford. CVNO obv.—TASCIO rev. Biggleswade. CVNOBELINI of/v.—TASCIO rev. Biggleswade. CVNOB obv.—TASCIOVANTIS rev. Clifton, Sandy. RVFI (?) = Rufinus, a possible son of Tasciovanus. Biggleswade. 1 Sir John Evans, Coins of the Ancient Britons, and supplement to that work, E. Latchmore (Cam- bridge Antig. Soc. May 1890). 173 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE TopocrapPuicaL List or Prenisroric ANTIQUITIES IN BEDFORDSHIRE’ Ar.eszyY.— British coins [Evans C., 546, 547]. BaRTON-IN-THE-CLay.—Neolithic quartzite hammer and drilled pebble. Beprorp.—Palzolithic implements [Evans S., 530, 645]. Neolithic hammer-stone [Evans S., 245]. British coin [Evans C., 315]. BippENHAM.—Palzolithic implements [Evans S., 531-3, 680 ; Arch. xxxix. 69]. Biccieswape.—Palzolithic implements [Evans S., 538]. British coins [Evans C., 79, 118, 119, 218, 237, 255, 258, 263, 271, 299, 326, 328, 329, 332; 333, 352s 537, 569). Cappincton.—British hut floors found at Buncer’s farm. Numerous palzolithic imple- ments [/V.G.8. ; Evans 8., 598-600]. CarpDINGTon.—Palzolithic implements [Evans S., 531]. DunsraBtz.—Numerous neolithic implements and prehistoric camp at Maiden Bower [Evans S., 69, 281, 301, 310, 334, 374, 376, 379, 415]. Numerous British hut- circles in the Dunstable districts [W.G.S. 323-5]. Dunsraste Downs.—Neolithic implements and interments [Evaas S., 72]. British coins [Evans C., 541]. Fiirron, Sitsoz.—Coin of Cunobelinus [Evans C., 560]. Hentow.—Palzolithic implements [Evans S., 536]. British coins [Evans C., 569]. Houcuron Recis.—Part of palzolithic implement [Evans S., 578 ; W.G.S., 91]. Kempston.—Neolithic and palzolithic implements [Evans S., 105, 125, 340, 353, 531, 535; W.G.S., 117, 243]. British coins [Evans C., 558]. Leicuton Buzzarp.—Long neolithic celt [Evans C., 91]. British coins [Evans C., 50]. Luron.—Neolithic implement, a thin perforated stone [Evaus S., 229]. Several neolithic hut-floors in the Luton district [W.G.8., 323-5]. Datrow Farm.—Paleolithic implement, found in 1830 [Evans S., 598]. Litty Hoo.—British coins [Evans C., 123]. LeaGravE.—Paleolithic implement [Evans S., 598; W.G.S., 90]. British coins [Evans C., 435, 539 577] Wautup’s Bank.—Neolithic camp and implements [Evans S., 68]. PavenHaM.—Ground neolithic celt, found in Miller’s Bog LEvans S., 101]. Porron.—British coins [Evans C., 300, 435, 559]. SaNnpy.—Stone wrist guard, or bracer (neolithic ?) [Evans S., 427]. British coins [Evans C., 229, 309, 329, 435, 439 449, 475, 485, 568, 571]. SHEFFoRD.—British coins [Evans C., 447, 568 Sursoz.—See Fiirron. Sronpon, Uprer.—British coin [Evans C., 261]. ToppIncTon.—T wo leaf-shaped bronze spear-heads, with rivet-holes through the sockets [Evans B., 320; W.G.S., 316]. TotrreRNHoE.—Neolithic bone [¥.G.8.] Waroen (or Otp WarDEN).—Vases of Kimmeridge shale of late Celtic period [4rcb. lii. 352]. Woorron.—British coins [Evans C., 63]. Wymincton.—Hoard of about sixty bronze celts ; specimens are in the cabinet of Sir John Evans, K.C.B. [Evans B., 113, 466]. 1 The following abbreviations have been adopted :— Evans B.=The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain, by John Evans, F.S.A. (1881). Evans C.=The Coins of the Ancient Britons (1864) and Supplement (1890) by John Evans, F.S.A. Evans 8.=The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain, ed. 2, by Sir John Evans (1897). W.G.S.= Man, the Primeval Savage, by W. G. Smith (1894). 174 HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ANGLO-SAXQ Tho Edinbungh Geographical Institute THE VICTORIA HISTORY OF Ti, ‘ion REMAINS. : : = f era . Gi 4 ha a oe 5 A ; 4 le yHo, i nary Ho. fe pe i \ he Bury Z a j Sir : Low 3) mn (Oc ree ; a Fee K ta = D : ie ty x Codi J matey fom De = rm 1 = 1B ® ver ‘egal Ws / ZO’ Tiree, Mga roo 10' Miz} mi AN Sy a ig Zp ioe ave U Myon, ns hf. 22 f 5 i Bay ee MN Hip od ° ‘e S ae ippidie = B; ston. re ed { , Owles S We w de We : y Pe : ese E < ip eB - Gilat me i bs eects FE; evels Wd empal ‘s ny 73 We h Crips Woods. ZF REFERENCE 50) @ Interments "Thei « Miscellaneous Finds, Coins, etc SCALE 4 MILES TO AN INCH Oo 1 2 a + 5 6 J.G Bartholomew. ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS F the centuries immediately succeeding the Roman withdrawal from Britain there is little to be learnt from history, and so far archeology has afforded no clear knowledge of the period, though such excavations as those conducted by the late General Pitt-Rivers in Wiltshire and Dorset have done something to lift the veil. On the chalk range of the Chilterns, which form the southern boundary of Bedfordshire, only a few faint traces of early Anglo-Saxon settlements have as yet been noticed. Some years ago a considerable number of human skeletons were found in extended positions on the Limbury side of Waulud’s Bank, an earthwork near Dunstable. A quantity of broken pottery that may have been Anglo-Saxon was found at the same time, but it is impossible now to decide on the date of the interments or the nationality of the interred. In this part of the country the new- comers seem to have preferred the plains and river-valleys. Groups of interments and sometimes large cemeteries mark the sites chosen by the Teutonic tribes when they first came to settle in this island, and it was not till the wide acceptance of Christianity, perhaps in the first half of the eighth century, that consecrated ground in the neighbourhood of churches was set apart for burials, and the haphazard selection of sites for this purpose in the open country prohibited by the Church. As a rule therefore interments, that from their contents or surroundings may be assigned to a pagan population, date from the obscure period between the Roman withdrawal and the establishment of Christianity in the various petty kingdoms in Britain; and it is to the early practice of burying with the dead their weapons, ornaments and utensils that is due our knowledge, scanty as it is, of the rise and growth of the various settlements. In Bedfordshire the alluvial soil in the valleys of the Ouse and its tributaries, the Ivel and the Ousel, certainly attracted many of the early comers; and, apart from considerations of water supply, facilities for agriculture no doubt constituted the main inducement. As will presently be seen, discoveries of this kind in the county are few and scattered, so that it is impossible to distinguish with any degree of certainty any local groups ; but it should be noticed that while to the north of the county- town only one interment is recorded, south of the Ouse a link between most of the sites as yet determined may perhaps be found in the road- 17§ A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE system already existing at that date. Thus Leighton Buzzard and Tod- dington lie six miles apart on either side of the great Roman highway to Chester ; and Dunstable is at the point of junction between that and the still earlier Icknield Way, which probably led the advance bands of im- migrants into what is to-day the shire of Bedford. Fifty miles divide Dunstable and Newmarket ; and the British road which runs between them, sometimes flanked by the parallel Ashwell Street, seems to explain discoveries of characteristic West Saxon remains in its vicinity. Whether the defensive earthworks across Newmarket Heath were erected to stop such an advance may be doubted, but that and other parallel embank- ments are evidently directed against an enemy on the west, and no Saxon (as distinguished from Anglian) remains have been as yet discovered to the east of those lines. A summary description of the few and mostly unimportant dis- coveries in the county is necessary before any closer connection between them can be established ; and to convey some idea of the remains that probably await discovery within the county it will be advisable to start with a remarkable cemetery from which an extensive series of relics is exhibited in the British Museum. On the western boundary of the town of Bedford is the straggling village of Kempston; and the road to Marston and Woburn, which branches off about two miles west of St. Mary’s church, skirts a field that has long been dug for gravel. During the year 1863 the excava- tions in this field laid bare a certain number of human remains, and further exploration revealed a cemetery of Anglo-Saxon date. A de- tailed description’ of the graves was submitted to the Bedfordshire Architectural and Archeological Society in the following year by Rev. S. Edward Fitch, M.D., who had watched the excavations and illustrated about forty of the antiquities discovered in five coloured plates.” His comments on the cemetery were summarized by Mr. Roach Smith, who also published the notes of Mr. James Wyatt, a geologist whose attention was drawn to the burials while engaged on a geological examination of the gravel. The road formed approximately the northern limit of the cemetery, though a few interments were found beyond it; and the large number of burials it contained were found to vary in size, depth and position, some being not more than 18 inches below the surface, others at a depth of nearly 5 feet. There was no attempt at a universal orientation, as skeletons were discovered lying at all angles with one another, and directed to almost every point of the compass. The fact that many skeletons of men, women and children were found entirely undisturbed shows that this was a common burial ground, and not the site of a battle where the fallen had been hastily interred. Various modes of burials were noticed ; some of the graves contained skeletons laid at full 1 Rep. Assoc. Archit. Soc. 1864, p. 269. 2 These and the journal of discoveries are reproduced in Roach Smith’s Col/. Antig. vi. 201 (see also p. 166). 176 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS length face upwards, while many cinerary urns of pottery containing the ashes of the dead were also recovered whole, all lying near the surface and sometimes arranged in straight lines. Fragments of other urns could not be pieced together, and Mr. Fitch concluded that many cremated burials had been disturbed by Saxons or others who opened the ground to deposit, whether in an urn or the bare earth, the dead of a later gener- ation. He was of opinion that urn-burial was the more ancient rite practised in this cemetery, but that at a later date the burial of the unburnt body was contemporary with the deposit of human remains in | urns. Observations on other sites confirm the priority of urn- burial, and there was no doubt a transition period during which cremation fell into disuse, but it would be difficult to prove that it persisted in this case till the cemetery was closed. According to all accounts there is here no question of Christian interments in coffins, neither the contents nor direction of the graves suggesting that any are later than the conversion of the English during the seventh century. Accepting therefore the chronology of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the Saxon conquest of the district, the cemetery may be approximately dated between the years 550 and 650, but there are some objects from the graves that were manu- factured, if not interred with their owners, about the middle of the fifth century, and it is quite possible that the cemetery was in use for two hundred years, or longer if Dr. Arthur Evans is right in referring them to the third century. Forty years ago there were few to study Anglo-Saxon remains and fewer still to report at length on the exploration of a cemetery ; but, for the time, the find at Kempston is recorded with remarkable fidelity and detail. Still many particulars, not at that time regarded as essential, are omitted from the account, and the value of the important series of relics now in the national collection is thereby somewhat impaired. Of certain broad features there can be no doubt; the burials were not ar- ranged according to any definite plan, and cinerary urns were discovered among unburnt interments in all parts of the cemetery. But besides these were a few that call for special remark. On 16 November 1863 a pit was discovered in the cemetery, over 7 feet in length, from 3 to 4 feet wide and the same in depth, where a body stretched at full length had been consumed by fire. About 2 feet from the surface was a large quantity of ashes, and among them were found portions of a human skull, vertebre and other bones, all charred, but the leg bones showing less traces of fire than the rest of the skeleton. In the ashes and on the left side of the body was a long iron spearhead with a portion of the wooden shaft left in the socket, and also an iron knife ; while surrounding these remains lay numerous pieces of charred wood, and ends of branches not quite burnt through. It seemed as if the pit had been partially filled with live embers, on which the deceased was laid, and then large branches heaped above it. Bones of some small animal, perhaps a rat, were also found, and had no doubt been burnt on the same occasion ; while an urn g inches high, half filled with the burnt I 177 23 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE remains of some small animals, was found at the feet of a skeleton in another part of the cemetery. Three skeletons seem to have been dis- covered in a bent or sitting attitude, and one at least of these was that of a warrior who had been buried with his spearhead, knife and an urn. It is clear from this and other cases that urns of a considerable size were sometimes placed in the grave with an unburnt body, though in other cemeteries urns above 6 inches in height may generally be con- sidered as proof of cremation. Another peculiarity of certain graves at Kempston was the presence of rough slabs of stone placed irregularly over the unburnt body. Though there is here no mention of similar stones along the sides of the grave, it may be of interest to compare the more complete tombs built in this fashion at Long Wittenham and Frilford, Berks, as well as at places in Northumberland, Westmorland, Leicestershire and Gloucestershire. In the original account urns are frequently mentioned as being found with skeletons, generally lying near the head and filled with Porrzry Vases FROM Graves aT Kempston, (2 size) earth. A few are expressly stated to have contained human bones, but in one instance it was doubtful whether these had been cremated. The smaller vases (see fig.), of which there are six from Kempston in the national collection, including one of Roman manufacture, are generally supposed to have contained liquid or food for ceremonial purposes, and the custom seems to have survived till the middle ages, when vessels of holy water were frequently placed in the tomb; but there are nine urns (see fig.) plain or ornamented with impressed patterns from this site in the British Museum that were doubtless used to contain the burnt re- mains of the dead, and some had intentionally been buried in a line. Bone combs are frequently found in these cinerary vessels, and at Kemp- ston a fragment with four teeth was found that had been placed in the urn after the act of cremation and so had itself escaped the fire. Other cinerary urns contained a piece of fused bronze, a drop of molten glass that may have been a bead, and an earthenware spindle-whorl. 178 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS From the unburnt burials the brooches are the most interesting and instructive relics. ‘They appear to have been found even in the graves of men at Kempston,’ and were generally worn in pairs by the other sex. First must be mentioned two brooches which are undoubtedly Civzrary Urns From Cemetery, Kempston. (4 size) earlier than the bulk of the collection, and have been referred by Dr. Bernhard Salin to the first half of the fifth century.” The claws at the head of one of these (see fig.) are survivals of the fastenings by which the long spiral spring of the pin was secured, and the facetting of the lower part is evidently derived from brooches and other ornaments of the Ripenseumeenens, pean ) 5 Bronze Broocu, Kempston. Encravep Bronze Broocu, Kempston. late Roman period, that is prior to the fall of the western empire in the middle of the fifth century. The second brooch (see fig.) is of a peculiar form hardly represented in this country, only two other speci- mens being published,’ both from Cambridgeshire. Behind the broad 1 Roach Smith, Co//. Antig. vi. 169, 171. ? Kongl. Vitterbets Historie och Antigquitets Akademiens Mdnadsblad (1894), pp. 23, 29- 3 Op. cit. fig. 9, from Haslingfield ; and Hon. R. C. Neville, Saxon Obsequies, pl. 2, from grave 35 at Little Wilbraham. 179 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE head, which is similar in size and decoration to the lower end, are traces of two perforated projections to hold the wire on which was threaded the spiral spring of the pin; and the length of the spring associates this and the other two examples rather with the brooches of the Danish moss-finds than with the specimens commonly found in England, which have no spiral but a simple hinge. The ornament too on the Kempston brooch, though not so well preserved or executed as that on the Hasling- field example, is directly descended from a Roman original and consists of floral scrolls. Four other types have been recovered from this site,’ and three are illustrated on the plate. Perhaps the most characteristic are of circular form (figs. 11, 13), with a thin embossed gilt plate attached by cement to a bronze plate, which constitutes the base of the brooch and holds the pin and catch. Round the edge is a vertical band of bronze which serves to retain the cement and the ornamented face in position, though it is often itself found detached. A specimen of un- usual size, 23 inches in diameter, was exhibited to the Society of Anti- quaries” in 1865, but the average diameter for brooches of this ‘applied’ type is 24 to 3 inches. As regards its origin, it should be observed that practically all the Saxon and Anglian brooches of the pagan period, as opposed to the jewelled specimens from Kent, are made all in one piece, while the type in question is formed of three metal parts in addition to the hinge-pin at the back. The embossed design on the Kempston specimens is generally in the form of a cross or star with human faces rudely delineated at the end of or between the arms (figs. 11, 13). It is unlikely that such a complicated pattern was a Teutonic invention of that time, and it may be possible to trace its beginnings to the late Roman period when models must have existed for such examples as those published from Gloucester- shire and Neufchatel, Seine-Inférieure.* The second type, hardly less common at Kempston, is one that seems closely connected with the early occupants of the upper Thames valley, and there is sufficient historical evidence that this was one of the principal seats of the West Saxons. ‘The ‘saucer’ brooch (figs. 6, 7) is generally smaller than the ‘applied’ variety just described, and has an average diameter of 14 to 2 inches. It is made all in one piece, and consists of a concave disc of fairly stout bronze, with the face gilt and incised with simple geometrical designs such as stars and scrolls, or with rude representations of the human features (fig. 6). Diminutive specimens, sometimes known as ‘ button’ brooches and almost invariably engraved with the human face, are found in the Jutish districts of Kent and the Isle of Wight, also occasionally in Wiltshire and Berkshire, and a pair occurred in the Kempston cemetery, but must be regarded as ex- ceptional, though their design seems to have been copied on somewhat larger examples here. A comparatively large number of a type with a small bow and © Proc, Soc. Antig. ser. 2, ii. 421. 2 Ibid. iii. 97. 3 Figured in Proc. Soc. Antig. iv. 38 and 237 respectively. 189 oan Pe n GLO SAXON ANTIQUITIES FROM KEMPSTON BEDS. ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS square head (figs. 1, 2, 4), averaging 3 inches in length, were found at Kempston and at Toddington and Leighton Buzzard, as well as in various parts of the country. They seem to have been derived from a Scandi- navian type of which only one or two examples have been found at Kempston (fig. 5), but do not seem connected with any particular tribe in England. The middle portion of a fine large square-headed variety of Anglian origin was recovered at Kempston, possibly from a cinerary urn ; but this was obviously exceptional, and the whole collection from Kempston has a decidedly Saxon appearance. By far the richest grave in the cemetery was that of a woman, with ‘whom had been buried no less than 120 beads of glass, crystal and amber, some of which were found near the left wrist. A ring of toilet articles and a carbuncle pendant set in gold (fig. 8) were also found, as well as a remarkably well preserved glass cup (fig. 3), 104 inches in height, with fine threads of glass applied to the surface. It is of conical form and pale green in colour, showing not the slightest trace of decay. The tapering end of a very similar cup from Longbridge, near War- wick, and a more complete specimen from East Shefford, Berks, are in the British Museum, but the form is a rare one and in this country is scarcely met with outside Kent.’ Several other objects of special interest were found in female graves, chief among them being three small cylindrical bronze boxes that had evi- dently been attached by a chain to the girdle and served as workboxes (see fig.)” One that had been highly gilt lay by the right arm of a skeleton, and contained some spun thread and wool of two twisted strands, probably intended for embroidery. The lid had been kept on by the insertion of a small piece of coarse linen, but both parts were attached by separate chains to the longer girdle chain. In an adjoining grave another of these boxes lay on the right leg. This specimen also had been gilt and had the lid attached by an ingenious arrange- : ment; while within was a fragment of Bronze Worxsox, Kempston. worsted fabric, and some linen textile of three distinct qualities. ‘Traces of what may have been leather in- dicated that the box had been carried in a pouch of that material. Leather seems also to have been used for bracelets, though the clasps are t One from Ozingell is figured in Col, Antig. iii. pl. 3, fig. 8; two others from High Down, Sussex, in Arch, liv. 377, 378, pl. xxvii. fig. 1. 2 This is shown by specimens found in the East Riding, Yorks, and at Hurdlow, Derbyshire, con- taining needles and thread (Catahgue of Mortimer Museum, Driffield, p. 21). ‘Two others from East Riding, Yorks, are in the British Museum, and one was found at Cransley, Northants, 181 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE generally all that remain; these are constantly found near the wrist, and a pair at Sleaford, Lincolnshire,’ were still attached to the original material when found. In three or four of the graves shell fragments of combs and possibly of an armlet were found but they are in the last stages of decay ; unlike a fine buckle (fig. 9) of the same material, which both for size and decoration may be compared with specimens of crystal found in Frankish graves on the continent.’ Bracelets and perhaps armlets of beads had also been worn ; and large numbers of beads, probably in the form of necklaces or festoons, had been deposited in many of the graves of women. With the exception of a remarkable barrel-shaped specimen (fig. 12), the bronze partitions of which are filled with some kind of shell, they are of the usual kind, the majority being of variegated glass and many of roughly-shaped amber, while the central bead of a necklace was often a large crystal. A sphere of this material (fig. 10) was recovered in its double loop of silver, but the loop was more probably for attaching this amulet to the girdle than to the necklace. These mysterious crystals again are mostly found in Kent, but examples are by no means uncommon in the Frankish graves of Normandy and the Rhine. As long ago as 1793 Rev. James Douglas, the author of Nenia Britannica, considered that they were used for purposes of divination or crystal-gazing ; and against the view that they were merely ornaments attached to the girdle is the fact that more than once they have been found lying in metal spoons with perforated bowls.’ A list of known specimens has been prepared in recent years in connection with Scottish charms and amulets.“ The assistant keeper of the museum at Edinburgh states that balls of rock crystal have been found in various parts of Europe, and especially in England, mostly in connection with interments of the (Scandinavian) Iron age, that is, from about the fifth century of our era. ‘ Many of these balls when found were enclosed within narrow bands of metal, chiefly of silver, but sometimes of gold or bronze. Formerly these balls were considered by archeologists to have been used for magical purposes, but the general opinion now is that they were worn on the person as ornaments. At a much later period however the use of crystal balls for magical purposes appears to have been common in England.’ The C/ach Dearg, or stone of Ardvoirlich, much resembles the Anglo-Saxon specimens, and is figured along with the C/ach-na-Bratach, or stone of the Standard, and another in a mount of the seventeenth century, in the papers referred to. The graves of warriors are marked by the spearhead and remains of the shield, such as the iron boss and handle ; while to one shield had been affixed by rivets a tin-plate device in the form of a fish (see fig.), 1 Arch. \. 3873 other examples have been found at Warren Hill, Suffolk, and at Marston Northants. 2 Lindenschmit, Averthimer unserer heidnischen Vorzeit, iii. pt. x. pl. 6. 3 V.C.H. Hants, i. 388, figs. 18, 22. 4 Mr. G. F. Black, in Proc. Soc. Antig. Scot. 1892-3, p. 522; cf. 1894-5, p. 439. 182 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS very similar to an example found in an Anglian grave at Kenninghall, Norfolk.’ Four swords of the usual two-edged type were found in the cemetery, one near the surface and the others in separate graves. They were originally about 3 feet in length, and one lay on the left side of Tin-ptaTe Bapcez, a Fish, Kempston. the skeleton between the arm and the body, reaching 2 or 3 inches below the knee ; in the same grave, 5 feet deep, was also a small bucket with bronze hoops and iron handle. Though now in poor preservation, this clearly belongs to the same class as others in the British Museum from Hampshire, Berkshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and North- amptonshire, and perhaps served the same purpose as the small vases placed in the graves. The iron spearheads seem to have been at the right or left of the skull indifferently, and one at least had the blades alternately depressed in a manner common at that period.” In two graves of men were found what appeared to be girdle-knives but without a cutting edge. These were perhaps made specially for funeral purposes, and may be compared with one from Lewes, and another found in a cinerary urn at Long Wittenham, Berks.” In 1856, some years before the exploration of the cemetery described above, a relic of remark- able rarity was found at Kemps- ton, and described by Mr. James Wyatt.” In digging for gravel, perhaps in the same field, the labourers came upon remains of several human _ skeletons, and Vase with Guass Disc, Kempston. among them an iron spearhead, (4 size) shield-boss and an earthenware urn (see fig.) of a peculiar character. Its shape is distinctive, the body being deeply fluted at intervals and the shoulder ornamented with groups 1 The fish occurs as a decorative motive on a jewel from Hardingstone (V.C.H. Northants, i. 233, fig. 1 on plate), and on a buckle from Crundale, Kent, in the British Museum. ® Several of this kind have been published, and four were recently found in a cemetery at Drox- ford, Hants. 3 Arch. xxxvili. 333, 342. * Coll. Antig. iv. 159. It is now preserved in the Library at Bedford. 183 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of dots enclosed in triangles. It is of dark ware, about 33 inches high, and in a hole made through the bottom a piece of greenish glass, about the size of a shilling, was inserted before the vessel was fired. Mr. J. M. Kemble drew attention to a similar vessel found on the Elbe near Bardewick, Liineburg, which had had two pieces of green glass, probably of Roman manufacture, let into the bottom and side; but the nearest parallel in this country is a vase found at Richborough, though in this case the pieces of glass were fixed on, and not in, the body of the vessel. Another skeleton found shortly afterwards in the same field at Kempston had several thin discs of metal about the neck ; but as Roman remains have also been found there, this burial may have belonged to the earlier period. An urn that resembles that just described in having groups of dots enclosed in triangles or chevrons is preserved in the library of Clare Hall, Cambridge.’ It is said to have been found at Dunstable, and probably contained cremated human remains. Another cinerary urn of remarkable size (see fig.),” the ornament on the body of which is not by any means unusual, was found in 1850 near Cesar’s Camp, Sandy, not on the Roman site at the foot of the hill, but to one side of it, near the railway bridge. This urn and another* were g inches high and 3 feet in circumference, and oneereaniercrres in the same place were found wooden coffins and a (d size) "skeleton, on the chest of which had been placed a shallow vessel of lead, perhaps a chalice. Two such vessels of lead or pewter have in fact been found in what were no doubt the graves of Christian priests near Canterbury and at Reading. From Sandy comes also a well made bronze bowl in the British Museum, but no particulars of its discovery are available. It seems to belong to the earliest Anglo-Saxon period, if not to the close of the Roman occupation, and may be the work of a British craftsman, though a larger specimen was found in the Anglian cemetery at Sleaford, Lincolnshire.’ It is 9°3 inches in diameter and quite plain, with the edge turned inwards at an angle and slightly thickened, evidently belonging to the same class as several found at Irchester,’ in the adjoining county of Northampton, and not far from the Bedfordshire border ; also at Stur- mere in the north-west corner of Essex.’ It has been suggested that they were used for libations or other ceremonial purposes, and their discovery in sets with strainers lends support to the view. It is clear they were never intended for cooking, and examples of this type retain 1 Coll. Antig. ii. 233, pl. liv. fig. 2. 2 Figured in Proc. Soc. Autig. ii. 109 ; for the site see Rep. Assoc. Archit. Soc. Beds, 1853, p. 4275 and Coll. Antig. ii. 234. 3 Probably that in the Library at Bedford. A smaller cinerary urn is in the British Museum. 4 V.C.H. Berkshire, i. Anglo-Saxon Remains.’ 5 Arch. \. 395. 8 Assoc, Archit. Soc. Northants, 1875, p. 90; V.C.H. Northants, i. 239. 7 Arch, xvi. 364, pl. Ixix. 184 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS no handles or any traces of them, unlike another well known class chiefly found in Kent with a pair of drop handles, or a third kind, found in various parts of the country, that had three hooks for suspension attached by means of enamelled discs to the side just below the moulded rim. Discoveries of Anglo-Saxon burials have been made in Toddington parish on several occasions, but all on Sheepwalk Hill. In 1861 a skele- ton was found close to a gravel pit there, but the only object associated with it was a bronze spiral finger-ring which was presented to the Society of Antiquaries by Major Cooper Cooper, from whose reports to the society’ the following account is compiled. At the close of 1883 the ground was opened about roo yards distant, almost in a direct line be- tween Toddington and Harlington churches, one mile from the former, half a mile from the latter, and one mile north of Foxborough Hill, the site of a Romano-British cemetery. On a spot where a skeleton had been found seven years before, another was discovered lying on a bed of concrete 4—6 inches thick, and not less than g feet square. It was nearly perfect and lay face downwards, the accompanying spearhead and knife of iron determining the sex. Close by was a third skeleton lying at right angles to the last and with the head to the south-east. On the shoulder were two bronze brooches’ of the small square-headed variety, similar to many found at Kempston (as fig. 4). They are of very frequent occurrence, and do not seem to have been confined to any particular locality. A year later bones that had been previously disturbed were found 5 yards off, and on a lower level, 3 feet from the surface, the skeleton of a woman with the head to the north-west. Below the waist lay an iron knife, and an iron object which seems to have been a ‘girdle-hanger,’ or chatelaine, with holes for attaching a bag of some kind by means of thread. At the head was a small urn (see fig.) rightly described as of Merovingian Maxdancien: Many “Tomuennt: type, with a white incrustation on (¥ size) the inside. Six other skeletons were found here without any article of note, but in a woman’s grave about 3 feet from the surface, with the head to the south, was a circular brooch 1% inches in diameter (apparently of the ‘ applied’ variety) laid upon the chest, with beads of jet and glass, a bronze pin and two finger- rings. Early records of discoveries at Bedford are imperfect and unpro- 1 Proc. Soc. Antig. ser. 2,1. 399 3 x. 36, 173. ; 2 They are compared with fig. 451 (from Peterborough) of Li. Jewitt’s Grave-mounds and their contents. I 185 24 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE vided with illustrations, so that there is now little opportunity of testing their accuracy or identifying relics said to be of Anglo-Saxon date. There is little internal evidence of such origin in several sharply pointed tines of deer-horn found at Bedford Castle about 1854, with a number of arrowheads, beads of vitrified paste and of agate or carnelian. ‘The tines measured about 34 inches in length and were thought to have served as the heads of missile weapons ; but though the beads may well have been of the glass and amber usually found in Anglo-Saxon graves, such primitive lance heads as those described suggest a much earlier period. In 1881 a number of Roman and Saxon remains including pottery of both periods are said to have been discovered in Castle Lane, on what was thought to be the site of a Roman villa,’ but nothing that can be held to confirm the testimony of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with regard to Bedford is recorded till 1896, when workmen employed in making a road through a field (now Russell Park), presented to the town by the Duke of Bedford, found three skeletons placed in a line east and west, the feet being towards the east. Close to two of the skulls lay spear- heads of a common type, and a few yards south of the bodies was found an iron sword’; this was of the ordinary two-edged kind just a yard in length including the tang, with a uniform breadth of 2 inches. The site is near Newnham, three quarters of a mile east of the county town on the north bank of the Ouse, and 50 yards from the river. The skeletons were 34 feet below the surface in a bed of river alluvium, but though the sur- = ——— Mi, rounding soil was carefully Bonz Comp, Beprorp. sifted, no further relics of the (4 size) period were discovered.’ This would not be surprising if, as is alleged, it was on this site that the Danes were repulsed from Bedford in the days of Edward the Elder, and these were the remains of burghers slain in action. The burial of weapons and ornaments with the dead would by that time be unusual, as the Church discouraged the practice. At the end of 1887 excavations for a malting in Horne Lane dis- closed two bone combs, one of which at least belongs to a Danish type, perhaps three or four centuries later than the battle of 571. They were Dousite Bone Coms, Beprorp. (4 size) 1 Fourn. of Arch. Inst. xi. 295. 2 Building News, 7 October, 1881. 3 These are now in the Council Chamber at the old Harpur Schools, Bedford. * Report of Mr. J. Gwyn Elger, local secretary, in Proc. Soc. Antig. xvi. 114. 186 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS found 10 feet from the surface in a thick deposit of black mud over- lying a bed of peat, and representing, as Speed’s map shows, a wide ditch or creek which joined the Ouse a few yards south of the spot.’ The more perfect specimen (see fig.) resembles several from sites acces- sible to the Danish freebooters of the ninth and tenth centuries, such as York, the lower Thames and the Witham. It is 6 inches long, and the teeth, in five sections of ten or twelve each, are inserted in a tapering stem of circular section, the thickest end of which forms the handle. Iron rivets are used to keep the teeth in place, but the only ornament consists of wavy lines engraved round the butt and a rude design on one side. The second (see fig.) is a double comb, the teeth in sections as before and fastened with rivets, while the decoration takes the form of slanting lines engraved along the middle. At Shefford, the name recalling an important West Saxon site in the Lambourn Valley, Berks, two saucer brooches characteristic of that people have been found in an ancient cemetery.” The numerous vases and other remains from this site show however that the graves are of Romano-British origin ; and the saucer brooches, which were a pair with gilt faces and iron pins, are perhaps the only traces of early Saxon occupation. That these came from a grave is practically certain, as it is unlikely that two brooches of exactly the same pattern would have been accidently lost on the same spot and have remained together on or near the surface for thirteen centuries. A few relics from Leighton Buzzard * were presented to the British Museum by Dr. Edward Lawford, F.S.A. Leighton Heath was brought under cultivation about fifty years ago, and on it at that time, about a mile north of the town, were two conspicuous grave mounds (tumuli), both circular and surrounded with a trench. About a quarter of a mile distant, at a place called Dead-man’s Slode (Slade), there appears to have been an Anglo- Saxon cemetery where cremation was exclusively practised. Several burial urns of dark clay, hand-made and imperfectly fired, had been pre- viously discovered, with the usual decoration consisting of rows of bosses, and zig-zags inter- spersed with dots and rings, impressed in the soft clay ; and in 1880 sand was being dug in an adjoining pit when three ornaments were noticed which had no doubt once been interred : : i Bronze-citt Broocu, with their owner. A gilt bronze saucer brooch, Leicuton Buzzarp. just over 14 inches in diameter, with a central boss and design consisting of a five-pointed star (see fig.),‘ points to intercourse with the West Saxons; though the probability that the burial was by way of cremation leaves the nationality of the original owner an 1 Proc. Soc. Antig. xii. 115. ® Fourn. of Arch. Inst. vii. 71 (fig. p. 79) 3 see also a paper on Shefford by Sir Henry Dryden in Pub. of Camb. Antig. Soc. 4to, vol. i. (1845-6). 3 Proc. Soc. Antig. ix. 29. 4 Compare one from Fairford, Gloucs., in Akerman’s Pagan Saxondom, pl. xix. fig. 8. 187 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE open question, towards the solution of which the common bronze brooch and small crystal bead, found at the same time, contribute little. It will thus be seen that, apart from the discoveries at Kempston, there is as yet little material for a history of the district now known as Bedfordshire before the Chronicles become explicit and trustworthy. It is the province of archzology to supply the links that are-missing in the written records, and at the same time to test the remainder ; and enough has perhaps been recovered from its soil to show that before the county was constituted there were Anglo-Saxon settlers of at least two branches of the race, who may have approached their future homes from opposite directions. It may be safely laid down as a general rule that in this country cremation was an essentially Anglian rite, as it is almost con- fined to the districts known to have been occupied by the people to whom we owe the name of England. Not that unburnt burials are by any means unknown in those districts ; they are in fact very plentiful, and in some parts of Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and East Anglia both rites were practised almost to the same extent. But in the centre and south of England cremation is certainly the exception, and is very rarely met with south of the Thames. The presumption is therefore that the Saxons of Essex, Sussex and Wessex, as well as the Jutes of Kent and south Hampshire, preferred to bury their dead in the extended position generally noticed in their districts. Where both methods of interment were adopted in the same cemetery, as at Kempston, the question arises whether the two classes of burials were contemporary, and if contem- porary whether they indicate difference of blood among the inhabitants at that time. Brief and spasmodic as are the early entries in the Chronicle, they do at any rate give some clue to the solution of the question. Authen- tic English history may be said to begin with the supremacy of Kent under Ethelbert in the closing years of the sixth century. Wessex was meanwhile extending her borders, and as the power of the A‘scings declined, Northumbria came to the front and was the leading kingdom among the Anglo-Saxons, till the Anglians of Mercia, under the redoubt- able Penda, threatened the northern frontier of the West Saxons in the second quarter of the seventh century. In spite of sundry reverses Mercia maintained her rdle as the great midland power through this and the following century, but it was not apparently till the year 779 that Wessex ceased to hold territory north of the Thames, and it has yet to be determined how far her dominion extended along the Chilterns and the Cotswolds before expansion was checked by the advance of the Mer- cian southward from the Trent. It is possible that cinerary urns, which occur in some numbers even at Long Wittenham and Frilford in Berkshire, mark in Bedfordshire an Anglian element in the population, before the general acceptance of Christianity rendered uniform the burial customs throughout English territory. If on the other hand cremation had here been the universal heathen rite, it is to be expected that the reformed burials would all be 188 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS orientated in the Christian manner, with the head laid at the west end with the idea of facing the eastern sky at the resurrection. It has been already observed that no such uniformity exists in the Kempston ceme- tery, and graves are found in various directions elsewhere in the county. Hence the conclusion seems inevitable that we have to do with a mixed population which used the same burial ground but buried their dead each according to his ancestral traditions. Brooches of West Saxon type found at Kempston, Shefford and Leighton Buzzard are evidence either of settlements from Wessex on those sites or of ready intercourse with the occupants of the upper Thames valley. Buckinghamshire has yielded similar specimens from several localities, and the conquest of Bedford rests on the same authority as the capture and occupation of the four towns in 571. Discoveries in the soil to this extent confirm the record of the Chronicle ; but if a West Saxon advance was possible under the escarpment of the Chilterns, it was also possible for immigrants from the eastern coast to gain a footing in the district. In addition to the fifth century brooches already described from Kempston, there may also be mentioned as indicating an early settlement in this part of Britain the peculiar jug-shaped cinerary urn discovered in the neighbouring county of Northampton at Great Addington." The late Mr. Grant Allen in a posthumous work ’* expressed his opinion that, though the West Saxons held what is now Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire for a considerable time after their victory at Bedcan- ford, they do not appear to have made any permanent settlement in Bed- fordshire itself. ‘’This flat and fenny district was first really occupied by the Middle English, a tribe of Teutonic colonists who effected their entry into Britain by the Wash, and advanced towards the interior by the marshy basins of the Nene and Ouse.’ Where all is so problematical, it is idle to gainsay such a deduction from the county’s natural features; but the unmistakable West Saxon stamp of brooches found at Shefford, Kempston and Leighton Buzzard might serve as a still stronger argument in favour of its partial occupa- tion by that tribe before the spread of Christianity among them, and archeology suggests that they entered the district from the west and south-west. As already mentioned the urn-burials at Sandy, Kempston, Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard point to an Anglian connection, either with the Mercians of the midlands or with the inhabitants of East Anglia ; and another link in the chain that binds Bedfordshire to the Fen district has been discovered at Farndish in the extreme north-west corner of the county, near Irchester, Northamptonshire. In the British Museum are a number of amber beads from this site found about 1828 with a skeleton in a bank which here forms the county boundary, and with them was a small bronze brooch of a peculiar type (see fig.) al- most identical with specimens from Soham, Cambs, and Kenninghall, Norfolk,’ in the same collection. Though no further details of the Farn- 1 V.C.H. Northants, i. 242. 2 County and Town in England, p. 87. Pa 3 Another coincidence in this cemetery has been already noticed on p. 7. 189 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE dish find are preserved, it is allowable to argue from such a coincidence, and to conclude that these horned brooches were made and worn by fellow-tribesmen in the two localities, who interred their dead without crema- tion. It is to this district that the South Gyrwa are assigned, and it is tempting to identify them with this folk, who lived in Anglian surroundings and yet had different burial rites ; but it has been suggested’ that the Gyrwa were Britons who had retained their territory and independence, and the question must remain an open one. Two silver pennies of the Anglo-Saxon period may be mentioned as having been found in the county and published on account of certain special features. The earlier of the two, from the Can- 2 atl terbury mint, was discovered at Bedford and can be RONZE ROOCH, . . . Rane dated within three years. On the obverse is the name of Archbishop Ethelhard as ‘pontifex,’ and on the reverse that of Offa, King of Mercia (757-96). The coin was described by Sir John Evans,” who assigned it to the years 790-3, the former being the date of Ethelhard’s nomination to the see of Canterbury, and the latter that of his full recognition as archbishop on receiving his pall from Rome. The other piece is from Toddington, and was struck for King Ceolwulf of Mercia (822-3 or 4) by a moneyer whose name appears as /Elhun, but who is supposed to be same as Almund.” An interesting relic of the late Anglo-Saxon period from the count may be mentioned in conclusion. Reference has already been made to some east-and-west burials in Russell Park that may conceivably be later than the seventh century, and contemporary with another sword pre- served at Bedford,’ of the date and origin of which there is still some uncertainty. The place of its discovery is indefinite but not far from the county town, and this serviceable weapon may have been wielded by one of the Danes who made an unsuccessful attack on Bedford in gat. It is 354 inches long, and complete except for the bone or wooden portion of the handle. The blade slightly tapers, and is double-edged with a shallow groove running down either face, as on most swords of the Viking period. The handle however is not quite so heavy as usual, the pom- mel being diminutive, and the straight guard of 3°3 inches somewhat short in proportion, in this respect resembling the early Anglo-Saxon type. On one face of the blade near the hilt is perhaps a trace of a damascened circular mark,’ a not uncommon feature on swords of this class, that are supposed to have been exported from Normandy and the mouths of the Rhine, and often bear the name of a maker VLFBERHT. 1 Rev. Edw. Conybeare, Popular History of Cambridgeshire, p. 42. 2 Numismatic Chronicle, new ser. (1865), v. 352, pl. xiv. No. 2. 3 Op. cit. p. 168 ; cf. Catahgue of Angh-Saxon Coins (British Museum), i. 40. * Recently restored at the instance of the Bedford Arts Club. 5 Cf, A. L. Lorange, Den yngre jernalders Sverd, pl. iii. fig. 5. 190 " HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE DOMESI NOTES TO DOMESDAY MAP Compiled by F. W. RAGG, M.A. With Notes by J. HORACE ROUND, M.A. ——$ In this map those manors in which the King had an interest have a scarlet line under them; a blue line (broken) is under those in which the principal ecclesiastical tenant, Ramsey Abbey, held land; a green line denotes those of which part or all was held by Hugh de Beauchamp, the greatest lay tenant in the county. The name of a manor or of a Hundred is often given in more than one form by Domesday, but only one of these forms can be shown on the map. It has been found impracticable to give the boundaries of the Domesday Hundreds, but their names will be found on the map together with index letters showing to which Hundred each manor apper- tained (as shewn below). The modern river names have been added for the convenience of the reader. The map illustrates the influence of the rivers, which were probably larger then than now, on the grouping of the manors, and the text illustrates their course and extent by its entries of meadows and watermills, both of them then valuable possessions. LIST OF THE HUNDREDS. Stodene, Stodden. Wilga, Wilge. (Half) Buchelai, Bochelai, Bocheleia. Bereforde. (Half) Weneslai. Bicheleswade, Bichelesworde. Wichestanestou, Wichenestanestou. Radeburnesoca, Radborgestoche, Radberne- Oo nm Ow) > stoch, Radborgestou, Ratborgestoc, Ratborgestou. | Manesheve. K Flictham. L Clistone, Cliftone. M (Half) Stanburge, Stamburge. N Odecroft (pre Domesday). Bedford itself is a Half Hundred. When, through the omission of the heading, a vill seems to be placed in the wrong Hundred, the letter denoting that Hundred is added in parentheses. REFERENCE TO COLOURING, King’s Manors thus Vestone Ramsey Abbey's Manors ” Bertone. Hugh de Beauchamp’s Manors » Strader Sokemen in King Edward's time, thus— x Scale of English Miles = A _———— NORTHANTONESCI Ttaseden Be M Edingeberge* also in, Eriac Hund, Bochinghamsowe ( \ san v Lstone Ae AS HUNTEDONSJESCIRE e Prowentons ao in re * J x f : i ie ee % ee cos ae G ; x : B ee lernebroc* f rath ' i Louse / Namboere y EE eae ae sham , pie . \y f *Pabeneham ‘ ara “ My cde. 1 . a ho aa (©) 0X ; nc c Goldentones ~~ Quse c i! = : Zjdeatan a o> | ne sw BEDEFORD : x - - > | 2 —_ (Kes Potone EX i Dn 2 2 Hatelai p S ub, i cy Inestou 5 Loe ATI ne SU Chernetone ° 3 ! ie) Camestone Laeronecone ay xs oe. Z x Sudtone ; = Xu eee fe i (er - Kescote &® be FX oO H ~ = a = ATULSSCWOT ie ~ Pee Debor 6 WD SsC Tl RE. “"s = H Xt ve, anaes eT CHE LE ork EB h » Winessamestede a z BLC *Domtone fi Lisseltone i Dryge \Stratone a, le Ae OS oe 6X j ‘Reale ae Z VJ ~ o Alrices: T ‘ / f : K K 4 ‘alpertesselle ys on ze % Xi. 4 * welat Flichtham Chainehow Ss Stottalt” \ ° vu L - Le SE eee Si Sion © Standone ad y K(D).X Yor / X« : Le aes \ iia = iy -Polocheselle Scthlindone \ . a Le i ' - / . TG Bardiclomew, DOMESDAY SURVEY Assessment of the county, pp. 191-193—-The royal demesne, p. 194.—Bedford, p. 195— The tenants-in-chief, spiritual and lay, pp. 195-204—-Fate of English holders, pp. 205-207 —Problems of tenure, p. 207—-Legal antiquities, pp. 208-212—-Sources of wealth, p. 212—Identification of manors, pp. 213-216—The Bedfordshire Hundreds, p. 217. F the Domesday student were asked to name the feature of most interest to himself in the survey of Bedfordshire, he would probably name its ‘hidage.’ For it ranks next to its neighbour Cambridge- shire as a county illustrating the system of hidation, that is assess- ment, which was based on a unit of ‘five hides.’ This, which is the true key to Domesday, is a discovery of our own time. It was formerly supposed that the Domesday hide was either an actual measure of area or at least the representative of some definite value. But it is now known that manors (or more correctly vills) were assessed to the ‘ geld,’ that is the land tax, in purely arbitrary multiples of the ‘ five-hide unit.’" A small matter, it may seem, and of no general interest. We have, how- ever, to remember what Domesday really was, and why the survey was made. ‘One great purpose,’ Professor Maitland says of Domesday, “seems to mould both its form and its substance ; it is a geld-book.’? And because it was the chief purpose of the survey to record assessment, we will deal with the assessment of the county first of all. The large number of assessments recorded as exactly ten or five hides can hardly fail to strike the intelligent observer ; but these are usually those of a vill (roughly speaking, a parish) in the hands of a single holder. When a vill was divided between two or more distinct tenants-in-chief, the assessment of each portion is recorded separately, and the total therefore is not obvious. Where, as at Husborne Crawley, a vill was divided into moieties, the assessment of each, it is true, is entered as five hides ; but in several cases the portions were unequal and the assessment consequently fractional. To ascertain the amount at which the whole vill was assessed we have to reconstitute the total by adding up the fractions, a task often of difficulty and sometimes open to doubt. In Feudal England (pp. 55-7) I adduced illustrations from Mr. Airy’s ‘digest’ of the Bedfordshire survey,’ and these I may here repeat :— it is only Mr. Airy’s work that enables us to reconstruct the townships, and to show how fractions—apparently meaningless—fit in, exactly as in Cambridgeshire, with one 1 See Feudal England, pp. 44-69, and Maitland’s Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 156-64, 450. 2 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 3. 3 Digest of the Domesday of Bedfordshire (Bedford), 1881. 1gI A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE another. His work is all the more valuable from the fact that he had no theory to prove, and did not even add together the factors he had ascertained. His figures there- fore are absolutely free from the suspicion that always attaches to those adduced to prove a case, Risely Tempsford Wymington Cople Eversholt nH. vel He Ve nn Ve He Ve ne. Ve 7 0 1 13 Oo 3 4 0 2 0 Io 1 1 3.0 5 3 740 ko 4 1 4.0 Io $0 30 2 0 40 Io 1 ¢ o 3 Io 10 oO I0 oO 10 oOo 10 oO 10 oO Clophill Northill Potsgrove Eyeworth Holwell He ve He ve ne Ve a. Ve BE v. 5 0 1% 0 Io 9 0 340 4 0 140 7h 0 Io 64 0 Io 40 Io 640 40 Io o 10 oO Io oO Io oO Io 0 Houghton Odell Pavenham Conquest Dean Me Vv. nm. Ve He ve nm Ve 44 4 240 +) 8 4 0 5 13 5 0 30 2 4 24 0 4} 0 2 7h o 8 10 0 10 0 10 0 10 of Of these fourteen ten-hide townships the last is selected as an instance of those slight discrepancies which creep in so easily, and which account for so many apparent exceptions to the rule. Passing to other multiples of the five-hide unit we have :— Oakley Thurleigh Blunham Marston Roxton Dunton me ve He Ve He Vv. ne ve ne ve He ve 4 0 e I 4 1 a6 2 (less 4 virg.) 1 oI BaD | ae) Zo o 1 8 (plus 4 virg.) Oo 4 I 3 40 40 I 1 1 5 0 o 1 Io Oo P 4 WA 43.0 o. 8 3 8 3 20 z 0 2 5 0 5 0 15 0 15 oO 20 0 20 0 I now give three illustrations of slight discrepancies :— Streatley Sutton Eaton Socon He Ve He ve. He Ve Io °o 3 20 0 4 1 Io 6 3 44.0 14 0 o if 0 3 tof o 4 o 3 o 38 9} o 1h ° sh 2 0 2 4 Oo 3 ojo $0 o 1% 10 9 33 9 of 40 1 1 These letters stand for ‘hides’ and ‘virgates’ ; the ‘ virgate’ was the quarter of the ‘hide’ and was divided into thirty ‘acres,’ which it must be remembered were not measures of area. 192 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY In the first case there is a deficiency of ;4,, and in the second of ;%,, while in the third we find an excess of z35. No one can doubt that these were really ten-hide, ten-hide, and forty-hide townships. We have to allow, in the first place, for trivial slips, and in the second for possible errors in the baffling work of identification in the present day. The essential point to be borne in mind is that the principle of assessment in units of ‘five hides’ has to be tested by examining the survey of the county as a whole. When this is done the evidence in its favour is, in Bedfordshire, overwhelming. That it is not so absolutely perfect as in Cambridgeshire is largely due to the fact that we have for the latter county transcripts of the jurors’ actual returns, hundred by hundred and vill by vill. These returns were broken up for the com- pilation of Domesday Book by re-arranging the contents under ‘ fiefs,’ and thus the unity of the vill’s assessment became obscured in what, as the above tables show, was often a multitude of fractions. Mr. Ragg, who has made an independent analysis for the purpose of the present work, has attempted the reconstruction of the vills hundred by hundred, and from his results we glean further cases in point :— Stagsden Radwell Wyboston Chawston Cardington iH v He ve He ve H. Vv. H. Vv. ac. 2 2 7 th 14 I 1 6 2 20 5 0 2 2$ 6 3 oO 4 3 1 Io 2 2 of 7 1 9 1 o 2 2 of 1 if 10-60 | Come) 20 O Io oO 10 0 90 The last two instances are peculiarly striking, and we may observe that even the fractions adapt themselves to the payment of the ‘ geld,’ for when this tax was at two shillings on the ‘ hide,’ five ‘acres’ would pay a penny and two and a half a halfpenny. Apart from assessment, the Bedfordshire Domesday is of interest for its surveys of the royal manors, for the light it throws on the difficult question of tenures on the eve of the Conquest, for disputed titles to estates, for allusion to exchanges of lands, and for the frequent mention of Ralf Tallebosc, who, although dead at the time of the survey, had left his mark on several places, and whose widow and daughter were holding lands which were often the subject of rival claims. King William’s share in the spoils of the Conquest was represented in this county, at first sight, by those lands only which came to him as Crown demesne ; for, strange as it seems, Harold is not mentioned in its survey as having held any manor within its borders.’ And this Crown demesne was of a very peculiar character. Instead of being scattered about the county as was usually the case, it lay in a belt along its southern border through the manors of Leighton Buzzard, 1 He had, however, annexed Weston(ing) to his manor of Hitchin (Herts); and it thus came to King William. I 193 25 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Houghton Regis and Luton.’ The first and last of these were assessed at 30 hides apiece, the other at 10 hides. In the form of the revenue derived from these three manors we detect at once a note distinctive of Crown demesne in the half day’s ferm (dimidiam diem ad firmam regis) that was due from each of them. ‘The constituents of this antique render are specified as wheat, honey, and the other things recognized as part of it, the honey being probably required for mead. But in addition to this traditional due there was also a money payment, amounting to £22 from Leighton, £30 from Luton, and £10 from Houghton, payable in each case in weighed money. This is an unusual feature, but there is nothing in the text to show that it is a Norman addition. Of the an- tiquity of the miscellaneous dues there can be no question, for they are found occurring similarly in other counties ; for the queen’s use Leighton and Houghton contributed each 2 ounces and Luton 4 ounces of gold; for a sumpter-horse and for the king’s hounds various amounts were paid, the payment for the former being here grouped with others. The pay- ment, however, for a sumpter-horse alone is found in Domesday as twenty shillings. In addition to all these payments Ivo (not Ralf) Tallebosc had enacted, it would seem, an additional payment (mzsit de cremento) of £7 apiece in the case of Leighton and Luton and of £4 in that of Houghton, partly in weighed and partly in assayed silver, with an ounce of gold further from each of them to the sheriff himself. The closest parallel to the dues from these royal manors is found in the adjoining county of Cambridgeshire, where several royal manors, in the days of Edward the Confessor, paid their rent to the Crown partly in ‘three days’ ferm’ (firmam trium dierum) and partly in money. Wheat and honey are specified, in their case also, as comprised in the ‘ferm,’ but malt (4rasium) is mentioned in addition. In Cambridge this pay- ment in kind had been commuted for money ; in Bedfordshire, appar- ently, it had not. The additional payments for special purposes due from the Bedfordshire manors are not mentioned in Cambridgeshire, and only occur, it would seem, elsewhere in Domesday among the payments due from counties as a whole. The churches of the three royal manors were, as was usually the case, important and richly endowed; but they must be reserved for treatment in another section below. The point which remains to be considered here is the arbitrary action of Ralf (not Ivo) Tallebosc in annexing manors and altering hundreds when in charge of the Crown demesne. In the manor of Leighton Buzzard he had, we read, incor- porated two considerable estates which had formerly belonged to private owners; in that of Houghton Regis he had similarly incorporated Sewell ; and in that of Luton, Biscot. In these last two cases the added estates were actually taken out of their Hundreds by Ralf, though he seems to have compensated the Hundred of Flitt by robbing another Hundred for its benefit. 1 Dunstable is not mentioned, because it was subsequently created, on the royal demesne, by Henry L., the bulk of it being taken from Houghton Regis. 194 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY For a parallel to such action we must turn to Hitchin, not far away, in Hertfordshire. As held by King William in 1086 it had been swollen by the action of Norman sheriffs of that county ; but of one at least of its additions we read that it was Earl Harold who had annexed it to Hitchin, ‘ by violence and wrongfully as the shire testifies.” The importance of such evidence lies in its suggestion that there may have been similar changes effected in the days before the Conquest in places where Domesday does not make any mention of the fact. Of Bedford itself the account in the Survey is singularly short and unsatisfying. As the county town it is entered apart from the rest of the shire, and is not even treated as included in the royal demesne’ ; but it differs from the chief towns of the shires surrounding in the singular brevity of its description. Cambridge, for instance, fills a whole column of Domesday, and the account of Northampton is nearly as long ; to Huntingdon is assigned a column and a half, and to Buckingham and Hertford respectively the greater part of a column. Why the entry on Bedford should be restricted to seven lines it seems impossible to explain. Even of this terse entry more than half is occupied with an act of agres- sion on the part of the Bishop of Lincoln. We are left in ignorance of so important a matter as the annual value of Bedford to the Crown, and the only fact, indeed, on which we obtain information is the assessment of the town (vi//a) ; for it is not styled a borough (durgus), although we read, towards the end of the Survey, of its ‘ burgesses.’ ‘This assessment is akin to that of Cambridge and of Huntingdon ; for while Cambridge is assessed at a whole Hundred, and Huntingdon at 50 hides, Bedford is assessed at half a Hundred, that is, presumably, at 50 hides. So too Shrewsbury was assessed at 100 hides and Chester at 50. * But the peculiarity in the case of Bedford is that its assessment was only for land and sea service, and implied probably a contribution of ten men to either.’ It would seem from this that the town was not assessed to the ‘ geld,’ and that such is the meaning of Domesday when it says that it was never apportioned into ‘ hides’ (4idata) with the exception of one ‘ hide’ with which St. Paul’s was endowed. In its regular and stately course the great Survey proceeds from the lands of the king himself to those of the spiritual lords. At the head of these are those alien magnates, the Bishops of Coutances and Bayeux, who held their great fiefs, extending over many counties, in a personal, not an official capacity. The former was a trusted friend of the Con- queror ; the latter was William’s half-brother. In Bedfordshire as in Northamptonshire Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, held the bulk of his estates as successor to an English landowner, Borgeret, Borgret, Borred, Borret, Burgret, Burred or Burret, ‘thegn of King Edward.’ These estates lay largely along the N orthamptonshire border, namely at Knot- * ¢ Apposuit Heraldus comes in Hiz’ (fo. 133). 2 For the importance and the implication of this separate treatment see Maitland’s Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 176-80, 212. 3 Compare Feudal England, p. 156 ; and my paper in Domesday Studies, pp. 117-21. 4 Ibid. 195 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ting, Newton Bromshold, Rushden, Melchbourne, Yelden, Shelton, Dean and Riseley. From the Northampton Survey we learn that the bishop claimed as Burred’s successor the ‘ homage’ of William Peverel’s sokemen, at Rushden, Irchester and Raunds (fo. 225b), together with some land at Podington (in Bedfordshire) which had been held by ‘two “‘men” of Burred’ (fo. 229). The account of these lands illustrates alike the position of a great English landowner, with thegns and soke- men under him, on the eve of the Norman Conquest, and the system by which a Norman magnate was placed in the shoes of his English prede- cessor, all whose rights he thereby acquired. Two of his Bedfordshire estates, however, had come to the bishop in another way. They are alleged to have been held by him ‘pro Excambio de Bledone,’ a phrase which there is nothing to explain, but which recurs in Buckinghamshire, where two estates are similarly alleged to be held ‘de Excambio pro Bledone’ (fo. 145b). It is clear that the place spoken of must be Bleadon, Somerset, although in the survey of that county there is nothing to connect it with the bishop. He must, however, have disgorged it in exchange for these lands in Beds and Bucks, such incidental mention of changes being found elsewhere in Domesday.’ It can hardly be said that the bishop left any mark on the county, save through his tenant Geoffrey de ‘ Traillgi —who doubt- less derived his name from Trelly, a few miles to the south of Cou- tances—with whom originated the Bedfordshire family and ‘barony’ of Trailly. The fief of the Bishop of Bayeux was soon forfeited to the Crown, and is only remarkable in this county for two cases of subinfeudation, that is, of an under-tenant enfeoffing a man under him. Ansgot of Rochester and Herbert son of Ivo, who held here of the bishop, were considerable tenants of his in Kent, the sphere of his power. The Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese the county then lay, had only succeeded to a small estate in his official capacity, the others in his possession having previously been held by English owners, now for- feited. Of the English religious houses some had lost by the Conquest, Harold’s foundation at Waltham in honour of the Holy Cross being despoiled, here as in Essex, in favour of a Norman prelate, the Bishop of Durham. Ramsey Abbey complained bitterly that the valuable manor of Clapham belonged to the endowment of its monks, a claim which its neighbours endorsed, though Miles Crispin had possession at the time of the Survey. Probably, as happened in other cases, Miles had obtained it as successor to the Englishman, Brihtric by name, who had held it, not in his own right, but as a tenant of the abbey. At Bedford itself St. Paul’s, a house of secular canons, had lost more than it gained. The Bishop of Lincoln had robbed it of its local en- 1 In this county we shall see below Ralf Tallebosc had received lands in exchange for Ware in Hertfordshire, and William Spech held two manors in exchange for ¢ Totingedone.’ 196 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY dowment, entered as worth no less than £5 a year; and it was poor compensation for this that ‘ Leuiet,’ an English priest, had bequeathed to it since William’s accession one virgate at Biddenham, to which Ralf Tallebosc had added three more, for the whole of this was only worth 13s. It held indeed of Countess Judith, seemingly asa fresh endowment, 3 hides at Harrowden, but even this was only worth 30s. If, as I have assumed above, ‘ the church of Bedford with its possessions, which was held by Bishop Remi, was identical with the endowment (of the same value) of St. Paul’s, which he had annexed, the alternative descrip- tion is worth noting.’ The well-endowed church of Leighton (Buzzard), worth £4 a year, was also held by Remi, as it had been by his prede- cessor Bishop Wulfwi. Of the two royal manors, Luton and Houghton (Regis), the churches, with their appendant estates, were held by ‘ Wil- liam the Chamberlain.’ In his erudite history of Luton church,’ Mr. Cobbe has discussed the exact position of this ‘ William the Chamberlain,’ contending that he was probably ‘ an ordained clergyman,’ but there is nothing to show that this was so beyond his holding the churches of Luton and Houghton ; and it is proved, as Mr. Cobbe observed, by the Gesta Abbatum of St. Alban’s, that a younger ‘ William the Chamberlain’ actually claimed to hold the church and its appendant estate of the Earl of Gloucester. The whole story is very curious, and illustrates the temptation presented by church endowments,’ when they were so valuable as at Luton, where the six ploughlands of glebe were assessed at 5 hides. Mr. Cobbe arrived at the conclusion that this estate is now represented by Dallow manor in Luton. There can be no reasonable doubt that William the Chamberlain, who also held lands 7 capite at Battlesden, Potsgrove, and Totternhoe, was identical with the man of that name who held land, also 7 capite, at Hartwell, Bucks, and at Wincot, Gloucestershire, who was joint-fermor of a Crown manor in Cambridgeshire, and who held of the Bishop of London at Stepney and of the abbot of Westminster in Essex. Mr. Cobbe, it would seem, was not acquainted with the cartulary of Ramsey Abbey, which contains charters of considerable importance in connection with William the Chamberlain. These show us a man of that name, probably the Domesday tenant’s son, residing at Luton under Henry I. and restoring to Ramsey Abbey its estate at Pegsdon (in Shillington) in this county, of which the abbey was in full possession at the time of Domesday. They further establish his identity as William the Chamberlain ‘of London,’ which accounts for the appearance of a tenant so styled on the Earl of Gloucester’s fief, Luton having been be- stowed on Robert, the first earl, by his father, Henry I. 1 The similarly double entry of his tenure of the church of Leighton makes the identity certain. 2 Luton Church, by Rev. Henry Cobbe (1899). 3 A good instance in point is found at Colchester, where the church of St. Peter’s, which ‘two priests’ had held before the Conquest, was endowed with a good estate. A quarter of this endowment, at the time of the Survey, was in the hands of ‘ Eudo Dapifer,’ and the rest was claimed by Robert son of Ralf de Hastings. * Ed. Rolls Series, i. 142-4. 197 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Of other than local religious houses, St. Neots (Hunts) had lost to Richard de Clare some of its lands in Eaton Socon across the Bedford- shire border, while it still held, as tenant to his wife, some land on the Huntingdonshire side of the river. ‘The evidence of Domesday here affords an interesting confirmation of the statement in the Liber Ehensis that Richard (who is there erroneously styled Gilbert) de Clare took advantage of the Ely revolt to despoil the lands of Einulfsbury—as St. Neots was then termed—and to expel the Ely monks by whom it was then held. These, it alleges, he replaced by foreign monks from Bec." St. Alban’s again appears to have lost a hide at Stotfold to Hugh de Beauchamp. From other sources we learn that it lost more than this. Oswulf the son of Frane, a wealthy thegn, had given to Abbot Leofstan under the Confessor land at Studham,’ which is found, however, at the time of the Survey, with the rest of Oswulfs estates, in the hands of the Norman lord of Belvoir. The gift had been witnessed by a neighbour- ing lord, Leofwine ‘ Cilt’ of Caddington, who himself held his lands at Caddington and Streatley for life only with reversion to St. Alban’s under the gift of his father Eadwine.’ Domesday ignores the gift under both these places, and shows us his Streatley land in the hands of Nigel ‘de Albini.’ The cathedral church of London had acquired his estate at Cadding- ton ; and the great abbey of St. Edmund at Bury, which flourished under the Conqueror’s rule, had received from Earl Waltheof and his wife a substantial addition to its endowment. Foreign monks had obtained as yet strangely little in the county, Nigel of Albini alone bestowing on those of St. Nicholas of Angers a small portion of the manor that he held at Henlow. The nunnery of Elstow, however, was an addition to the local houses, being founded since the Conquest by Countess udith. : As to the laymen holding lands, at the time of the survey, in the county, we must not expect to find their names or even their descendants in the male line among the local landowners of modern times. Even of the list of local gentry in the reign of Henry VI., Fuller, its editor, wrote in the seventeenth century :— Hungry Time hath made a [Gluttons Meal] on this [Catalogue of Gentry] and hath left but a very little [morsell for manners] remaining ; so few of these are found extant in this [Shire], and fewer continuing in a [Gentile Equipage]. The name of one, the Mordaunts of Turvey, is still found in the Baronetage (creation of 1611), and, although no longer connected with the county, invites mention here on account of the assertion still found 1 Liber Elensis (Ed. Anglia Christiana Society), pp. 239-40: ‘Quam violenter locus de Enulfes- bury abstractus sit Elyensi ecclesiz.’ The Sudbury land in Eaton Socon, which belonged to St. Neots, had been wholly annexed by Richard ; while at Wyboston, which the house had formerly held ‘in almoin,’ it now held only as Richard’s tenant. 2 Kemble, Cod. Dipl. iv. 280-1 (No. 945). 3 Ibid. iv. 259 (No. 920). 198 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY in Burke’s Peerage and similar works that its founder, ‘ Osbert le Mor- daunt,’ obtained a manor at Radwell by the gift of his brother, Eustace de St. Gilles, who had received it from King William in return for his services in the Conquest. To this tale the Domesday Survey affords no support, and I have elsewhere denounced as a mere concoction the charter on which it rests.’ It was printed in that curious work, Succinct genealogies of the noble and ancient houses of . . . Mordaunt of Turvey (1685), for which the eccentric Earl of Peterborough, then head of the Mordaunts, and a rector of Turvey appear to have been jointly responsible. The family, however, was already seated at least as early as the thirteenth century at Turvey. The three great local barons whose fiefs had their ‘heads’ in the county were Hugh de Beauchamp, Walter the Fleming, and Nigel ‘de Albini’—whose name, in French, would be represented by Néel d’Au- bigny. All three were succeeded in their lands by lines of heirs longer than was usual in the case of Domesday barons. The last of the Beau- champs ‘ of Bedford’ fell at the battle of Evesham (1265), his sisters succeeding him in his lands; and the lands of Albini ‘ of Cainhoe’ simi- larly passed, a generation earlier, to the sisters of the last of the male line; but the heirs male of Walter the Fleming continued to hold his barony of ‘ Wahull’ (now Odell) down to the days of Henry VIII., and the Domesday fief remained afterwards in the hands of the heir- general.” Cainhoe and ‘ Wahull’ were from the first part of their respec- tive baronies’; but the Domesday account of the town of Bedford is too meagre for us to discover what, if any, connection Hugh de Beauchamp had with it in 1086. As the Bishop of Coutances had, we have seen, brought with him a tenant from the region of his cathedral city, so had Nigel ‘de Albini’ brought with him a namesake from what was probably the same district, the Cétentin. This was Nigel ‘de Wast,’ who derived, I think, his name from Le Vast, east of Cherbourg, as would his lord from (St. Martin d’)Aubigny, north-east of Coutances. Under his lord he held five estates in Beds and one in Bucks, but these probably escheated after- wards, for his adjoining manors of Ampthill and Milbrook are subsequently found in the hands of the lords of the fief. A noteworthy entry in its Domesday description tells us that Nigel ‘de Albini’ was holding 25 acres in Maulden,* which John de Roches had annexed to the wrong of the men of that vill (super homines qui villam tenent). Under the holdings of Ramsey Abbey we read that at Barton-in-the-Clay the abbot had been wrongfully disseised, he claimed, by John de Roches of 12 acres of meadow, which were held at the time of the survey by Nigel ‘de Albini’ and Walter the Fleming. Thus we have, in two places, incidental men- tion of John de Roches as a predecessor of Nigel, together with a hint 1 See ‘ The Companions of the Conqueror’ in Monthly Review, iii. 107. 2 Domesday Book, with its entry of this fief, was actually produced in the House of Lords, some years ago, in the ‘ Wahull’ peerage case. 3 For the moated mounds at each, on which stood the barons’ castles, see the section on ‘ Ancient Earthworks,’ below. 4 Maulden lay between his manors of Ampthill and Clophill, 199 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE that Walter the Fleming was also a successor of John. In Nigel’s case, at any rate, we can connect this aggression with his tenure of land at Streatley adjoining Barton. Unlike Nigel ‘de Albini,’ whose lands had been held before the Con- -quest by many and chiefly by small owners, Walter the Fleming held his fief mainly in Bedfordshire and wholly in Northamptonshire as suc- cessor to Leofnoth, a great thegn, whose ‘men,’ Ordric and Lant, are mentioned in the former county. But another thegn, Leofwine, had preceded him in some of his Bedfordshire estates. More than five columns of the survey are devoted to the fief of Hugh de Beauchamp, which is chiefly remarkable for its previous history. As I have shown in my introduction to the ‘ Domesday Survey of Hertfordshire,’* a great estate in Bedfordshire as well as in that count had belonged to an English thegn Anschil (or Aschil) ‘ of Ware,’ * who must have been so named from having there his chief seat. This estate had passed to Ralf Tallebosc, who exchanged Ware itself (which is found at the time of the survey in the hands of Hugh de Grentmesnil) for certain lands in Bedfordshire. The six entries of lands held ‘pro excambio de Warres’ (or ‘ Wares’) relate to this exchange. As is usually the case in Domesday, we only learn the history of the fief by incidental allusions. For instance, we read of Hugh’s valuable manor of Stotfold, which had belonged to ‘ Aschil,’ that it was rented at £30 a year at the time of Ralf Tallebosc’s death. For further allusions we have to turn to the entries of other fiefs. Thus under that of the Bishop of Lincoln we find William de Caron complaining that his father had been disseised by Ralf Tallebosc of land which Hugh de Beauchamp was holding at the time of the survey ; under that of William de Warenne we find Hugh de Beauchamp claiming land at Tillbrook on the ground that his predecessor (antecessor) Ralf Tallebosc had been duly seised of it ; and a few lines lower down we find ‘ Aschil’ spoken of as Hugh’s pre- decessor with no mention of Ralf's intermediate tenure. On the opposite page of Domesday Eudo dapifer complains that Ralf ‘when he was sheriff’ disseised him of some woodland at Sandy, which Hugh now holds. So also the wife of Hugh de Grentmesnil complains that Hugh de Beauchamp is holding land which Ralf had wrongfully annexed ‘when he was sheriff.’ There is thus abundant evidence to show that Hugh was the recog- nized successor of Ralf. But Ralf had left a widow, Azelina, who held some of his landsin dower. Of these some lay at Henlow, a ‘ berewick’ 1 V.C.H. Herts, i. 284. 2 T have there established the identity of ¢ Anschil’ and ‘ Aschil,’ but the Bedfordshire survey en- ables us to go further still. In it we read of Hugh’s manor of Colmworth that his predecessor there was ‘Achi a thegn of King Edward.’ As his predecessor is regularly styled ‘ Aschil’ in the survey of this county, ‘Achi’ would be taken for a different man. Yet on the previous page (213) we read of Hugh’s estate at ‘Estone’ that its soke always belonged to ‘Culmeworde,’ a manor of ‘¢ Aschil’ ; and of William de Warenne’s estate there we similarly read that ‘ Aschil’ retained its soke in his manor of ‘Colmeborde.? And both these estates had been held by ‘men’ of ‘ Aschil.? We may therefore claim ‘Achi’ as here yet another variant of Anschil or Aschil, and may therefore do so in the case of Hugh’s manor of Haynes as in that of Colmworth. 200 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY of the manor of Stotfold (in which Ralf had succeeded Anschil), and Hugh claimed these as not being part of her dower. Ralf had left a daughter as well as a widow, and in the adjoining county of Herts we find her entered as a tenant-in-chief of 4 hides at Hunsdon (‘ Hodes- done’), though these are described as ‘of the fee of Hugh de Beau- champ’ (fo. 142b). As restless there as in this county Ralf had trans- ferred one of these hides from Stanstead Abbots to Hunsdon. But the matter is further complicated by the devolution of the estates of a great Bedfordshire thegn, Wulfmar of Eaton Socon, the ‘Etone’ of Domesday.’ His estates ran south through Wyboston, Chawston, Tempsford, Barford, Blunham and Sandy, to Sutton and Hat- ley Cockayne, extending over the Cambridgeshire border into Gamlingay and Hatley. With the exception of his land at Barford, the whole of his estates appear to have passed either to Eudo ‘Dapifer’ or to Ralf Tallebosc’s widow, who seems to have held her share, the smaller one, as part of her marriage portion. As with the three local baronies of which I have spoken above, that of which Eaton Socon was the head deserves special notice, because it has a part as the barony of ‘ Etone’ in the feudal history of the county. Escheating to the Crown in 1120 on the death of Eudo ‘dapifer,’ it was granted to one of the house of Beau- champ, but it must be carefully distinguished from the barony of ‘ Beau- champ of Bedford.’’ There would seem to be no actual proof of a connection between these two lines of the name of Beauchamp, however probable it may seem ; nor is it known whether either line was connected with the Worcestershire house. As bearing, however, on the origin of the Beau- champs ‘of Bedford,’ it is interesting to note the unusual circumstance that three, if not four, of their under-tenants derived their names from places within what is now a single canton, that of Tilly-sur-Seulles in the Calvados.* Wimund de ‘ Taissel,’ William de ‘ Locels,’ and Serlo de ‘Ros’ were clearly named from Tessel (-Bretteville), Loucelles and Rots within this canton. Osbert de ‘ Broilg,’ therefore, may possibly be named from Brouay, which was also within it, for the list of the knights of the barony, in 1166, is headed by Robert de ‘ Broi’ (or ‘Bray ’).* We have now dealt with the Domesday fiefs which became local baronies, all of them appearing as such in the returns of 1166 except that of Eaton (Socon), which was not included in those returns.” Of the other Bedfordshire tenants-in-chief the first in order is the Count of Boulogne, whose lands, in which he had succeeded Alwold, ‘a 1 See the section on ‘Earthworks ’ for its noteworthy early castle. ? There is confusion between them in Dugdale’s Baronage (i. 224). See Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 171. Beauchamp itself occurs as a place-name in Moyaux and in Vouilly, both of them in the Calvados. Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 319. The Domesday name, however, is more suggestive of Breuil, a name borne by several places in the Calvados. 5 See ibid. p. 318 fora later entry of it. I 201 26 =» OO A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE thegn of King Edward,’ lay in the north-west of the county. They are chiefly remarkable as being held of him, with the exception of two hides at Sharnbrook by Ernulf of Ardres (‘Arde’), from whom they de- scended to the Counts of Guines.t Stevington was the chief manor.’ Walter Giffard belongs to the adjoining county of Buckingham, as does his great tenant Hugh de Bolbec, though he held of him Woburn and two other manors in Bedfordshire. William de Warenne held in Bedford- shire only dependencies of his lordship of Kimbolton across the Hunting- donshire border.’ In this county as in others William de Eu (‘Ow’) held his lands as successor to a great Wiltshire thegn, ‘ Alestan * of Boscombe, whose estates were scattered about the country. Short as is the entry of the lands held by Miles Crispin it raises some points of interest. I have already spoken of the complaint by the monks of Ramsey Abbey that his rich manor of Clapham had been held of them for life only by his English predecessor,’ but the men of the Hundred also asserted that two sokemen with small holdings in Milton (Ernest) had been wrongfully added to Clapham by Robert de ‘ Olgi.’ Now this statement distinctly implies that Robert had preceded Miles in his tenure of Clapham, a fact of much interest in view of the traditional belief that Miles married Robert’s daughter. That Robert and Miles were in some way connected is proved not only by their both succeeding to lands of Wigod of Wallingford—a fact which attracted Mr. Free- man’s notice and led him to suggest that they both married daughters of Wigod—but also by their both succeeding to lands of a certain Brihtric, a fact, it would seem, unnoticed. In Bedfordshire ‘ Brixtric, thegn of King Edward,’ was the only English predecessor of Miles, and in Buck- inghamshire Miles had similarly succeeded, in fourteen cases, to the lands of a ‘ Brictric’ variously described as ‘a thegn of King Edward’ and ‘a man of Queen Edith.’ In Buckinghamshire also Robert d’Ouilly was holding two valuable manors of which one had been held by Brihtric, ‘thegn of King Edward,’ and the other by Brihtric of Queen Edith, while some land held by men of Brihtric at Wigginton across the Hertfordshire border had also passed to him. We can thus identify the Bedfordshire ‘ Brictric’ as a wealthy thegn who had ‘men’ of his own and lands in more than one county.” 1 See Feudal England, pp. 462-4, where Mr. Freeman’s errors on the point are corrected. 2 It should be observed that ‘Alwold (sic), a thegn of King Edward,’ was the count’s predecessor in all his Bedfordshire lands except at Stevington itself, which is entered as having been held by ‘ Ade- lold a thegn of King Edward.’ The two names would certainly be deemed distinct, and yet the entry, on the fief of the Bishop of Bayeux, of land at Turvey which had been held by ‘a man of Alwold of Stevington’ (‘homo Alwoldi de Stivetone’), proves that the names were identical and incidentally that Stevington was Alwold’s seat. I have elsewhere (p. 200) shown that Anschil of Ware is indifferently styled ‘Aschil? and ‘Achi’ in the survey of this county. These instances are important as evidence of the almost incredible variations in the forms of Englishmen’s names given by the Domesday scribes. 3 See Testa de Nevill, p. 249 ; ‘ Honor de Kenebauton verumptamen est in comitatu Huntedon, sed villate pertinentes sunt in comitatu Bed{ford].’ (Compare p. 214 below.) 4 The complaint was clearly ineffectual, for Clapham continued to form part of ‘the Honour of Wallingford’ (as Miles’ fief was termed). 5 He is also found in Worcestershire as ‘a thegn of Queen Edith,’ and possibly in Gloucester- shire as ‘a thegn of King Edward.’ 202 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY William Spech who appears as the holder of considerable estates in the county must have been a predecessor of Walter Espec, the famous leader at the Battle of the Standard (1138), for one of the three Cister- cian abbeys founded by the latter was at Warden in this county, a manor which was held by William Spech at the time of the Survey. Two of Walter’s sisters and co-heirs married Trailly and Ros, names which ap- pear in the Bedfordshire Domesday as those of under-tenants, and the house of Ros became his heirs in the north. Robert de Toeni (of Belvoir) obtained, here as elsewhere, the lands of Osulf, son of Frane, a wealthy thegn, while the single manor held by Robert Fafiton illustrates the opposite system of devolution; for the lands of his English predecessor Alwin ‘ Horim’ (or ‘ Horne’) had been given in the adjoining county of Hertfordshire to Derman, and Robert’s lands, which were in four counties, were derived from different owners. Flemings were well represented in this part of England, and the entry of Walter the Fleming’s lands is followed by those of estates held by ‘ Walter brother of Seier,’ who may possibly have been his father’s brother, for a Seiher—the name is distinctively Flemish—is incidentally alluded to, under Southill, as having been Walter the Fleming’s prede- cessor in the course of William’s reign. Moreover, both these barons had the same English predecessor, the thegn Leofnoth ; and, lastly, Segen- hoe was afterwards held as part of the ‘ Wahull’ barony, which is very strong evidence. Fellow-countrymen of theirs soon follow in Hugh the Fleming and in Sigar and Gunfrey de Chocques (‘ Cioches’) from what we call French Flanders, of whom the two latter were Northamptonshire barons. Gilbert of Ghent also held land in the county. It is strange to find Osbern Fitz Richard, the lord of Richard’s Castle, Herefordshire, holding estates so far east as this, but he seems to have had a special grant of the lands of Stori, a Bedfordshire ‘man’ of Earl Tostig. There is nothing to show how Archbishop Stigand had come to hold a considerable estate in Biggleswade (with Stratton and Holme) and Dunton, with some outlying appendages, or why it was divided between Richard Pungiant and Ralf ‘de Insula,’ neither of whom appears elsewhere as succeeding him. Albert of Lorraine, as I have elsewhere shown, was a ‘clerk’ or ‘chaplain’ (although there is nothing to show it in the entry of his Bedfordshire estates), who enjoyed the favour alike of Edward the Confessor and of William, and received from them lands and houses. Of Chalgrave, in the south of this county, we read that he had held it in Edward’s days. The three columns devoted to the lands of Judith, widow of Earl Waltheof, are of interest for the light they throw on the ‘ comital ’ his- tory of the county. Mr. Freeman, in his special study on ‘The great earldoms under Eadward,’ arrived at the conclusion that the shires of Huntingdon and Northampton, which were appurtenant to the earldom ' See The Commune of London and other Studies, pp. 36-7. 203 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of Northumberland, passed to Earl Waltheof on the fall of Harold’s brother Tostig in 1065. In Huntingdonshire, he wrote, Domesday ‘implies the succession of Siward, Tostig, and Waltheof by speaking of “‘men ” and of rights which belonged first to Tostig and afterwards to Waltheof.”" But, he added, ‘ of Bedfordshire I cannot speak with any certainty.’’ So far as actual possessions go, there is little to choose in Bedfordshire between Harold’s brothers, Earl Gyrth and Earl Tostig ; as for Harold himself he had but one ‘man’ in the county. Gyrth had held Kempston in its western, Tostig Potton in its eastern half, both of them important manors with satellites, which were held alike by Countess Judith in 1086.* In the case of Potton, however, there is a peculiarity ; we read not only of Potton itself, but also its ‘ berewick ’ Charlton : ‘Hoc M[anerium] tenuit rex Edwardus et fuit comitis Tosti.’ This is an ambiguous phrase which I interpret as meaning that King Edward had held the manor after Tostig’s forfeiture, but it might conceivably mean that the king had given it to Tostig. A further complication is intro- duced by the fact that lands at Cardington and Harrowden which had been held by a ‘man’ of Tostig could not be sold without the leave of the lord of Kempston. The ‘sphere of influence,’ as shown by their ‘men,’ of the two earls was but small in the county. Of Tostig’s man ‘Stori,’ I have al- ready spoken. Four other ‘men’ of his are mentioned, and one of Gyrth’s, but no succession of earls is indicated, nor are we shown how Countess Judith came by so much land in the county. Her husband, Waltheof, had but few ‘men’ within its borders, while in Cambridge- shire he had a good number. From the lands of Countess Judith, the Conqueror’s relative, to those of Bedford burgesses is a sharp change. Four of these bur- gesses who had been holding land in Biddenham before the Conquest continued to do so at the time of the survey, and their manors are followed by those of five other ‘ survivals,’ who, in spite of the heading, had nothing, I take it, to do with the burgesses. Edward had been allowed by the king’s writ to hold ‘in almoin’ half a hide which had belonged to his father, and Almar similarly half a virgate. Godmund retained three virgates and Alric one virgate, which they had held respec- tively before the Conquest. The arrangement of Domesday here is bad ; on the next page (218b) we find, after the king’s reeves, the names of more Englishmen who had been allowed to retain small holdings of land. These vary from three or four virgates to a quarter of a virgate. Holders of this class were usually grouped together, at the end of the survey of a county, as ‘king’s thegns,’ and this was actually done with Alwin and his holding at Keysoe, under Huntingdonshire (fo. 207b) ; but Domes- 1 Norman Conquest (1870), ii. 559. 2 Ibid p. 567. In the section dealing with ‘Religious Houses’ there will be found a curious claim, in 1327, by the abbess of Elstow to the (earl’s) ‘third penny’ of Bedford under a charter of Malcolm IV. (Earl of Huntingdon under Henry II.). Although unsuccessful, the claim connects Bedford with the earldom of Huntingdon and Northampton. 2 Compare pp. 257, 258 below. 204 ¢ THE DOMESDAY SURVEY day seems by its arrangement to have deemed them an anomalous class. The small English holder, when he retained his land, was usually doomed to pass sooner or later beneath the domination of a foreign lord. Even Norman, who held at Beeston no less than seven hides under Wil- liam as under Edward, held them only, at the time of the survey, as a tenant of Eudo dapifer. Smaller men were fortunate indeed if they could retain their own land as tenants of a Norman lord. At Astwick, ‘ Ledmar,’ a man of Earl Tostig, had ‘ himself’ held the half-hide which he only held at the time of the survey under Hugh de Beauchamp ; at Thurleigh, Leofric, who held a virgate under Miles Crispin, had held it ‘himself’ in King Edward’s time as a ‘man’ of Miles’ predecessor Brihtric, but he and ‘ Ledmar’ had power, we read, at that time to sell or assign their land. The change in their status is instructive. Of two Englishmen, each of whom held of Countess Judith, at the time of the survey, half a hide in Sutton, we read that they had been ‘the king’s men and had power to sell.’ Here we seem to detect the same alteration of status. At Dean there is a change of tenure of an unusual character: ‘the very same’ eleven sokemen who had held an estate in King Edward’s time with power to assign their land held it, in 1086, as ‘sokemen of King William’; but Ralf Tallebosc had assigned the land ‘in ministerio regis whatever that may mean. We must not think of these sokemen as holding the estate jointly, for the Domesday hundred rolls of Cambridgeshire show us that in such cases each of the sokemen had his own separate holding. There is, however, one entry unique for this county, if not for the whole country, in which tenure in common is actually asserted ; at Goldington we read of a hide which ‘the men of the vill held in common and could sell.’* As contrasting with the instances given above of a change of status in those who had become under-tenants at the time of the survey, we may take the exceptional case of Leofwine, who continued to hold at Clifton, after as before the Conquest, a small estate (‘one hide’) under the abbot of Ramsey. For Leofwine ‘ could not alienate this land from the abbey’ ; he had not the power to sell. The last section of the county survey is of value for the light it throws on the doings of the king’s reeves. Entry after entry shows us the restless Ralf Tallebosc assigning, as sheriff, to the king’s service (i ministerio regis) lands which had not belonged to it in King Edward’s time. Ten small estates head the list, and others follow lower down at Beeston and Dean. It is exceedingly difficult to discover the precise effect of Ralf's action in connection with these estates. Sewelland Biscot he seems to have annexed, with King William’s consent, to the royal manor of Houghton (fo. 20gb), and seventeen hides to that of Leighton (Buzzard) ; but these estates (fo. 209) are found in the hands of royal bailiffs ( prefecti or prepositi)—‘ reeves,’ the English would have called ' See for this ‘ notable case’ Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 142-3. 205 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE them, who claimed that they had the king’s consent for holding them. These lands had belonged to thegns or sokemen who had power to dis- pose of them, but the Domesday commissioners hardly seem to be con- cerned with the wrongs of the previous holders; they are rather examining the titles of those who were then in possession, and who ‘said’ they held by the king’s grant. How closely the evidence of title was examined is seen in the entry that, of 3§ virgates held by Chetelbert at Carlton, he had taken possession (occupavit) of 24 for which he could neither prove livery of seisin nor vouch any man to warranty. Still more remarkable is the case, on an earlier page, of Ernwi the priest (fo. 211), who held a hide at Harrowden, which his father had held before him in King Edward’s time. He could neither prove livery of seisin nor produce the king’s writ to account for his possession of his father’s land, which ‘ the Hundred ’ consequently charges him with taking possession of to the king’s injury (super regem). ‘Two burgesses of Bedford had similarly got into trouble by buying land since the Conquest without the transfer being ratified by the king. This was at Biddenham, where it was found, on scrutinizing the holdings of Godwine and Ordwi, that the former had ‘done service’ to no one for that portion of his land which he had bought and could not prove livery of seisin (nec de ea liber- atorem habuit), while Ordwi had similarly ‘ done service’ to no one for the land he had bought there. Of others, on the contrary, it is recorded that they were able to produce the king’s writ and seal. At Henwick Edward duly produced both the writ and the witness of ‘the Hundred’ that the king had granted him his small paternal estate ‘in alms’; and so did ‘ Almar’ at Sharnbrook. Even the Church was not exempt from having to produce its title in the case of newly acquired land, and the canons of St. Paul’s of London proved their right to Caddington by showing the king’s writ.’ The larger portion of Caddington, which lay in Hertfordshire and is sur- veyed under that county, had been held by the same thegn before the Conquest and had been similarly acquired by the canons. It is worth noting that Domesday is silent as to their producing, for that portion, any evidence that the king had sanctioned its acquisition. For what was done in the one case must have been done in the other, and I conclude, therefore, that in this, as in so many matters, the silence of Domesday is not evidence, and that in all such cases proof was called for and pro- duced. It must always be remembered in reading the survey that its chief object was the ascertainment of the king’s rights and dues, and that it was this that the Commissioners would specially keep in view. Whether William actually promulgated any universal rule as to Englishmen and their lands, and, if so, what that rule was, can only be matters of inference. So far as we can judge, all but a few specially favoured individuals were deprived of the lands they had held, or at most were allowed to retain a fragment or were placed in subjection to a 1 This manor 2 menof King Edward and 1 man of Earl Harold held, and each could assign his land to whom he wished. M. Hugh himself holds CHaINHALLE 1 This virgate is entered under Huntingdon- shire. See Introduction (J.H.R.) 2 Now part of Willey Hundred. 3 Now in Goldington, which is in Barford Hundred. 4 Nowin Willey Hundred. 5 The words within quotation marks are added at the foot of the folio, having been omitted in the text. OF LANDS [? Channells End®].” It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 5 ploughs. In the demesne are 2 hides, and on it are 2 ploughs, and 12 villeins have 3 ploughs, There are g bordars and 5 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams, and 1 mill (worth) 40 shillings and 100 eels, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. In all (totis valentiis) it is worth 8 pounds ; (was worth) when received roo shillings, and T.R.E.7 pounds. This manor Aschil, a thegn of King Edward, held. In the same (vill) Hugh holds half a hide which belongs to (jacet in) PurENEHou [Put- noe®]. There is land for 1 plough and 4 oxen are there and 2 bordars. It is and was worth 2 shillings. This land Anschil, a thegn of King Edward, held. In Gotpenrone [Goldington] Hugh holds 3 hides and 1 virgate which belongs to (jacet in) Putenehou [Putnoe]. There is land for 3 ploughs, and they are there, and 7 villeins and 1 bordar, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, and 1 mill (worth) 30 shillingsand 100 eels. In all it is worth 60 shillings ; (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 4 pounds. Of this land Ralf Tallgebosc had 2 hides and 3 virgates in exchange for (pro excambio de) Warres [Ware]. This land 9 sokemen held and could assign or sell to whom they wished. In WicHEsTANEsTOU [WIXAMTREE] HunpDRET In SupcrszeE [Southill!] Hugh holds 2 hides and 1 virgate. There is land for 3 ploughs and they are there, and meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is and was worth 40 shillings ; T.R.E. 50 shillings. This land 8 sokemen held and could do what they wished with it. In Sranrorp [Stanford'®] Hugh holds 1 hide and half avirgate of land. There is land for 14 ploughs, and they are there, and 4 vil- leins and 1 bordar, and meadow (sufficient) for 14 plough teams. It is and was worth 20 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 4 sokemen held, of whom 3 were free; the fourth had 1 hide but could neither assign nor sell. M. In Cuernerone [Cardington] Hugh holds 64 hides, and 2 thirds of 1 virgate. There island for 8 ploughs. In the demesne § In Colmworth. 7 In Barford Hundred. ® See Introduction. 8 In Goldington 40 In Southill. 237 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE are 24 hides, and 1 plough is on it; and 12 villeins have 7 ploughs. ‘There are 6 bordars, meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 120 swine, and 1 mill fo. 213 (worth) 40 shillings and 100 eels, In all it is worth 6 pounds ; (was worth) when received 100 shillings ; T.R.E. 6 pounds. This manor 13 sokemen held and could go to what lord (quo) they wished with their land. M. Hugh himself holds Wextrone [Wil- lington]. It is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 9 ploughs. In the demesne are 5 hides, and on it are 3 ploughs, and there could be a fourth ; and 13 villeins have 5 ploughs. There are 8 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 12 shil- lings and 100 eels ; meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams and woodland (to feed) 40 swine. In all (totts valentiis) it is worth 7 pounds, (was worth) when received 40 shillings and T.R.E. 6 pounds. This manor Aschil, a thegn of King Edward, held, and there were 8 sokemen there who could go (recedere) with their land to what lord (gus) they wished. Of this land they had 7 hides. In Cuirron [Cuirron] Hunprer M. Hugh himself holds Storrarr [Stot- fold]. It is assessed at 15 hides. There is land for 15 ploughs. In the demesne are 5 hides, and on it are 3 ploughs; and 21 vil- leins have 12 ploughs. ‘There are 14 bordars and 6 serfs, and 4 mills worth (de) 4 pounds and 400 eels, and meadow (sufficient) for 7 plough teams. In all (totis valentiis) it is worth 25 pounds ; when received (was worth) 12 pounds, and T.R.E. 20 pounds. On the day on which Ralf ‘Tallebosc died it was farmed at (ad firmam pro) 30 pounds. ‘This manor Aschil, a thegn of King Edward, held. He himself had 93 hides, and 7 soke- men held the remainder of the land and could sell (it) to whom they wished. One hide of this land belongs to the church of St. Alban, and the men of the hundred (court) say it belonged to it (i: jacuit) T.R.E. In Rarzorcgesrou [ REDBORNESTOKE] HuNDRET In Me.tpone [Maulden] Hugh holds half a hide and half a virgate. ‘There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and 1 villein and 1 bordar ; meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team and woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 10 shillings; when received (was worth) 5 shillings, and T.R.E. 12 shillings. This land Goduin, a man of Aschil, held and could assign and sell. M. In Housrong [Houghton (Conquest)] Hugh holds 5 hides. There is land for 6 ploughs, and they are there, and 8 villeins and 6 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 200 swine. It is and was worth 100 shillings; T.R.E. 7 pounds. ‘This manor 7 sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In FuicrHamM [Furr] Hunpret M. Hugh himself holds Hacznes [Hawnes (or Haynes)]. It is assessed at 5 hides. ‘There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 24 hides, and on it are 3 ploughs; and 14 villeins have 5 ploughs. ‘There are 9 bordars and 1 serf, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, and woodland (to feed) 500 swine. In all (¢otis valentiis) itis worth 10 pounds ; when received (was worth) 7 pounds, and as much T.R.E. This manor Achi, a thegn of King Edward, held In BEREFORDE [BaRForD] HunpReEtT M. Hugh himself holds SatcuHou [Sal- phot]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 8 ploughs and they are there. This land 11 sokemen hold and the same men held it T.R.E. and could assign and sell to whom they wished. There is meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 50 swine. In all it is worth 100 shil- lings, was worth as much when received, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. This land Ralf Tallge- bosc had in exchange for (pro excambio de) Wares [Ware], as his men say ; and when received, it was worth 8 pounds. In ManesHeve [MansHeaD] HunpRET M. Aspexzta [Aspley (Guise)] is assessed at 10 hides. Acard’ de Ivri holds it of Hugh. There is land for 12 ploughs. On the de- mesne are 2 ploughs, and there could be a third ; and 16 villeins have 8 ploughs and there could be a ninth. There are 4 bordars and § serfs, and 1 mill (worth) ro shillings ; meadow (sufficient) for 10 plough teams and woodland (to feed) 50 swine. In all (¢otis valentiis) it is worth 8 pounds; when received 100 shillings; T.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor was held by Leveva, (who was) com- mended to Earl Waltheof (commendata Wallef comitis) and could go to what lord (gue) she wished with her land. M. Saterorp [Salford] is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 5 ploughs. On 1 In Renhold. Now corruptly ‘Salph end’ (J.HLR.) 238 THE HOLDERS the demesne is 1 plough, and 12 villeins have 4 ploughs. There are 1 bordar and 4 serfs. A mill is there (worth) 9 shillings and 4 pence, meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 150 swine and through (de) other due(s) worth 10 shillings (besides), In all (¢otis valentiis) it is worth 4 pounds; (was worth) when received 60 shillings ; 'T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Turchil, a thegn of King Edward, held and could assign to whom he wished. M. In EvresHor [Eversholt] Ralf holds 74 hides of Hugh as 1 manor. There is land for 8 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 15 villeins have 6 ploughs. There are 4 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 8 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 100 shillings; (was worth) when received 3 pounds, and as much T.R.E. This manor Turgis, a thegn of King Edward, held and could sell. M. In Mippetrone [Milton (Bryant)] William Froissart holds of Hugh 6 hides as I manor. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 3 ploughs, and 6 villeins have 3 ploughs. ‘There are 3 bordars and 4 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams ; woodland (to feed) 40 swine. It is worth 6 pounds, (was worth) when received 4 pounds, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor Auti a housecarl of Earl Algar held and could do with it what he wished. M. The same William holds of Hugh Cravenuest [Gravenhurst].' It is assessed at 3 hides. ‘There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 4 villeins have 1; there could be another. ‘There are 3 bordars and 4 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 60 shillings; was worth as much when received, and T.R.E. 100 shillings. ‘This manor § sokemen held and could assign and sell their land to whom they wished. M. In Srraixrer [Streatley]* William de Locels holds 4 hides and 1 virgate of Hugh as 1 manor. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and there could be another, and 7 villeins have 4 ploughs. There are 5 bordars and 1 serf, and wood- land (to feed) 16 swine. It is worth 4 pounds; 1 This and the two manors which follow belong to the Hundred of Flitt. The hundredal heading has been omitted. 2 See note I above. OF LANDS (was worth) when received 40 shillings ; T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Aschil, a thegn of King Edward, held, and there was I sokeman there, his man, having 1 hide, which he could assign to whom he wished. M. The same William holds of Hugh, Ecuam [Higham (Gobion)*]. It is assessed at 8 hides. There is land for 11 ploughs. On the demesne are 4 ploughs, and 14 villeins have 7. There are 2 bordars and § serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 8 pounds; (was worth) as much when re- ceived ; and T.R.E. 12 pounds. This manor 5 sokemen held and could assign their land to whom they wished. In Stoppen [StoppEN] Hunpret In Esrong [Easton*] Wimund® holds of Hugh half a hide. There is land for 3 ploughs, and they are there. There are 2 villeins and 6 bordars, and woodland to feed 40 swine. It is worth 30 shillings; when received and T.R.E. (was worth) 20 shillings. This land Oviet, a man of Aschil, held and could assign and sell; but the soke always belonged to (jacuit in) Culmeworde (Colm- worth), Aschil’s manor. In RisEat [Riseley] Alvric the priest holds of Hugh half a hide. There is land for a half plough, and it is there and 4 bordars. It is worth 5 shillings, when received (was worth) a like sum, and T.R.E. 8 shillings. This land Uvenot a man of Godric the sheriff held and could assign to whom he wished. In Mippetrone [Milton (Ernest)] William Basset holds of Hugh 2 hides less half a virgate. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 1 villein has 1 plough. ‘There are 4 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 6 swine. It is worth 30 shillings ; (was worth) as much when re- ceived, and T’.R.E. 40 shillings. In roe Harr Hunpret or Bocuerar® M. In BuecuesHou [Bletsoe] Osbert de Broilg? holds of Hugh 23 hides. There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 3 See note 1 above. 4 Co, Hunts (see Introduction) 5 This must be Wimund de Taissel, who also held of Hugh at Barford and Colmworth (J.H.R.) ® Now part of Willey Hundred. 7 See p. 240, note 4, below, 239 A HISTORY OF plough and 7 villeins have 3 ploughs. There are 2 bordars and 2 serfs and a moiety of a mill (worth) ro shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is and was worth 60 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This manor Aschil held, and 3 sokemen had there 3 vir- fo. 213b gates and could sell (them) to whom they wished. In BipeHam [Biddenham] Serlo de Ros* holds 1 hide of Hugh. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there; and 1 bordar and 1 serf, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth ro shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land was held by Alsi of Bruneham [Bromham?], a man of Queen Eddid, and he could assign (it) to whom he wished. M. In BruneHam [Bromham] Serlo de Ros* holds 6 hides of Hugh. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 16 villeins have 4 ploughs. There are 5 bordars and 6 serfs, and 1 mill worth 20 shillings and 125 eels, meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 40 swine. In all it is worth 7 pounds; was worth when received 100 shillings; T.R.E. 4 pounds, This land Alsi, a man of Queen Eddid, held and could sell. In Witca [WiLtEy] Hunprer In Torve1 [Turvey] Warner holds 1 hide of Hugh. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and 1 villein (has) 1 plough. There are 4 bordars. It is worth 10 shillings ; (was worth) as much when re- ceived, and T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land 2, sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In Sernesroc [Sharnbrook] Osbern de Broilg* holds 14 virgates of Hugh. There is land for 3 oxen® (to plough). It is and was worth 2 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 3 sokemen held and could assign and sell. 1 He also held at Biddenham under William Spech. See p. 246 below (J.H.R.) 2 See the next entry. 3 See note 1 above. 4 This is the same as the Osbert (sic) de Broilg who held at Bletsoe, ‘Osbern’ and ‘ Osbert’ being used indifferently (J.H.R.) 5 i.e. three-eighths of a plough-team, just as 1} virgates was three-eighths of a hide. BEDFORDSHIRE In Lareca [Thurleigh ®] Leviet holds half ahide. There is land for 2 ploughs and they are there. ‘There are 4 bordars and 1 serf, and woodland (to feed) 30 swine. It is worth 30 shillings ; when received was worth 15 shillings; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Moding, a man of Queen Eddid, held and could sell. In Bererorp [BARForD] HunDRET In WisoLpEsTonE [Wyboston 7] Wimund holds half a virgate of Hugh and it is and was worth 2 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Aschil, a thegn of King Edward, held. In CatnestornE® [Chawston *] Riwalo?° holds of Hugh 4 virgates. There is land for 2 oxen (to plough). There are 2 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 2 oxen, and woodland (to feed) 60 swine. It is worth 10 shillings ; (was worth) when received, 15 shillings; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land 2 sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In RocuEstone [Roxton] Rualon holds of Hugh 1 hide and 1 virgate. ‘There is land for 1 plough; meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team; woodland (to feed) 4 swine. There are 2 bordars and 1 serf. It is worth 10 shillings; when received and T.R.E. (was worth) 20 shillings. This land 4 soke- men held, men of King Edward, and could sell. In BEREFORDE [(Great) Barford] Rualon holds of Hugh 3 hides.** There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne are 3 ploughs, and 3 villeins have 1 plough. ‘There are 5 bordars and 3 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 22 shillings and 4 score eels, and meadow (suffi- cient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 3 pounds ; (was worth) when received 30 shil- lings, T.R.E. 3 pounds. This land 3 soke- men, men of King Edward, held and could sell. In the same (vill) Wimund de Taissel holds of Hugh 5 hides and 2 thirds (partes) of 1 hide. There is land for 11 ploughs. On the demesne are 5 ploughs and 16 villeins have 6. There are 6 bordars and 1 serf; ® Land in ‘ Lega’ was subsequently held of the (Beauchamp) ‘ barony of Bedford’ (J.H.R.) 7 In Eaton Socon. 8 ? for Caluestorne. ® In Roxton. 10 This name is identical with the Rualon of the next two entries and is Breton (J.H.R.) it MS. has ca?’ corrected, by underlining, to Aid. 240 THE HOLDERS OF LANDS meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 10 pounds ; was worth when received 20 shillings; T.R.E. 60 shillings. This manor 3 sokemen held and could assign and sell. M. The same (ise) Wimund holds of Hugh CoLmMEworvE [Colmworth]. It is assessed at 5 hides. ‘There is land for 10 ploughs. On the demesne are 2, and 12 villeins have 8 ploughs. There are 13 bordars and 1 serf, and woodland (to feed) 200 swine. It is and was worth 100 shillings, T.R.E. 4 pounds. This manor Achi, a thegn of King Edward, held ; and 8 sokemen were there, who could assign and sell their land to whom they wished. In BeREFoRDE [(Great) Barford] Anschetil the priest holds of Hugh 14 hides. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 1 villein (has) 1 plough. There are 6 bordars and 3 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 7 shillings, and meadow sufficient for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 40 shil- lings, T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 2 sokemen held and could sell. In the same (vill) Tetbaud holds of Hugh 1 hide and 3 virgates and the third part of 1 virgate. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2, and 1 villein has 1 plough. There are 8 bordars and 1 serf, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 40 shillings ; (was worth) when received 20 shillings, and T.R.E. 60 shillings. This manor 3 sokemen held and could assign and sell. In Goxpenrone [Goldington] Roger son of Teodric holds of Hugh 2 hides. ‘There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 3 villeins have 1 plough. There are 2 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 30 shillings ; when received (was worth) 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 40 shillings. "These 2 hides Ralf ‘Tall[ge]b[osc] held in exchange for (fro excambio de) Wares [Ware]. This land 3 sokemen held who could assign their land to whom they wished. In the same (vill) Richard holds of Hugh 3 hides as 1 manor. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 5 villeins have 1 plough. One serf is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 40 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 60 shillings. These 3 hides Ralf Tall[ge]b[osc] held in exchange for (pro excambio de) Wares [Ware]. This manor was held by Almer, aman of Aschil, and he could sell it. In the same (vill) Walter holds or Hugh 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there ; and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team, and there are 2 serfs. It is worth 15 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 15 shillings. This land is (held) in exchange for (est escambium de) Wares [Ware]. ‘This land the men of the vill held in common and they could sell it. In BICHELESWADE [BIGGLESWADE] HunDRET In Hotma [Holme*] Mortuing holds of Hugh 1 virgate. There is land for 3 oxen (to plough), and they are there. It is worth 3 shillings; (was worth) T.R.E. 5 shillings. This land 1 sokeman held under Aschil and could sell and assign it. In Estwicue [Astwick] Bernard holds of Hugh 1 hide and 1 virgate. There is land for 24 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 2 villeins have 24 ploughs. ‘There are 3 bordars and meadow sufficient for 4 oxen. It is worth 20 shillings ; when received and T.R.E. (was worth) 10 shillings. This manor 6 sokemen held and could sell. In the same (vill) Wenelinc holds of Hugh half a hide. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there. There are 3 bordars. It is worth 10 shillings ; (was worth) when received 5 shillings; and T.R.E. 20 shillings—and they ? could sell it. In the same (vill) Ledmar holds halt a hide. ‘There is land for a half plough and it is there. ‘There are 3 bordars, and 1 mill worth (de) 9 shillings and 4 pence. It is and was worth 20 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). The same man who holds it held it T.R.E. He was a man of Earl Tosti, and he could sell (it) to whom he wished. In WicHEsTangestou [WIxAMTREE] HunprRET In StTanForbE [Stanford *] Roger holds of Hugh 1 hide. There is land for 14 ploughs, and they are there, and 4 villeins and 1 bor- dar, meadow (sufficient) for 14 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 16 swine, and a moiety of a mill worth (de) 5 shillings. In all it is worth 15 shillings ; (was worth) when received 5 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land AZilmar of Ow (Oux) held and could sell to whom he wished. In Cocuepot [Cople] Robert holds of Hugh 4 hides as 1 manor. There is land for 1 In Biggleswade. 2 So MS. 3 In Southill. I 241 31 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 4 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 6 villeins have 2 ploughs. ‘There are 1 bordar and 1 serf, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. There is woodland all over (super totam) Chochepol [Cople] (enough to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 60 shillings ; when received (was worth) 20 shillings, and T.R.E. 60 shillings. This land 3 sokemen held and could sell. In the same (vill) Raynald holds of Hugh 1 hide and 1 virgate. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and 2 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 oxen. It is worth 10 shillings ; (was worth) when received 5 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. ‘This land 2 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. In the same (vill) Gunfrey (Gonfrid’) holds of Hugh 1 hide and half a virgate. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there. There are 1 villein and 1 serf, and meadow sufficient for 4 oxen. It is worth 10 shillings ; (was worth) when received 5 shillings, and T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land 2 sokemen held. They were the king’s men and could sell. In the same (vill) Norman holds of Hugh 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and 2 oxen are there and meadow (sufficient) for 4 oxen. It is worth 6 shillings; when received (was worth) a like sum, and T.R.E. 8 shil- lings. Of this land Aschil held 3 virgates fo. 214 which belonged to (jacuit in) Weltone [Wil- lington], his manor, and Alestan held 1 virgate which he could sell to whom he wished. In the same (vill) Branting held 1 hide of Hugh. ‘There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 oxen. It is and was worth 10 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 3 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. In the same (vill) Robert holds of Hugh 3 virgates. There is land for 1 plough and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 oxen. It is and was worth 74 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 2 sokemen held and could sell. In the same (vill) Roger the priest and Liboret hold half a hide and half a virgate. There is land for 6 oxen’ (to plough) and they are there, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 oxen. It is and was worth 5 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 3 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. Nine hides of this manor of Chochepol [Cople] Ralf Tallgebosc had in exchange for (pro excambio de) Wares [Ware], his men say, 1 ive. three-quarters of a plough-team. and when he received them they were worth 4 pounds. In NortersieE [Northill] Walter holds of Hugh half a hide. There is land for a half plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is worth 5 shil- lings ; when received (was worth) a like sum, and T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Osiet, a man of King Edward, held and could sell to whom he wished. In Cutsrone® [Cuirron] Hunpret In Cupessane [?Chicksand*] 3 sokemen hold of Hugh 2 hides. ‘There is land for 14 ploughs, and they are there, and 1 bordar, and meadow (sufficient) for 14 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 4 swine. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land 4 soke- men held and could sell to whom they wished. XXIV. THE LAND OF NIGEL DE ALBINGI In Manesueve [MansHeap] Hunprer M. In Crawetar [(Husborne) Crawley] Turgis holds of Nigel de Albini (Albintensi) 5 hides as 1 manor. There is land for 5 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs; and there could be 3 belonging to the villeins (vi//an- orum). There are 1 villein and 7 bordars and 1 serf, and meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams. In all it is worth 30 shillings; when received (was worth) 40 shillings, and T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor 9 thegns held and could sell their land to whom they wished. In THE saME Hunpret Turgis holds of Nigel 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and the plough is there, and 2 serfs and wood~ land (to feed) 10 swine. This land is worth 15 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shillings; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land was held by Suglo, a man of Alric son of Goding, and he could sell it to whom he wished. M. Tincrer [Tingrith] Turgis holds of Nigel for 2 hides and 1 virgate. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and 4 villeins have 2 ploughs. There are 2 bordars, meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 150 swine. It is worth 40 shillings ; was worth when re- ceived 30 shillings; T.R.E. 100 shillings. 2 For Cliftone. 3 See Introduction. 242 THE HOLDERS This manor 2 thegns held and could sell to whom they wished. In Presretar [Priestley'] Turgis holds of Nigel 14 hides. There is land for 2 ploughs and they are there ; meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams; woodland (to feed) 40 swine. There are 1 villein and 4 bordars. It is worth 20 shillings; (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 60 shillings. This land 5 thegns held and could assign and sell. M. Nigel holds Hertincpong [Harling- ton]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 10 ploughs. On the demesne are 3} ploughs and there could be 2 more. There 12 villeins have 5 ploughs. There are 6 bor- dars and 10 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 400 swine, and 1 ram and 1 load of oats (are proceeds) from the woodland. It is worth 6 pounds ; when received (was worth) 4 pounds ; T.R.E. 9g pounds. This manor 4 thegns held and could sell to whom they wished. In RatTBorcEsTOCHE [REDBORNESTOKE] HuNnpDRET In EssErrone [Shelton *] Erfast holds of Nigel 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and the plough is there ; meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team; woodland (to feed) 40 swine. There are 1 villein and 2 bordars and 1 serf. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) when received 15 shillings, and T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land was held by Alward a man of Alric son of Goding and he could assign it to whom he wished. In the same (vill) Stephen holds of Nigel half a hide. There is land for a half plough and it is there with 2 bordars ; meadow is there (sufficient) for 2 oxen ; woodland (to feed) 12 swine. It is worth 6 shillings; when re- ceived (was worth) 3 shillings, and T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Fuglo, a man of Alric son of Goding, held and could sell to whom he wished. M. In Mersrong [Marston (Morteyne)] Erfast holds of Nigel 8 hides and half a virgate. There is land for 10 ploughs. On the demesne are 3 ploughs, and 14 villeins (are there) with 8 ploughs. ‘There are 2 bordars and 4 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 8 plough teams, wood- land (to feed) 300 swine. It is worth 7 pounds ; when received 100 shillings ; T.R.E. 12 pounds. This manor 21 sokemen held 1 In Flitwick. 2 In Marston Morteyne (J.H.R.) OF LANDS who could sell or assign their lands to whom they wished. M. Nigel de Wast® holds of Nigel de Albini (Albiniensi) MELEBRoc [Millbrook]. It isassessed at 5 hides. ‘There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 4 villeins (are there) with 4 ploughs. There are 2 bordars, and 2 mills worth (de) 6 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 100 swine, It is worth 3 pounds ; (was worth) when received 30 shillings, and T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Goduin son of Lewin held “who could all sell or assign their land to whom they wished. M. The same (ifse) Nigel de Wast holds of Nigel de Albini AMMETELLE [Ampthill]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 8 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 6 villeins have 4 ploughs and there could be 2 more. There are 2 bordars and 1 serf, meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, wood- land (to feed) 300 swine. It is worth 4 pounds; when received (was worth) 40 shil- lings; T.R.E. 4 pounds. This manor 7 soke- men held and could sell and assign their land to whom they wished. The same Nigel holds of Nigel Brumz [Broom *]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for § ploughs ; and so many are there with 9g villeins and 5 bordars. There is woodland (to feed) 30 swine. It is worth 40 shillings. Seven sokemen held it and could assign and sell it. In Metpong [Maulden] John de Roches ® took unjust possession of 25 acres to the hurt of (super) the men who hold that vill; so the men of the hundred (court) attest ; and now Nigel de Albini has them. M. Nigel de Albini (4/biniensis) holds WeEs- coTE [ .7] It is assessed at 3 hides all but 1 virgate. There is land for 6 ploughs. Five are there and there could be a sixth. There 3 See Introduction, p. 199. 4 MS. is probably defective. 5 In Southill and near Biggleswade, in Wixam- tree Hundred. This is probably the identification. The entry is inserted in the margin, having been omitted, and is placed next to the other holding of Nigel de Wast, without note of what Hun- dred it was in. I think it was in Wixamtree (F.W.R.) ® See Introduction. 7 Formerly Westcote, a hamlet in Willsham- stead, which was in Redbornestoke Hundred 243 A HISTORY OF are 5 villeins and 11 bordars, meadow (suffi- cient) for 2 plough teams, woodland to feed 100 swine and yielding iron (ferrum) for the ploughs.’ It is worth 60 shillings ; (was worth) when received 40 shillings, and T.R.(E.) 6 pounds. This manor 7 sokemen held and could assign and sell their land to whom they wished. In Fiicruam [Furr] Hunpret M. Nigel himself holds Croprtie [Clop- hill]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 3 hides, and on it are 2 ploughs; and 5 villeins have 6 ploughs. There are 5 bordars and 1 serf; meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams ; wood- land (to feed) 200 swine and (worth) 12 pence (besides). It is worth 60 shillings, (was worth) when received 30 shillings, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. ‘This manor 2 thegns held, men of Earl Tosti. Of these 5 hides Nigel himself claims 1 virgate which his predecessor held T.R.E. Nigel himself was seised of it after he came into (possession of) the honour (ad honorem venit). But Ralf Tallgebosc dis- seised him. M. Nigel himself holds CuatneHou [Cain- hoe].? It is assessed at 4 hides. There is land for 6 ploughs. There are 2 hides and 3 virgates in the demesne; 2 ploughs are on it, and there could be 2 others. There 3 villeins have 2 ploughs, and (there is) 1 mill worth (de) 6 shillings, and meadow (sufficient) for 8 plough teams. There is woodland (to feed) 100 swine and (worth) 2 shillings be- sides. “There are 3 bordars and 5 serfs. It is worth 60 shillings; when received (was worth) 30 shillings, and T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Alvric, a thegn of King Edward, held and could assign and sell without his leave. M. In Srwiessov [Silsoe] a certain concu- bine of Nigel’s holds 2 hides. ‘There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 2 villeins have 2 ploughs and there could be a third. There are 3 bordars and 1 serf ; meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams ; woodland (to feed) 50 swine. It is worth 30 shillings ; was worth as much when re- ceived and T.R.E. This land was held by Alvric the little (farvus), a thegn of King Edward. M. Roger and Ruallon hold of Nigel de 1 See Introduction, p. 212. 2 This became the head of the barony (J.H.R.) BEDFORDSHIRE Albini® PorocuesseLe [Pulloxhill]. It is as- sessed at 10 hides. ‘There is land for 13 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and there could be 2 others, and 11 villeins have 9 ploughs. There are 13 bordars and 2 serfs ; meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams; woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 10 pounds; when received (was worth) 8 fo. 214b pounds, and T.R.E. 13 pounds. This manor 8 sokemen held and could assign and sell their land to whom they would. M. In Strap. [Streatley] Pirot * holds of Nigel (de) Alb(ini) 4 hides and the third part of 1 hide as 1 manor. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 4 villeins have 1 plough and there could be 3 more. There are 4 bordars and 1 serf; meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams ; woodland (to feed) 20 swine. There a cer- tain Shas 1 plough. It is worth 4 pounds ; when received (was worth) 40 shil- lings ; T.R.E. 6 pounds. This manor Lewin Cilt held, and 3 other thegns of King Edward and they could sell their land to whom they wished. ‘Three hides of this land Pirot holds by marriage as his wife’s (de maritagio sue femina), and 1 hide and a third part of 1 hide he holds in fee of Nigel de Albini. In MirpenTone [ Milton (Ernest)*] Turgis holds of Nigel 3 hides all but 1 virgate. There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and 4 villeins have 23 ploughs and a half plough” villeins and 3 bordars. There is meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams. It is worth 30 shillings ; (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land 6 sokemen held and could assign or sell their land to whom they wished. In Witce [WiLLEY] Hunprer In CarxentonE [Carlton] Chetel holds of Nigel 1 hide and the third part of 1 hide. There is land for 14 ploughs, and they are 3 ¢ten’ Nigell’ de albin’.’ 4 See p. 236, note 3. Ralf Pirot held 5 fees and John Pirot 1 fee of Robert de Albini on this fief in 1166 (J.H.R.) 5 Word probably omitted in MS. § Milton Ernest was in Stodden Hundred, but the hundredal heading is omitted. The 23 hides here entered is exactly the amount required, with the other Milton Ernest entries, to complete the 10 hide unit (J.H.R.) 7 So MS., apparently defective. Probably the text should read: ‘And there could be half a plough more’ (J.H.R.) 244 THE HOLDERS OF LANDS there, and 3 villeins and 2 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 14 plough teams. It is worth 20 shillings; (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 15 shillings. This land Golderon a man of Levenot held and could assign to whom he wished. In the same (vill) Bernard holds of Nigel 1 hide and half a virgate. There is land for 14 ploughs, and they are there, and 5 bordars; meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, and 1 mill (worth) 13 shillings and 4 pence. It is worth 40 shillings; (was worth) when re- ceived 20 shillings, and T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land 3 sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In RapEweELz [Radwell’] Nigel Wast holds of Nigel de Albingi 7 hides and 14 virgates. There is land for § ploughs. On the demesne is 1, and 6 villeins have 4 ploughs. There are 6 bordars and 3 serfs, and 1 mill worth (de) 10 shillings, and meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams. It is worth 4 pounds ; (was worth, as much when received, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. ‘This manor 10 sokemen held and could assign their land to whom they wished. In Tornera? [Turvey] Nigel de Wast holds of Nigel de Albingi 1 hide and half a virgate. There is land for 14 ploughs and they are there and 5 bordars ; meadow (suffi- cient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 13 shillings; (was worth) as much when received ; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Alward a man of Bishop Wlwi held and could assign to whom he wished. In BEREFORDE [BARFORD] HUNDRET In WizotpestuneE [Wyboston*] Pirot ‘ holds of the king 9 hides and 1 virgate of Nigel’s fee. There is land for 9 ploughs. On the demesne are 4 ploughs and 12 villeins have 5 ploughs. There are 6 bordars and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 6 pounds ; (was worth) when received 4 pounds ; T.R.E. 10 pounds, This manor 12 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. In BICHELESWADE [BIGGLESWADE] HuNDRET Fulcher of Paris ® (paristacensis) holds half a hide of Nigel. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, and 1 serf. It is worth 52 shillings ; In Felmersham. For Torueia. In Eaton Socon. See p. 244, note 4, above. See p. 232, note z, above, a rw to when received (was worth) 10. shillings ; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Samar, a man of Lewin held and could sell. In Houme [Holme®] the same (psc) Fulcher holds of Nigel 1 hide and half a virgate. There is land for 2 ploughs, and they are there, and 3 villeins, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 20 shillings, was worth when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land 7 sokemen held and could assign and sell. In WicueEstanestou [WIXAMTREE] Hunpret In Hercuetone [Harrowden’] Nigel holds 6 hides. There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 14 hides and half a virgate, and on it is 1 plough; and 14 villeins have 7 ploughs. ‘There are 10 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 50 swine. In all it is worth 100 shillings ; (was worth) when re- ceived 4 pounds, and T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor 14 sokemen held and could assign and sell their land to whom they wished. In Cutstone® [Ciirron] Hunpretr In Cutstone [Clifton] William de Caron holds 2 hides of Nigel. There is land for 14 ploughs. One plough is there, and there could be a half plough (more). Meadow is there (sufficient) for 1 plough team. Itis worth 15 shillings, when received (was worth) 10 shil- lings, and T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land 4 sokemen held and could assign and sell. In Hanestav [Henlow] Erfast holds of Nigel 54 hides. There is land for 54 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and ro villeins have 34 ploughs. There are 3 serfs and 1 mill worth (de) 5 shillings, and meadow suffi- cient for 5 plough teams, From pasture (come) 10 pence. In all (totis valentiis) it is worth 110 shillings, (was worth) when re- ceived 4 pounds, and T.R.E. 7 pounds. This land g sokemen held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. Of these 54 hides the monks of St. Nicho- las of Angers now hold of Nigel 3 virgates in almoin. In Arriceseta [Arlesey] Erfast holds of Nigel 3 virgates and the third part of 1 virgate, There is land for 1 plough, and it is there and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough 6 In Biggleswade. 7 In Eastcotts. 8 For Cliftone, 245 A HISTORY OF team. It is worth 17 shillings, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 20 shil- lings. This land 2 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. XXV. THE LAND OF WILLIAM SPECH In Manesueve [MansHeap] Hunpret M. William Spech holds in Hoxecore [Holcutt] 4 hides as 1 manor, and Ralf Passa- q(uam) holds of him. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and § villeins have 2 ploughs. ‘There are 8 bor- dars and 1 serf, and 1 mill (worth) § shillings and 4 pence, and woodland (to feed) 50 swine. In all it is worth 60 shillings ; when received 20 shillings; T.R.E. 40 shillings. This manor Alward Belrap, a man of Alric, held and could sell to whom he wished. This land is (held by William) in exchange for (est de excambio de) Totingedone [Todding- ton*], which he exchanged for it. In RaATBERNESTOCHE [REDBORNESTOKE] HuNDRET William son of Rainald holds of William Spech Srepicexal [Steppingley]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 7 ploughs. On the demesne are 1} ploughs, and 14 villeins have 54 ploughs, and (there are) 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 7 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. In all it is worth 4 pounds, (was worth) when received 40 shillings; T.R.E. 8 pounds, This manor was held by Almar, a man of Alvric of Flicte- wite [Flitwick*], and there were 2 sokemen, his men, there, who could sell their land to whom they wished. In Fruicruam [Furr] Hunprer In Srraprer [Streatley] Hugh holds of William two-thirds ( partes) of 1 virgate. There is land for 2 oxen® (to plough). It is and was worth 2 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Alvric, a man of Alvric the little, held and could sell to whom he wished. M. In BipeHam [Biddenham] Ralf and Serlo de Ros hold of William 4 hides less 14 virgates. There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 6 villeins have 2 ploughs. There are 2 bordars and 2 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 10 shillings, and 1 Toddington (‘ Dodintone’) appears above as held by Ernulf de Hesdin in 1086 (J.H.R.) 2 The name of the holder of Flitwick is given below as Alwin. 3 je, a quarter of a plough-team. BEDFORDSHIRE meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams. It is worth 40 shillings; (was worth) when received 20 shillings, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This manor 11 sokemen held and could assign and sell their land to whom they wished. This land William states that he has in ex- change for (pro excambio de) Totingedone [Toddington 4]. In Witce [Wittey] Hunpret In Henewic [Hinwick] Walter holds of William 1 hide. There is land for 2 ploughs. A half plough is there, and there could be another and a half. It is worth 10 shillings ; (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land was held by Ulnod, a man of Ulsi son of Borgret, and he could assign to whom he wished. In WimentoneE [Wymington] Walter holds of William 3 virgates. There is land fo. 215 for a half plough. It is worth 2 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. ro shillings. This land Levric, a man of Borgred, held and could assign to whom he wished. In BEREFORDE [BARFORD] HuNDRET In CHAVELESTORNE [Chawston *] William son of Raineward holds of William 7 hides and 1 virgate. ‘There is land for 7 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 16 villeins have 6 ploughs. There are 2 bordars and 1 serf, and 1 mill worth (de) 13 shillings and 4 pence, meadow (sufficient) for 7 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 10 swine. In all it is worth 6 pounds, (was worth) when received 4 pounds, and T.R.E. 9 pounds. ‘This land 12 sokemen held and could sell to whom- they wished. Of these 7 hides and 1 virgate the men of William Spech claim 14 acres of meadow against (super) the men of Eudo Dapifer ; and the hundred (court) attests that his predecessor had it T.R.E. ; and the same William claims against (super) a certain man of Hugh de Beauchamp other 7 acres of land of which he was disseised, but of which his predecessor was seised. Of the aforesaid land Eudo Dapifer claims 1 acre against (super) Ruallon aman of Hugh de Beauchamp.® In the same (vill) William Gros holds half a hide of William Spec. There is land for a half plough and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. There * See note 1. 5 In Roxton. ® He held of him at Chawston, 246 THE HOLDERS OF LANDS are 2 villeins. It is worth 5 shillings, (was worth) when received 5 shillings, and T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land 2 men of King Edward held and could sell to whom they wished. M. In Rocugspong [Roxton] William Spec holds 8 hides and 3 virgates. There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 4 hides and 3 virgates, and on it are 2 ploughs, and 12 villeins have 6 ploughs. There are I bordar and 1 serf, and 1 mill worth (de) 33 shillings and 260 eels, meadow sufficient for 3 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 7 pounds, (was worth) when received 50 shillings, and T.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor 12 sokemen held and could sell their land to whom they wished. In BicHELEswADE [BIGGLESWADE] HuNDRET M. In AtssEworpE [Eyworth] William Spec holds g hides as one manor. There is land for 9 ploughs. In the demesne are 54 hides, and on it are 3 ploughs, and 13 villeins have 6 ploughs. There are 2 bordars and 6 serfs, and 1 mill worth (de) 8 shillings, and meadow (sufficient) for 9 plough teams. It is worth 7 pounds, when received (was worth) the same, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor 20 sokemen held and could assign or sell their land to whom they wished without leave of their lords. In WicHENESTANESTOU [WIXAMTREE] HuNDRET M. In Supervere [Southill] 2 Frenchmen hold of William Spech 5 hides and half a vir- gate. There is land for 7 ploughs. On the demesne are 4 ploughs, and 8 villeins have 3 ploughs. There are 8 bordars and 6 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 7 plough teams and woodland (to feed) 200 swine. It is worth 4 pounds and 10 shillings ; (was worth) when received 4 pounds; T.R.E. 3 pounds. ‘This manor 16 sokemen held and could assign and sell their land to whom they would. In Sranrorp [Stanford’] Hugh holds of William Spech 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough and it is there, and the moiety of a mill (worth) 5 shillings. ‘There are 2 serfs, meadow sufficient for 1 plough team, wood- land to feed 20 swine. It is worth 15 shil- lings, when received (was worth) 20 shillings, and as much T.R.E. This land Lemar, a thegn of King Edward, held. M. In Warpvone [Warden] William Spec 1 In Southill. holds 9 hides of the king as one manor. There is land for 9 ploughs. In the demesne are 34 hides, and on it is 1 plough and there could be another. There 18 villeins have 7 ploughs, There are 4 bordars and 4 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 12 shillings, and meadow suffi- cient for 6 plough teams. It is worth 6 pounds, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor 8 soke- men held and could assign their land to whom they would. In Bistonz [Beeston*] William Spech holds 4 virgates. There is land for 1 plough. A half plough is there and there could be (another) half plough. There is meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is worth 10 shillings, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 20. shillings. This land Lewin Cilt, a king’s thegn, held. In Norrtetvere [Northill] Walter Spec holds 64 hides as one manor. There is land for 7 ploughs. In the demesne are 4 hides and on it are 3 ploughs, and 10 villeins have 4 ploughs. ‘There are 4 serfs and a moiety of a mill worth (de) 13 shillings, meadow sufficient for 7 plough teams and woodland to feed 200 swine. In all it is worth 6 pounds, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. ‘This manor 6 sokemen held. They could assign and sell to whom they wished T.R.E. XXVI. THE LAND OF ROBERT DE TODENI In Sranpurce [STanpripceE] Hunprer® M. Rotbert de Todeni holds of the king EstopHam [Studham], and Baldric holds of Robert. It is assessed at 6 hides. ‘There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and ro villeins have 4 ploughs. There are 1 bordar and 4 serfs, and woodland to feed 100 swine. It is worth 4 pounds, (was worth) when received 40 shillings, and T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor was held by Osulf son of Frane, a thegn of King Edward.* [ A In Acuerer [Oakley] 2 knights (mi/ites) hold of Robert 4 hides. There is land for 8 ploughs. On the demesne are 3 ploughs and 3 In Sandy. 3 Half Hundred. Now part of Manshead Hun- dred. * See Introduction. 5 The name of the Hundred is apparently omitted. It should be ‘Stodene.’ 247 HISTORY OF there could be a fourth. There 7 villeins have 4 ploughs, and (there are) 3 bordars and 5 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 26 shillings and 200 eels, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams. It is worth 4 pounds, (was worth) when received a like sum, and T.R.E. 4 pounds and 10 shillings. This land Osulf, a thegn of King Edward, held. In Witce [Wittey] Hunpret In Torvet [Turvey] 2 knights (milites) hold of Robert 2 hides and 1 virgate. There is land for 44 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 3 villeins have 2 ploughs and there could be a half plough (more). There are 6 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient for) 1 plough team, and woodland (to feed) 10 swine. It is worth 40 shillings, (was worth) when received 60 shillings; T.R.E. 70 shillings. This land the aforesaid Osulf held. XXVII. THE LAND OF GILBERT DE GAND In rHE HatF Hunprep oF STANBURGE! Gilbert de Gand holds Ep1ncEBERGE [Edles- borough 7]. It is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 7 ploughs. In the demesne are 5 hides and on it are 4 ploughs, and 10 villeins have 4 ploughs. In all (totis valentiis) it is worth 110 shillings, when received (was worth) a like sum, and T.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor Ulf, a thegn of King Edward, held and could do with it what he wished. XXVIII. THE LAND OF ROBERT DE OILGI In Witce [WitLey] Hunprer Rotbert de Olgi holds in Lareca [Thur- leigh], and Richard Basset holds of him, half a hide. There is land for 2 ploughs. One isnow there and there could be another. There are 1 villein and 3 bordars and 2 serfs, and wood- land (to feed) 30 swine. It is and was worth 40 shillings T.R.E. and since (semper). This land Oviet, a thegn of King Edward,® held and could sell to whom he wished. The men of Eudo claim this land through the 1 Now part of Manshead Hundred. 2 Now wholly in Bucks. Gilbert de Gand is entered under Bucks as holding zo hides at ‘ Ed- dinberge,’ so that one-third of it was reckoned as in Beds at the time of the Survey (J.H.R.) 3 This was probably the ‘Oviet,’ a man of King Edward, who had been succeeded by Countess Judith at Sharnbrook close by (J.H.R.) BEDFORDSHIRE predecessor of their lord,* all whose lands King William gave to him (sz). In the same (vill) Salomon the priest holds 1 virgate of Robert de Olgi. There is land for 1 plough and it is there with 1 bordar. It is and was worth 10 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Alwin, a man of Bishop Wlwi held, and could sell. XXIX. THE LAND OF RANNULF BROTHER OF ILGER In THE Hate Hunpret oF BocuHerar® Rannulf, Ilger’s brother, holds 5 hides in PaBENEHAM [Pavenham] and Robert son of Nigel of him. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and there could be another ; and g villeins have 2 ploughs and there could be other 2. There are 2 bordars and 3 serfs, and meadow sufficient for 6 plough teams. It is worth 3 pounds, (was worth) when received 4 pounds, and T.R.E. 6 pounds. ‘This manor Goduin, a thegn of King Edward, held. Of this land Rannulf, Ilger’s brother, claims 12 acres of arable against Gilbert son of Salomon,® and 4 acres of meadow against Hugh de Grentmaisnil,’ of which Rannulf has been unjustly dispossessed. And the men of the half hundred (court) state that this land which Hugh and Gilbert are now holding belonged T.R.E. to (jacuit ad) the land which Rannulf, Ilger’s brother, holds. XXX. THE LAND OF ROBERT FAFITON ® In FurcrHam [Furr] Hunprer Rotbert Fafiton holds Fricrua [Flitton] of the king. It is assessed at 5 hides. There fo. ar5b is land for 6 ploughs, In the demesne are 2 hides, and on it are 2 ploughs. There 3 villeins have 2 ploughs and there could be 2 others. There are 3 bordars and 4 serfs, and meadow (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 50 swine. In all it is worth 60 shillings, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Alwin Horim, a thegn of King Edward, held. * The predecessor in question was probably Lisois de Moustiers (see p. 236, note 2, above). ® Now part of Willey Hundred. ® He held at Felmersham, the next parish to Pavenham (J.H.R.) ” Hugh’s wife appears below as holding land in Milton (Ernest) facing Pavenham across the Ouse, on the banks of which this meadow must have been (J.H.R.) 8 See Introduction. 248 THE HOLDERS XXXI. THE LAND OF ALVRED OF LINCOLN In Witcze [Wiuey] Hunprert M. Alvered of Lincoln holds in W1ImMEN- TONE [Wymington] 3 hides, and Gleu holds of him.t. There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and there could be another. There are 1 villein and 6 bordars and 3 serfs with 2 ploughs, and meadow sufficient for 2 plough teams. It is worth 40 shillings; (was worth) when received 50 shillings ; T.R.E. 60 shillings. This manor Goduin Franpold held and could sell. With these 3 hides Alvered claims against Walter the Fleming half a hide of which he dis- possessed him unjustly, as the men of the hundred (court) bear testimony, since his pre- decessor was seised of it T.R.E., and the same Alvered was afterwards possessed of it.? With this land, besides, the same Alvered claims against the Bishop of Coutances* wood- land (to feed) 100 swine, which land his predecessor had T.R.E., but the bishop dis- possessed him of it unjustly, as the men of the hundred (court) attest. XXXII. THE LAND OF WALTER THE FLEMING In THE Harr HunpreT oF STANBURGE * M. Walter the Fleming holds TorznzHou [Totternhoe] and Osbert holds of him. It was assessed at 15 hides T.R.E. But after that King William came to England it was assessed ® only at (non se defendit nisi pro) 10 hides, and the men who held and still hold (the) 5 hides kept back all the king’s dues and ‘gafol’ (gablum) and still keep them back. There is land for 10 ploughs. On the de- mesne are 2 ploughs, and 22 villeins have 4 ploughs and there could be 4 others, There are 2 bordars and 4 serfs. There are 3 mills worth (de) 10 shillings and 8 pence, meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams, and woodland 1 He also held of Alvred in Lincolnshire at Cuxwold, Rothwell, and two other places (J.H.R.) 2 Opposite this entry in the MS., in the next column, stands the entry of this contested half hide on the fief of Walter the Fleming (J.H.R.) 3 This may refer to the Bishop’s holding at Rushden adjoining, entered at the end of his fief on p. 226 (J.H.R.) * Now part of Manshead Hundred. 5 It is scarcely possible to give in English the exact force of the Domesday formula ‘se defendit.’ But, in this instance, the reduction must not be taken as an act of the authorities. It seems rather to represent an unauthorized pretension of the holders (J.H.R.) I 249 OF LANDS (to feed) 150 swine. In all it is worth 8 pounds; (was worth) when received 10 pounds; T.R.E. 16 pounds. This manor Levenot a thegn of King Edward held and could sell to whom he wished. In Stopen [StoppEN] Hunpret In Mirpenrone [Milton (Ernest)] Rainald holds of Walter 2 hides. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 2 villeins have 1 plough, and there could be another. There is 1 bordar ; meadow is there (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 25. shillings. This land 2 sokemen, men of Brictric, held and could assign to whom they wished. In Witce [Wittey] Hunprer In Torner® [Turvey] Hugh holds of Walter 1 hide. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1, and 8 bordars and 1 serf are there with 1 plough. Meadow is there (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 40 swine. It is worth 30 shillings, (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Levenot, a thegn of King Edward, held and could sell to whom he wished. M. In WapkHELLE [Odell] Walter the Fleming holds of the king 5 hides and 1 virgate and two-thirds (partes) of 1 virgate. There is land for 5 ploughs. In the demesne are 2 hides and on it are 2 ploughs, and there are 13 villeins with 3 ploughs. There are 5 bordars and 5 serfs, and 1 mill worth (de) 36 shillings and 8 pence and 200 eels, meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams and woodland (to feed) 60 swine. It is worth 100 shillings, (was worth) when received 8 pounds, and T.R.E. 10 pounds. ‘This manor Levenot a thegn of King Edward held, and there 1 sokeman had a half hide which he could assign to whom he wished. M. In Popinrong [Puddington (or Poding- ton)] Hugh holds of Walter 1 hide and 3 virgates. There is land for 54 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 4 villeins have 3% ploughs. There are 9 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 4 poundsand 10 shillings ; (was worth) when ® For Toruei. 7 This was the head of the barony (see Intro- duction, p.199). 32 A HISTORY OF received 50 shillings, and as much T.R.E. This manor Levenot, a thegn of King Edward, held. M. In Wimenrone [Wymington] Osbert holds of Walter 4 hides as 1 manor. There is land for 5 ploughs. On the demesne are 3 ploughs, and there are x villein and 8 bor- dars and 4 serfs with 1 plough. Meadow is there (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 3 pounds, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 4 pounds. Lant,a man of Levenot, thegn of the king, held this manor, and there 1 sokeman had 1 hide and could assign it to whom he wished. In the same vill the same Osbert holds of Walter half a hide. ‘There is land for a half plough, but it is not there. It is worth 2 shillings ; (was worth) when received 4 shil- lings ; and T.R.E. ro shillings. This land Goduin Franpalt held and could assign to whom he wished. ‘This same land Alvred of Lincoln claims against Walter the Fleming.* In Lateca [Thurleigh?] Hugh holds of Walter 3 hides as 1 manor. There is land for 7 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 8 villeins have 5 ploughs. ‘There are 12 bordars and 3 serfs and woodland (to feed) 150 swine. Itis worth 100 shillings; (was worth) when received 60 shillings ; T.R.E. 4 pounds. This manor Levenot, a thegn of King Edward, held. In the same (vill) Raynald holds of Walter half a hide. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 4 bordars (are there) with 1 plough. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 5 shillings. This land Ordric, a man of Levenot, held and could sell. In BicHELEswADE [BIGGLEswADE] HunDRET In Srratone [Stratton *] [ *] holds 1 hide and 1 virgate. There is land for 14 ploughs, and a plough and a half plough could be there.> ‘There are 3 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 10 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Lewin a thegn® of King Edward held and could assign and sell. This belongs 1 See p. 249, note 2, above. _ 2 A third of a knight’s fee in Thurleigh (Lega), is found held of the barony of ‘ Wahull’ (J.H.R.) 3 In Biggleswade. 4 Name omitted in MS. 5 Probably error for ‘1 plough is there, and there could be a half plough (more).’ 6 MS. < Steign.’ BEDFORDSHIRE and belonged to (jacet et jacuit in) Langeford [Langford], the manor of the same Walter.” In Horme [Holme *®] Walter holds 1 hide. There is land for 14 ploughs. One plough is there, and there could be a half plough (more). There are 3 bordars; meadow (suffi- cient) for 14 plough teams. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) when received 16 shil- lings; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land 2 sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In Estwicue [Astwick] Hugh holds 1 vir- gate of Walter. There is land for 2 oxen® (to plough), and they are there. There are 1 bordar and 1 mill worth (de) 13 shillings. It is and was worth 16 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Lewin, a thegn of King Edward, held. M. Walter himself holds LancEForp [Langford]. It is assessed at 10 hides, There is land for 16 ploughs. In the de- mesne are 4 hides and 1 virgate, and on it are 4 ploughs, and there could be a fifth. There are 12 villeins 7 bordars and 5 serfs with 9 ploughs, and there could be 2 ploughs more. There are 2 mills worth (de) 26 shillings and 8 pence, meadow (sufficient) for 16 plough teams, and worth 2 shillings besides (de super- plu). From pasture (come) 6 shillings, and there is pasture besides for 300 sheep. There is woodland (to feed) 16 swine. In all it is worth 15 pounds and 10 shillings, (was worth) when received 10 pounds, and T.R.E. 15 pounds. This manor Lewin, a thegn of King Edward, held, and there 1 sokeman had 1 hide and could assign it to whom he wished. In WIcHEsTANEsTOU [WIXAMTREE] HunpbReET In Supcivere [Southill] Walter holds half a hide of woodland which his predecessor held T.R.E. In the same vill Alric holds of Walter 1 virgate. There is land for 4 oxen (to plough), and they are there, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 oxen. It is worth 5 shillings, (was worth) when received 3 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Lewin, a thegn of the king, held in mortgage (vadimonio) T.R.E. But after King William came to England he 7 The Langford entry comes three places lower down. 8 In Biggleswade. ® i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. 250 THE HOLDERS who had mortgaged this land redeemed it, and Seiher took possession of it to the king’s hurt (super regem), as the men of the hundred (court) testify. In Cutston' [Crirron] Hunpretr In Hanstave [Henlow] Hugh holds of Walter 34 hides. There is land for 34 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and there could be another. There are 4 villeins with 2 ploughs, and (there are) 4 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 33 plough teams, and 1 mill worth (de) 34 shillings. In all it is worth 60 shillings, (was worth) when received 40 shillings; T.R.E. 70 shillings. This land 6 sokemen held and could assign their land to whom they wished. fo. 216 XXXII. THE LAND OF WALTER BROTHER OF SEIER In Rargorcestoc [REDBORNESTOKE] HunprRET M. Walter, Seiher’s brother, holds SEGENE- Hou [Segenhoe?]. It is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 10 ploughs. In the demesne are 4 hides, and on it is 1 plough and there could be 2 ploughs (more). There 24 villeins have 7 ploughs. There are 4 bordars and 3 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 8 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 300 swine, and from dues of the woodland come 10 rams yearly. In all it is worth 6 pounds, when received (was worth) 10 pounds, T.R.E. 16 pounds. This manor Levenot a thegn of King Edward held, and there 1 sokeman had half a hide and could sell it to whom he wished. In Fuicruam [Fiitr] Hunpret M. In Sewizessovu [Silsoe] Hugh holds of Walter 4 hides as 1 manor. There is land for 10 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs; and 6 villeins and 8 bordars and 4 serfs are there with 7 ploughs, and there could be an eighth. There is 1 mill worth (de) 26 pence. Meadow is there (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 100 swine and (worth) 2 shillings (besides). In all it is worth 8 pounds, (was worth) when received 100 shillings; T.R.E. 11 pounds. This manor Levenot, a thegn of King Edward, held, and there 3 sokemen held half a hide and could assign and sell it to whom they wished. This half hide Hugh holds of the king, as his men say. 1 For Clifton. 2, In Ridgmont. The Ordnance Survey’s spelling Legenhoe appears to be a mistake. OF LANDS XXXIV. THE LAND OF HUGH THE FLEMING In Witca [Wutey] Hunprer Hugh the Fleming holds of the king in Popinrone [Podington] 2 hides and 1 vir- gate. There is land for 2} ploughs. In the demesne is half a hide, and on it is 1 plough, and 3 villeins have 14 ploughs. ‘There are 6 bordars and 1 serf. It is worth 30 shillings, (was worth) as much when received, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land 4 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. Hugh himself holds in Hangwicu [Hin- wick*] 13 hides of the king. ‘There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 1 villein and 4 bordars and 3 serfs (are there) with 1 plough. It is worth 30 shillings, (was worth) when received 20 shillings, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. ‘This land Alwold a man of Bishop Wlwi held and could sell. In SeRNeBRoc [Sharnbrook] Robert holds of Hugh half a hide and one fourth part of 1 virgate. There is land for 1 plough and it is there, and 1 bordar and 1 serf, and meadow sufficient for 1 plough team. It is worth 10 shillings, (was worth) when received 5 shil- lings ; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land Levric a man of the abbot of Ramesy held and could assign to whom he wished. XXXV. THE LAND OF HUGH THE BUTLER In Sropen [SToppEN] Hunpret Hugh the butler holds of the king in Estone [Easton *] 2 hides and 3 virgates. There is land for 4 ploughs. In the demesne is 1 hide and on it are 2 ploughs. ‘There are 4 villeins and 1 bordar and 1 serf with 2 ploughs, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, and woodland (to feed) 200 swine, It is worth 40 shillings, (was worth) when re- ceived 70 shillings, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This manor Wig a thegn of King Edward held, and there 1 sokeman had half a hide and could assign it to whom he wished. In SEGREsDONE [ 5] Hugh holds 1 virgate, and it is worth 12 pence ; (was worth) T.R.E. 2 shillings. This land Alwin a man of Earl Harold held and could assign to whom he wished. 3 In Puddington or Podington. * Co. Hunts (see Introduction). 5 See Introduction. 251 A HISTORY OF THE LAND OF SIGAR DE CIOCHES In Sroprn [Sroppen] Hunprer Sygar de Cioches holds in Esrone [Easton *] 2 hides of the king. There is land for 5 ploughs. In the demesne are 2 carucates of land besides the 2 hides,? and on it are 2 ploughs, and 6 villeins have 3 ploughs. There are 12 bordars and 2 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 60 swine. It is worth 4 pounds ; when received (was worth) 3 pounds; T.R.E. 4 pounds, This land Wig, a thegn of King Edward, held and could assign and sell to whom he wished. XXXVI. XXXVII. THE LAND OF GUNFREI DE CIOCHES In Wuca [WILEY] Hunpret Gunfrey (Gunfridus) de Cioches holds in Hanewic* [Hinwick] 1 hide and 3 virgates. Tetbald holds of him. There is land for 3 ploughs, On the demesne is 1 plough and there could be 2 (more). There are 3 villeins. It is worth 20 shillings ; (was worth) when re- ceived 10 shillings; T.R.E. 40. shillings. This land 2 sokemen held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. XXXVII. THE LAND OF RICHARD SON OF COUNT GILBERT‘ In BEREForD [BARFoRD] HuNDRET Richard son of Count Gilbert holds in SupBeRigE [Sudbury ®] 1 virgate of land which belongs to (sacet in) the church of St. Neot, and belonged thereto (jacuit in) T.R.E. In WiBoLDEsTONE [Wyboston °] the monks of St. Neot hold of the aforesaid Richard 2 hides and half a virgate. ‘There is land for a half plough, but it is not there. Woodland (is there to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 11 shillings, (was worth) when received a like sum; T.R.E. 21 shillings. This land be- longed to (jacuit in) the church of St. Neot, T.R.E., in almoin. 1 Co. Hunts (see Introduction). ? See p. 229, note 2. 3 In Puddington or Podington. 4 Alias Richard ‘de Clare’ or ‘de Tunbridge,’ ancestor of the house of Clare and founder of St. Neot’s priory (J.H.R.) 5 In Eaton Socon. Mg, Airy described it as ‘situated by the river at the northern extremity of the parish towards Little Paxton’ (J.H.R.) 6 In Eaton Socon, BEDFORDSHIRE XXXIX. THE LAND OF RICHARD PUNGIANT’ In BicHeLeswaDE [BiGGLEswADE] HuNDRET M. Richard Puniant holds of the king in Darnrong [Dunton] 8 hides and [1 °] vir- gate as one manor. ‘There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 4 hides and 1 virgate, and on it are 3 ploughs. There 12 villeins have 5 ploughs, and (there are) 2 bordars and 3 serfs, and woodland (to feed) 60 swine. In all it is worth 8 pounds, (was worth) when received 6 pounds, and as much T.R.E. This manor Archbishop Stigand held. In TamiserorpE [Tempsford] Robert holds of Richard P[un]g[iant] 2 hides of the king’s fee. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and (there are) 4 villeins with 1 plough, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 30 shillings, (was worth) when received 20 shillings and T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land 3 sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In WicuesransTou [WIXAMTREE] HuNDRET In Superveze [Southill] Richard Pungiant holds half a hide of woodland which Arch- bishop Stigand held T.R.E. XL. THE LAND OF WILLIAM THE CHAMBERLAIN ® In Manesueve [MansHeap] Hunpret William the chamberlain holds in Portss- GRAVE [Potsgrove] 1 hide of the king. There is land for 1 plough and it is there, and mea- dow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 15 shillings, (was worth) when received a like sum and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Morcar the priest of Lintone*® [Luton] held and could sell. In BapELesTone (Battlesden) Robert holds of William the chamberlain half a hide. There is land for a half plough. It is worth § shillings ; (was worth) when received a like sum; T.R.E.7 pounds.** This land Morcar the priest held and could sell. 7 He held land in six counties, but his whole fief was not large (J.H.R.) 8 This figure must be right, for the addition of the 1 hide and 3 virgates in ‘Domtone’ (p. 231, above) completes the 10 hide unit (J.H.R.) ® See Introduction. 19 For Liutone (see p. 222). 11 So MS. ; probably error for shillings, 252 THE HOLDERS OF LANDS In THE Harr Hunpretr oF STANBURGE! M. William himself holds ToTenrHou [Totternhoe] of the king. It is assessed at 7 hides less 1 virgate. There is land for 6 ploughs. In the demesne are 3 hides and 3 virgates, and on it is 1 plough. There 4 villeins have 3 ploughs. ‘There are 4 bordars and 4 serfs and 1 mill (worth) 3 shillings, meadow sufficient for 3 plough teams, and woodland to feed 20 swine. It is worth 50 shillings, was worth when received a like sum ; T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor Lewine a man of Earl Waltheof (Wallef) held. With this manor William the chamberlain claims 2 hides which his predecessor held T.R.E., as the hundred (court) testifies. But the Bishop of Bayeux? took them from him by force and gave them to Adelulf his cham- berlain. XLI. THE LAND OF WILLIAM LOVET In MangsHeve [MansHeaD] Hunpret M. William Lovet holds in CravEtai [(Husborne) Crawley] of the king 5 hides as one manor. There is land for 5 ploughs. In the demesne are 2 hides and 2 ploughs are on it; and 5 villeins have 2 ploughs and there could be a third. ‘There are 3 bordars and 2 serfs, and 2 mills (worth) 10 shillings, and meadow sufficient for 5 plough teams. It is worth 40 shillings; (was worth) when received 30 shillings; T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Grimbald a man of King Edward held and could assign to whom he wished. In Rapgorcestou [REDBORNESTOKE] HunDRET M. William himself holds [Flitwick] of the king. It is assessed at 5 hides. ‘There is land for 7 ploughs. In the demesne are 2 hides and on it are 2 ploughs. There 3 villeins have 3 ploughs and there could be 2 more. There are 7 bordars, and 1 mill (worth) 4 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 50 shillings, (was worth) when received 60. shillings, T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor Alwin, a thegn of King Edward, held. FLICTEWICHE 1 Now part of Manshead Hundred. 2 The bishop held the adjoining manor of Eaton Bray. Adelulf or Adelold, the bishop’s chamberlain (compare Cakndar of Documents in France, pp. 530-1) held under him in Kent and also had a grant from him at Southwark (J.H.R.) XLII. THE LAND OF WILLIAM In Wick [Wittey] Hunprer William holds of the king in FERNADIS [Farndish*] 2 hides. There is land for 24 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 3 villeins have a half-plough. There are 2 bordars and 1 serf and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 40 shillings, (was worth) when received 20 shillings, T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land 3 sokemen held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. fo, 216b XLII. THE LAND OF HENRY SON OF AZOR In Witca [Witiey] Hunprer Henry son of Azor holds in FERNapIs [Farndish*] of the king 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and there are 2 villeins and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is and was worth 10 shil- lings ; T.R.E. 2o shillings. This land 2 soke- men held and could assign to whom they wished. XLUW. THE LAND OF OSBERN SON OF RICHARD‘ In Stoprene [STopDEN] HunpRET Osbern son of Richard holds in Estone [Easton®] half a hide and half a virgate and Hugh Hubald® holds of him. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 1 serf. There is meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team; woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 10 shillings, when received (was worth) a like sum, and T.R.E. 12 shillings. This land Stori, a man of Earl Tosti, held, and there a certain sokeman had half a virgate which he could assign and sell. In RisErar [Riseley] Hugh Hubald” holds of Osbert® son of Richard half a hide. There island for a half plough and it is there with 1 bordar. There is meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is and was worth 5 shillings; T.R.E. 8 shillings. This land Alwin a man of Stori® held and could assign to whom he wished. 3 Now in Podington. 4 Lord of Richard’s Castle, Herefordshire 5 In Hunts (see Introduction). 6 A Henry ‘ Hubold’ is recorded to have held half a fee (but in Shropshire) on the Richard’s Castle fief in 1212 (J.H.R.) 7 See note 6. 8 So MS. 9 See p. 254, note 3. 253 A HISTORY OF In Caissor [Keysoe] Hugh Hubald! holds of Osbert 1 virgate. There is land for 2 oxen (to plough). It is and was worth 2 shillings ; T.R.E. 4 shillings. M. The same (fse) Hugh holds of Osbern ELvenpons ? [ ]. It is assessed at 1 hide and 1 virgate. There is land for 14 ploughs and they are there, and meadow sufficient for 1 plough team; woodland to feed 34 swine. It is and was worth 10 shillings; T.R.E. 15 shillings. This manor Alwin a man of Stori® held and could assign to whom he wished. XLV. THE LAND OF OSBERN SON OF WALTER In BIcHELEswADE [BIGGLESWADE] HunpRET M. Osbern son of Walter holds of the king in BEREFORDE [(Little) Barford] 3 hides as one manor. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs and 4 villeins have 1 plough. There are 2 bordars and § serfs and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 60 shillings; (was worth) when received 40 shillings; T.R.E. 60 shillings. This manor Ulmar of Etone [Eaton Socon] a thegn of King Edward held. XLVI. THE LAND OF OSBERN THE FISHERMAN In Witce [Wititey] Hunprer Osbern the fisherman holds in SERNEBROC [Sharnbrook] of the king half ahide. There is land for 1 plough and it is there. A mill is there (worth) 16 pence ; meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team, woodland (to feed) 10 swine, and a fish-stew (vivarium piscium). There are 1 villein and 2 bordars. It is worth 26 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shillings, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. ‘This land Tovi housecarl of King Edward held* and could sell, With this land the same Osbern claims 1 virgate and the fourth part of 1 virgate which his predecessor held T.R.E. But after King William came into England he refused the ‘ gafol’ (gab/um) due from this land and Ralf Taillgebosc gave the ‘gafol’ and took 1 See p. 253, note 6. 2? = Giveldone, = Yeldon. duction. 3 This was evidently the ‘Stori’ of the first entry, so that we have here a ‘man’ of Earl Tosti(g) who has himself a ‘man’ of his own as a his tenant (J.H.R.) 4 He had also held at Radwell, just to the south of Sharnbrook (J.H.R.) But see Intro- BEDFORDSHIRE possession of the land itself as forfeit and handed it over toa certain knight (midi) of his, In CarLenTone [Carlton] the same Os- bern holds of the king 1 hide and 14 virgates, There is land for 2 ploughs. On the de- mesne is 1 plough, and 2 villeins have 1 plough. There are 4 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is and was worth 20 shillings (T.R.E.*); T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Goduin Frambolt,° a thegn of King Edward, held and could sell. XLVI THE LAND OF TURSTIN THE CHAMBERLAIN’ In Bucuerar Hunpret® Turstin the chamberlain holds of the king in PaBENEHAM [Pavenham] 24 hides as one manor. There is land for 3 ploughs. In the demesne is 1 hide and 1 plough. There are 6 villeins with 2 ploughs and 1 bordar, and meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams. It is worth 40 shillings, (was worth) when received a like sum, and T.R.E. 45 shillings. ‘This land Alsi, a man of Alli his brother, held and could [sell ?] In Henewic [Hinwick °] Turstin holds of the king 1 hide and 3 virgates. There is land for 2 ploughs. In the demesne is 1 hide and 1 plough and (there are) 2 villeins with 1 plough and 1 bordar, and meadow sufficient for 1 plough team. It is worth 30 shillings, when received (was worth) 10 shillings; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Goduin Frambolt, a thegn of King Edward, held. In WicHEsTANEsTOU [WIXAMTREE] HUNDRET In Bisronz [Beeston *°] the aforesaid Turstin holds half a hide of the king. There is land for a half plough, but it is not there ; meadow is (sufficient) for 1 plough team. This land has been laid waste (devastata est), but when Turstin received it, it was worth 10 shillings; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land Goduin a man of Earl Tosti held and could assign. 5 MS. inserted by error. 6 He had also held at Wymington in this Hun- dred (see p. 250), and, as the next fief shows, at Hinwick near Wymington (J.H.R.) 7 He also held in Hampshire and Wiltshire. 8 Half Hundred. Now part of Willey Hundred. ® In Puddington or Podington. 10 In Sandy. 254 THE HOLDERS In Cuistong* [Cxiirron] Hunpret In CHampettonE [Campton] Turstin holds of the king 2 hides (and)? all but the fourth part of 1 virgate. There is land for 14 ploughs. In the demesne are 1 hide and 1 virgate and three-quarters (partes) of 1 virgate, and on it is 1 plough. There 2 villeins and 1 bordar have a half plough. Meadow is there (sufficient) for 14 plough teams ; woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 30 shillings, and was worth T.R.E. 40 shillings? This land 3 sokemen held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. XLVIII. THE LAND OF GILBERT SON OF SALOMON In Cuistone* [Ciirron] Hunpret M. Gilbert son of Salomon holds Mat- PERTESSELLE [Meppershall] of the king. Itis assessed at 4 hides in Bedefordescire® ; there is land for 4 ploughs. In Herefortscire® (Herts) the same (ipsa) vill is assessed at 3 hides and 1 virgate ; there is land for 3 ploughs. In all there are 7 ploughs. In the demesne are 5 hides and on it 3 ploughs and there could be 2 more. There 5 villeins have 2 ploughs and (there are) 4 bordars and 2 serfs ; meadow (sufficient) for 7 plough teams, wood- land (to feed) 200 swine, and from dues of woodland (come) 10 shillings. It is and was worth 6 pounds; T.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor Lewin Cilt, a thegn of King Edward, held,® and in this manor were 4 sokemen. They held 2 hides and could sell them to whom they wished. In Witce [Wuttey] Hunprer M. In FrammeresHam [Felmersham] Gilbert holds 74 hides. There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 4 hides, and on it are 3 ploughs, and 4 villeins have 4 ploughs. There are 6 bordars and meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams. It is worth 100 shillings, (was worth) when received 12 pounds and as much T.R.E. This manor 6 sokemen held and could sell. 1 For Cliftone. 2 Erroneously inserted in MS. 3 But possibly the scribe has omitted something between ‘valuit’ and ‘ T.R.E.’ 4 For Cliftone. 5 ie. 4 hides of it are assessed in Bedfordshire ; 3 hides and 1 virgate in Hertfordshire (see the Victoria History of Herts, vol. i.) 8 See pp. 198, 230. OF LANDS XLIX. THE LAND OF ALBERT OF LORRAINE (LOTHARIENSIS)? In Manesueve [MansHeap] Hunprer M. Albert of Lorraine holds of the king CrcrRAvE [Chalgrave]. It is assessed at 8 hides and two-thirds (partes) of 1 virgate. There is land for 10 ploughs. In the demesne are 3 carucates of land, and on it are 2 ploughs. There 13 villeins have 8 ploughs. There are 4 bordars and 6 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 8 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 50 swine. It is worth 7 pounds; when received (was worth) 6 pounds, and as much T.R.E. This manor the same Albert held T.R.E. and could assign to whom he wished. In Rapsernestoc [REDBORNESTOKE] HunpDRET M. Albert himself holds Oronr [Woot- ton]. It is assessed at 10 hides. ‘There is land for 11 ploughs. In the demesne are 2 hides and on it are 3 ploughs. There 20 villeins have 7 ploughs, and there could be an eighth. There are 6 serfs, meadow (suffi- cient) for 5 plough teams, woodland to feed 400 swine. It is worth 10 pounds, when received (was worth) 8 pounds; T.R.E. 10 pounds and 15 shillings. This manor Almar aman of Earl Tosti held and could sell. In Essecrong [Shelton®] Albert holds 3 hides. ‘There is land for 5 ploughs. In the demesne is 1 hide, and on it are 2 ploughs. There are 7 villeins with 3 ploughs and there are 4 serfs, meadow (sufficient) for 3 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 40 shillings ; (was worth) when received 20 shillings; T.R.E. 45 shillings. This manor was and is a member of Otone (Wootton). Almar a man of Earl Tosti held it. In Witca [Wittey] Hunpret In SernesBRoc [Sharnbrook] Albert holds 2 hides and the fourth part of 1 virgate. There is land for 3 ploughs. In the demesne is 1 hide, and on it are 2 ploughs, and there are 4 villeins with 1 plough. ‘There are 4 bordars and 4 serfs, and 1 mill (worth) 16 shillings, meadow (sufficient for 2 plough teams, woodland (to feed the swine. It is worth 50 shillings ; when reccived (was worth) 30 shil- lings; T.R.E. 60 shillings. This land Algar a man of Queen Edid held and could assign to whom he wished. 7 See Introduction, p. 203. 8 In Marston (Morteyne). 255 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE L. THE LAND OF DAVID DE ARGENTAN (ARGENTOMO) In Sropeng [StoppEn] Hunpret David de Argentan holds in RuisELar [Riseley] 1 hide of the king. There is land for 1 plough, but it is not there. ‘There are 1 villein and 3 bordars. It is worth 10 shil- lings, (was worth) when received 20 shillings and T.R.E. a like sum. This land Homdai aman of Earl Harold held and could sell to whom he wished. fo. 217 LI. THE LAND OF RALF DE INSULA? In BICHELESWADE [BIGGLESWADE] HunpRET M. Ralf de Insulat holds of the king in STRATONE [Stratton*] 4 hides as one manor. There is land for 8 ploughs. There are 7 and there could be an eighth. There are 10 villeins and 2 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams. In all it is worth 12 pounds, (was worth) when received 3 pounds ; T.R.E. 100 shillings. This manor Stigand the archbishop held. M. Ralf himself holds PicHELEswADE [Biggleswade]. It is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 10 ploughs. In the de- mesne are 54 hides and on it are 3 ploughs. There are 7 villeins with 7 ploughs and 10 bordars and 3 serfs, and 2 mills worth (de) 47 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 10 plough teams and (producing) 5 shillings from the hay. It is worth 17 pounds, (was worth) when received 15 pounds ; T’.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor Stigand the archbishop held, and there 2 sokemen had half a hide which they could sell and assign. M. In Hotme [Holme?] the same Ralf holds 2 hides. There is land for § ploughs and they are there. Thereare 6 villeins and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 40 shillings, (was worth) when received 30 shillings, and T.R.E. 40 shillings. This manor Archbishop Stigand held and there 3 sokemen had 2 virgates of land and could sell. In Wicuestangsrou [WIXAMTREE] HuNDRET In Warpong [Warden] the same Ralf holds of the king 14 virgates. This land 1 Tt is not certain how this name should be Englished (J.H.R.) 2 In Biggleswade. belongs to (jacet in) Bicheleswade [Biggles- wade] and it is valued (est appreciata) there® ; and he who held it T.R.E. could not assign or sell it without the leave of him who held Bicheleswade [Biggleswade]. LI. THE LAND OF GOZELIN THE BRETON In ManegsHEve [MansHEapD] HunDRET M. Gozelin the Breton holds of the king in PorEsGRavE [Potsgrove] 74 hides as one manor. There is land for 74 ploughs. In the demesne are 3 hides, and on it are 3 ploughs. There 3 villeins have 2 ploughs, and there could be 2 others and a half plough. There are 6 bordars and 3 serfs and meadow (suffi- cient) for 5 plough teams. It is worth 50 shillings, (was worth) when received 100 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor 4 thegns held and could assign and sell their land to whom they wished. In tHE Harr Hunprer oF STANBURGE [STANBRIDGE] * Gozelin himself holds GrepgeLar [Gladley (farm) *] for 24 hides. There is land for 1 plough, and there are there 4 oxen,® and 1 mill (worth) 16 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is and was worth 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Wigot, a huntsman of King Edward, held and could sell to whom he wished. LUI. THE LAND OF COUNTESS JUDITH In RapgorcEstoc [REDBORNESTOKE] HunprRET M. Countess Judith holds in MgLpong [Maulden] 5 hides and 14 virgates and the nuns of Elnestou [Elstow] hold of her in almoin. There is land for 5 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 7 villeins have 3 ploughs. There are 2 serfs and 1 mill (worth) 3 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 5 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is worth 60 shillings, (was 3 The reason for its being separately entered is evidently that it was assessed for ‘geld’ in Wixam- tree Hundred as lying in Warden (J.H.R.) * Now part of Manshead Hundred. 5 Formerly in Leighton Buzzard; now in Heath and Reach. It was a separate manor JH.) ® i.e. half a plough-team. 256 THE HOLDERS worth) when received 4 pounds; T.R.E. 7 pounds. This manor Alwold, a thegn of King Edward, held, and there 1 sokeman had half a virgate and could assign to whom he wished. In Houston [Houghton (Conquest)] Hugh holds of Countess Judith half a hide, There is land for 1 plough, and it is there; and 2 bordars, and woodland (to feed) 25 swine. It is and was worth 10 shillings; T.R.E. 12 shillings. This land Lepsi a man of Earl Tosti held, and could assign and sell to whom he wished. M. The countess herself holds Wunes- SAMESTEDE [Willshamstead] and nuns hold it of her. It is assessed at 3 hides. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs. There 11 villeins have 4 ploughs, and (there are) 11 bordars and 1 serf, and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is worth 7 pounds and 6 shillings; when received (was worth) 45 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 pounds and roshillings. This manor 8 soke- men held and could assign and sell. Countess Judith gave it to St. Mary of Elnestou [Els- tow] in almoin, but the soke has always belonged to (jacuit in) Camestone [Kempston]. M. Exnestou [Elstow] is assessed at 34 hides. The nuns of St. Mary hold it of Countess Judith. There is land for 7 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 14 villeins have 5 ploughs. There are 11 bordars and 4 serfs, and 1 mill worth (de) 24 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 4 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 60 swine. It is worth 100 shillings, (was worth) when re- ceived 40 shillings; T.R.E. 10 pounds. This manor 4 sokemen held. They were men of King Edward and could assign and sell their land, but their soke always belonged to (jacuit in) Camestone [Kempston]. M. CamestonE [Kempston] is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 20 ploughs. The countess holds it. In the demesne are 2 hides and on it are 4 ploughs, and 18 villeins have 12 ploughs and there could be 4 more. There are 12 bordars and 8 serfs, and 1 mill worth (de) § shillings, meadow sufficient for 20 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 200 swine, and from pasture come 2 shillings. In all it is worth 18 pounds, when received 22 pounds ; T.R.E. 30 pounds. This manor Earl Guert held, and there 2 thegns had 24 hides and 14 virgates and could assign and sell to whom they wished. I 257 OF LANDS ' In Sropen [Sroppen] Hunprer In Borenestre [Bolnhurst] Hugh holds half a hide of the countess. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 2 bordars. There is meadow sufficient for 4 oxen,! wood- land to feed 20 swine. It is worth 10 shil- lings ; (was worth) when received 5 shillings ; T.R.E. 12 shillings. This land Almar, a thegn of King Edward, held and could assign and sell. In Acuzrz1a [Oakley] Milo Crispin holds of the countess 1 hide. There is land for 14 ploughs. One plough is there and there could be a half plough (more). There are 3 bor- dars and meadow sufficient for 1 plough team. It is and was worth ro shillings; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land Goduin, a man of Earl Harold, held and could sell. In THE Harr Hunpret or Bucuerar? In BiacuesHou [Bletsoe] Osbern holds of the countess 24 hides. There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough and 6 villeins have 3 ploughs. There are 3 bordars and 3 serfs, anda moiety of a mill (dim’ molin.) worth (de) 10 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 100 swine. It is and was worth 60 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). “This manor Leveva,’ a ‘man’ (ome) of King Edward, held and could sell and assign to whom she wished. In BrungHam [Bromham] Hugh holds of the countess 2 hides. ‘There is land for 2 ploughs, and they are there, and 5 villeins and 2 bordars, and 1 mill worth 40 shillings and 100 eels. It belongs indeed to the fee of the countess, but does not ‘ lie’ (jacef) in this land. There is meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 20 shillings; when re- ceived and T.R.E. was worth 10 shillings. This land Goduin a man of Earl Harold held and could sell. In STacHEDENE [Stagsden] Hugh holds of the countess 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and 2 villeins and 2 bordars, and woodland (to feed) 40 swine. It is and was worth 1o shillings; T.R.E. 20 shil- lings. ‘This land 2 sokemen, men of King Edward, held and could sell to whom they wished. i.e. half a plough-team. Now part of Willey Hundred. This is a female name, ‘ Leofgifu’ (J.H.R.) MS. anguillus. ep Oo tm 33 A HISTORY OF In Witca [Wittzy] Hunprer In FatmeresHaM [Felmersham] Gilbert holds of the countess 34 hides. There is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and there are 2 villeins with 1 plough and there could be another plough. There are 4 bordars, and 1 mill worth (de) 10 shil- lings, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 3 pounds, when received (was worth) too shillings and as much T.R.E. This land Alli, a thegn of King Edward, held. In RapEwELtE [Radwell'] Hugh holds 2 hides and 23 virgates of the fee of the countess. ‘There is land for 13 ploughs and they are there. There are 1 villein and 1 bordar and 1 serf, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) when received 10 shillings; T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Tovi a housecarl of King Edward held. Gilbert de Blossevile holds of the countess HarewELe [Harrold].? It is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 16 ploughs. On the demesne there could be 3 ploughs; one is there; and (there are) 10 villeins with 7 ploughs, and there could be 6 more; mea- dow is there (sufficient) for 6 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 200 swine, and 1 mill worth (de) 36 shillings and 8 pence and 200 eels. In all it is worth 6 pounds; when re- ceived was worth 16 pounds; T.R.E. 20 pounds. This manor 3 thegns of King Edward held and could sell to whom they wished. In Sernesroc [Sharnbrook] Hugh holds of the countess 3 virgates of land. There is land for 1 plough and it is there. There are 1 villein and 1 bordar and meadow (sufh- cient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 10 shillings ; was worth when received 5 shillings ; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land Oviet a man of King Edward held and could assign to whom he wished. fo. 217b In THE HunpRET OF BEREFORDE [BARFORD] Osbern holds 2 hides and 3 virgates.? There 1 In Felmersham. 2 He held of the Countess also at Lavendon, Bucks, close to Harrold (J.H.R.) 3 The only place in this Hundred with which the heirs of the Countess seem to have been associated was Sudbury in Eaton Socon, where half a fee was held of the Honour of Huntingdon BEDFORDSHIRE is land for 3 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and there are 3 villeins with 1 plough. There are 2 bordars and 1 serf, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, wood- land (to feed) 200 swine. It is worth 40 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shil- lings ; T.R.E. Soshillings. This land Ulfech a steersman of King Edward held and could sell. In Porong [Potton*] Hugh holds of the countess half a virgate of land. ‘There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 1 bor- dar. It is and was worth § shillings; T.R.E. 2 shillings. This land Earl Tosti held in his manor of Potone [Potton].° In BicHELEswaDE [BiGGLEswADE] HuNDRET In Srratone [Stratton *] Fulcher of Paris (de parisio) holds 34 virgates of the countess. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough. There are 1 villein and 5 bordars ; meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 8 shillings; T.R.E. 20 shil- lings. This land Alwin, a man of King Edward, held and could sell. In Hoime [Holme®] Fulcher holds of the countess half a hide. There is land for a half plough, and a half plough is there ; meadow is there sufficient for a half plough team. There is 1 villein. It is and was worth 7 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Alwin a man of King Edward held and could assign and sell. In the same (vill) 2 men hold of the countess 1 virgate. There is land for 2 oxen” (to plough) and they are there. It is and was worth 5 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Goduin, a man of King Edward, held and could sell. In tHe Harr Hunpretr or Wengszar® M. Countess Judith herself holds PoTong [Potton]. It is assessed at ro hides. ‘There is land for 12 ploughs. In the demesne are 34 hides and on it are 3 ploughs. ‘There are 18 villeins and 2 sokemen with 8 ploughs, and there could be a ninth plough. ‘There are 13 bordars and 3 serfs and 1 mill worth 5 shillings (v solidorum), meadow (sufficient) for in the fourteenth century (Feudal Aids, i. 15, 33) (J.-H.R.) Now in Biggleswade Hundred (J.H.R.) See the Potton entry below. In Biggleswade. i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. Now part of Biggleswade Hundred. ot anne 258 THE HOLDERS 12 plough teams, pasture for the live stock of the vill. In all it is worth 12 pounds ; when received (was worth) 100 shillings; T.R.E. 13 pounds. ‘This manor King Edward held, and it was (before that) (fuit) Earl Tosti’s. There were 4 sokemen there who had 1 hide and 1 virgate and could assign to whom they wished. In Suprone [Sutton] Torchil holds* 14 hides. ‘There is land for 14 ploughs. One plough is there and there could be a half plough more. ‘There are 4 bordars, meadow (sufficient) for 14 plough teams and (worth) 16 pence besides. It is worth ro shillings, (was worth) when received 8 shillings; T.R.E. 20 shillings, This land 3 sokemen held and could sell. In Suptone [Sutton] Alwin holds of Countess Judith 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough. ‘There are 3 bordars and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 8 shillings. Six sokemen held it and could assign and sell (it).? In the same (vill) Levegar holds half a hide. There is land for a half plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team and (worth) 12 pence (besides). It is worth 5 shillings ; (was worth) when received and T.R.E. to shillings. The same man who holds it now held it (T.R.E.). He was a king’s man and could sell (it). In the same (vill) Robert holds 34 virgates. There is land for 1 plough, but there are only 2 oxen® there. Meadow is (sufficient) for 1 plough team. ‘There are 3 bordars.* It is and was worth 8 shillings; T.R.E. 10 shil- lings. This land 2 sokemen held and could sell. In the same (vill) Sueting and Robert hold 14 virgates of land. There is land for 4 oxen® and they are there ; meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team; and 1 bordar. It is and was worth 4 shillings; T.R.E. 5 shillings. This land Edward, a man of the abbot of St. Alban, held and could sell. In THE sAME HatF HunpRET In Suprone [Sutton] Turbert holds 2 hides of the countess. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1 plough, and there are 4 bordars with 1 plough, and meadow (sufficient) 1 ive. of the Countess. 2 This entry is in the margin by the side of the Sutton entry which precedes it in the text. 3 i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. 4 This clause is inserted in the margin. 5 i.e. half a plough-team. OF LANDS for 2 plough teams. It is and was worth 20 shillings; T.R.E. 25 shillings. This land 2 sokemen held and could sell. In the same (vill) Goduin holds 3 virgates of the countess. There is land for 1 plough, but now it is not there. It is worth 3 shil- lings ; (was worth) when received 6 shillings; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Ulmar a man of Ordui held and could sell. In the same (vill) Ederic holds half a hide. There is land for a half plough, and it is there with 1 villein. Meadow is there (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is and was worth 5 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. ‘The same man who holds it now held it (T.R.E.). He was a king’s man and could sell (his land). M. In Harezar [(Cockayne) Hatley] the Countess Judith holds 3 hides and 24 vir- gates as 1 manor. ‘There is land for 63 ploughs. In the demesne are 1 hide and half a virgate, and on it are 2 ploughs. There are 8 villeins with 44 ploughs. ‘There are 8 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, and woodland (to feed) 4 swine. It is worth 6 pounds and 5 shillings ; (was worth) when received 100 shillings; T.R.E. 6 pounds. This manor Earl Tosti held and it belongs to (jacet in) Potone [Potton], the own (proprio)® manor of the countess, and there a certain sokeman had 1 virgate. He could assign and sell (his land) and put himself under another lord (ad alterum dominum recedere). M. Rannulf, Ilger’s brother, holds of the countess Eurerone [Everton]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 5 ploughs. There are 2 ploughs and there could be 3 (more). There are 4 villeins and 5 bordars, and mea- dow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 3 pounds ; (was worth) when received 100 shillings, and as much T.R.E. This manor Earl Tosti held, and it belonged to (jacuit in) Potone [Potton], the own (proprio)® manor of the countess. In THE HunprReT oF WICHESTANESTOU [WIxaMTREE] In Supeivee [Southill] Hugh holds of the countess 1 hide. There is land for 2 ploughs and they are there. There are 3 villeins and 3 bordars and 1 serf ; meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams ; woodland (to feed) 60 swine. It is worth 30 shillings ; (was worth) when re- ceived 4o shillings; T.R.E. 60. shillings. This land Tuffa a man of Earl Waltheof (Wallef) held and could sell. § ie. demesne, Compare p. 258, note 5. 259 A HISTORY OF In Hercentone [Harrowden*] the canons of Bedeforde [Bedford] hold 3 hides of the countess. There is land for 3 ploughs, and they are there, and 6 villeins and 4 bordars, and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, It is worth 30 shillings ; when received (was worth) 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Azelin a man of Earl Tosti held. He could not assign or sell without leave of him who held Camestone [Kempston], the countess’ (com’) manor. In Cuernetone [Cardington] Hugh holds of the countess 3 hides and 1 virgate and the third part of 1 virgate. There is land for 4 ploughs, and they are there. There are 12 villeins and 3 bordars and 3 serfs, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 40 shillings ; (was worth) when received 20 shil- lings; T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land Aze- lin a man of Earl Tosti held. He could not assign nor sell without leave of him who held Cameston [Kempston]. In CocueEpot [Cople] Hugh holds of the countess 1 virgate of land. This land is and was worth 30 pence T.R.E. and after (semper). This Wlwin a man of King Edward held and could sell to whom he wished. In BiunHam [Blunham] the abbot of St. Edmund holds half a hide of the countess. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) when re- ceived 10 shillings; T.R.E. 20 shillings. This land a man of King Edward held and could sell. In Cutstonge? [CiiFron] Hunpret In Cutsrone [Clifton] Alwin holds of the countess 1 hide. There is land for a half plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is and was worth 5 shillings; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Ulvric a man of King Edward held and could sell. LIT. THE LAND OF THE WIFE OF HUGH DE GRENTMAISNIL In RapporGesTocH [REDBORNESTOKE] HunpRET Adeliz wife of Hugh de Grentemaisnil holds of the king half a hide in Ese-rone [Shelton*]. There is land for a half plough, and it is there ; 1 In Eastcotts. 2 For Cliftone. 3 In Marston Morteyne. BEDFORDSHIRE meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team, and woodland (to feed) 6 swine. There is 1 bor- dar. It is and was worth 6 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land Goduin a man of Earl Guert held and could assign to whom he wished. In Ousrone [Houghton (Conquest)] Ernald holds of Adeliz 44 hides asone manor. There is land for 6 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and (there are) 11 villeins and 7 bordars with 34 ploughs, and there could be another half plough. ‘There are 3 serfs; mea- dow sufficient for 2 plough teams; woodland (to feed) 225 swine. Of this land'1 sokeman holds 1 hide. It is worth 4 pounds, (was worth) when received 60 shillings; T.R.E. 8 pounds. This manor 3 sokemen held who could assign and sell their land (to whom) they wished, In this same (vill) the aforesaid Adeliz claims half a virgate and 30 acres of woodland and field («xx acras inter silvam et planum) against Hugh de Beauchamp; and the men of the hundred (court) bear testimony that this land T.R.E. belonged to (jacuit cum) the other land which Adeliz holds and he who held this land could assign or sell it to whom he wished. This land Ralf* took possession of unjustly when he was sheriff. In WicHEsTANEsTOU [WIXAMTREE] HunpreEtT M. Adeliz herself holds CrRLENTONE [Charlton®]. It is assessed at 10 hides. There is land for 10 ploughs. In the demesne are 5 hides, and on it are 2 ploughs and there could be 3 more. There are 16 villeins and g bordars with 5 ploughs. There are 2 serfs, and 1 mill(worth) 30 shillings ; meadow (suffi- cient) for 10 plough teams; woodland (to feed) 16 swine. In all it is worth 10 pounds; (was worth) when received 8 pounds; T.R.E. 12 pounds, This manor King Edward held and it was (before that) (fut) Earl Tosti’s. This Jand was an outlying part (erewich) T.R.E. of Potone [Potton], the manor of Countess Judith ® and in such wise belonged thereto that no one could alienate it therefrom. fo, 218 In Stopen [StoppEn] Hunpret M. In Mirpenrone [Milton Ernest] Ivo steward (dapifer)” of Hugh de Grent[maisnil] 4 i.e. Ralf Tallebosc. 5 In Blunham, ® The words ‘ M[anerium] Judite Comit[isse]’ are added below the line. 7 This was probably the ‘Ivo’ who held as an undertenant of Hugh in Leicestershire and North- 260 THE HOLDERS holds 3 hides and 1 virgate as one manor. There is land for 4 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and 8 villeins (are there) with 2 ploughs. There is 1 serf, and there is 1 mill (worth) 20 shillings, meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 40 swine. It is (and was) worth 60 shillings ; T.R.E. 4 pounds. This manor Goduin a man of Borret held and could sell. LV. THE LAND OF THE WIFE OF RALF TAILLEB(OSC) In ManegsHeve [Mansoeap] Hunpret Azelina wife! of Ralf Tallgebosc holds of the king in BaDELEsponeE [Battlesden] 14 hides. There is land for 13 ploughs. One is there and there could be a half (plough) (more). There are 2 villeins and 1 bordar, and meadow (suffi- cient) for 1 plough team. It isand was worth 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 40 shillings. This land 2 sokemen, Anschil and Alwin, held and could sell to whom they wished. M. Azelina herself holds HocHetera [Hock- liffe). It is assessed at 10 hides. ‘There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 5 hides and on it are 2 ploughs. Thereare 13 villeins and (11?) bordars with 6 ploughs, meadow sufficient for 4 plough teams, wood- land to feed 100 swine. It all it is and was worth 8 pounds; T.R.E. 12 pounds. This manor Anschil held T.R.E. and could sell. In FuicrHam [Furr] Hunprer In Cainou [Cainhoe] Turstin holds of Azelina 1 hide. There is land for 2 ploughs. On the demesne is 1, and 1 villein has another. There are 3 bordars, and meadow sufficient for 1 plough team, and woodland to feed 100 swine. It is worth 20 shillings, (was worth) when received 10 shillings ; T.R.E. 20 shil- lings. This land Ulvric, a sokeman of King Edward, held and could assign and sell to whom he wished. In BereForDE [BaRForD] HuNDRET In Wizo.tpgstone [Wyboston *] Judichel ants, There is no reason to suppose that he was a tenant-in-chief. Moreover this estate was after- wards held of the Earls of Leicester as half a knight’s fee. The occurrence, however, of Stod- den Hundred after that of Wixamtree is not in accordance with the regular sequence, and might be held to suggest the beginning of a new tenancy- in-chief as suggested by Mr. Ragg (J.H.R.) 1 The word is‘ femina’ instead of the usual ‘uxor,’ and it is clearly used here to mean ‘ widow’ (J-H.R.) 2 In Eaton Socon. OF LANDS holds 54 virgates ot Azelina. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 1 villein and 2 bordars ; meadow is there (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is worth 10 shillings, (was worth) when received 5 shillings; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Almar, a man of Ulmar, held and could sell and assign to whom he wished. In BicHELEswADE [BIGGLEswaDE] HunpRET In ArEworDE [Eyworth] Brodo holds 1 hide of Azelina. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 1 bordar, (and there is) meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 10 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). ‘This land belongs to (Azelina’s) marriage portion. This land the same Brodo held and could sell to whom he wished. In Wenestat Hunprer? M. In Harexat [(Cockayne) Hatley] Aze- lina holds, (as) of her marriage portion, 5 hides and 14 virgates. There is land for 8 ploughs. In the demesne are 1 hide and 1 virgate, and on it are 2 ploughs. There are 8 villeins and 4 bordars with 6 ploughs. ‘There are 1 serf, and 1 mill (worth) 18 shillings («viii solid- orum), meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 4 swine and (producing) 3 shillings rent. In all it is worth 6 pounds, when received (was worth) 100 shillings ; T.R.E. 6 pounds. This manor Ulmar a thegn of King Edward held, and there were 2 soke- men, his men, there. They had 24 virgates, and could assign and sell them to whom they wished. In WIcHEsTANESTOU [WIXAMTREE] HUuNDRET In Stanrorp [Stanford*] Roger holds 2 hides of Azelina, and this is (part) of her mar- riage portion. ‘There is land for 2 ploughs.. On the demesne is 1 plough, and 2 villeins and 1 bordar (are there) with 1 plough ; mea- dow is there (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, woodland (to feed) 30 swine, and 1 mill (worth) 13 shillings and 4 pence. It is worth 60 shillings, (was worth) when received 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 60 shillings. This land 2 sokemen held and could assign to whom they wished. In Warpone [Warden] Walter, a monk,° 3 Half hundred. Hundred. 4 In Southill. 5 But possibly ‘monachus’ was, as in later times, a nickname. Walter also held of her at Tadlow in Cambridgeshire (J.H.R.) Now part of Biggleswade 261 A HISTORY OF holds half a hide of Azelina, and this is (part) of her marriage portion, There is land for a half plough, but it is not there. One bordar is there, meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team and woodland (to feed) 40 swine. It is worth 10 shillings ; when received and T.R.E. (was worth) 20 shillings. This land Goding a man of Edric the bald (ca/vi) held and could assign to whom he wished. In Cuisrong* [Currron] Hunprer In Hanestawe [Henlow] Widrus holds 1 hide and 3 virgates of Azelina, There is land for 2 ploughs, and they are there. Two villeins and 2 bordars and 2 serfs are there, and meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams. It is worth 30 shillings, (was worth) when received 20 shillings; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Anschil held, and it was an outlying part (serewiche) of Stodfald [Stotfold] T.R.E. This land Hugh de Beauchamp (Belamp) claims against Azelina, saying that she holds it unjustly and that it was never (part of) her dower. In the same vill Bernard holds 1 hide of Azelina, There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and 3 villeins (and) meadow (suffi- cient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 23 shillings; T.R.E. 28 shillings, This land 2 sokemen held, men of Anschil, and could assign to whom they wished. In Curcuesana [Chicksand] 3 sokemen hold 3 hides of Azelina. (It is part) of her dower. There is land for 2 ploughs; one is there and there could be another, meadow is there (sufficient) for 2 plough teams, wood- land (to feed) 20 swine. It is and was worth 20 shillings; T.R.E. 25 shillings. This manor 4 sokemen held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. In the same vill Walter holds 1 hide of Azelina, and this is (part) of her marriage por- tion. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team, woodland (to feed) 50 swine, and 1 mill worth (de) 10 shillings. It is and was worth 20 shil- lings; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land Suete- man a man of Ulmer of Etone [Eaton Socon] held and could assign to whom he wished. In Sranpone [Stondon] Engeler holds 24 hides of Azelina. There is land for 24 ploughs. On the demesne are 2 ploughs, and (there are) 3 bordars with a half plough. There are 2 serfs, and meadow sufficient for 24 ploughs. It is worth 60 shillings, (was worth) when received 40 shillings; T.R.E. 4 pounds. This 1 For Cliftone. BEDFORDSHIRE land Ulmar of Eton [Eaton Socon], a thegn of King Edward, held; and there were there 5 sokemen, men of the same Ulmar, and they could assign and sell (their land) to whom they wished. LVI. THE LAND OF THE BUR- GESSES OF BEDEFORD [BEDFORD] In THE Harr Hunpret or Bocuerai? In Broeuwam [Biddenham] Osgar of Bede- ford holds 1 virgate of land of the king. There is land for 2 oxen? (to plough). It is and was worth 2 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). He who now holds it held it T.R.E. and could assign to whom he wished. In the same vill Goduin a burgess holds of the king 1 hide and the fourth part of 1 vir- gate. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 10 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). A half hide of this land he who now holds held T.R.E. and could assign to whom he wished ; half a hide and the fourth part of a virgate he bought after King William came into England ; but neither to the king nor to any one else has he done service for it, nor has he had possession given (/iberatorem) of it. Against him Wil- liam Spech claims 1 virgate and the fourth part of 1 virgate, which had been given into his possession (/iserata) and which he after- wards lost.* In the same vill Ordwi a burgess holds of the king 1 hide and the third part of a half hide. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there. There are 2 villeins and 1 bordar, and meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is and was worth 10 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). Half a hide and the fourth part of 1 virgate of this land was held T.R.E. by him who now holds it, and he could assign (them) to whom he wished. One virgate however he held in mortgage T.R.E., and as yet holds it; so the men of the hundred (court) attest. The same man bought 1 virgate and the fourth part of 1 virgate after King William came into England and renders no service for it to the king nor to any one else. In the same vill Ulmar a burgess holds of the king two-thirds (partes) of 1 virgate. There is land for 1 ox (to plough). It is 2 Now part of Willey Hundred. 3 i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. * William held 4 hides less 1} virgates there (J.H.R.) 5 These fractions amount in all to r} hide; but the man is said to hold 12 hide (J.H.R.) 262 Ke THE HOLDERS and was worth 12 pence T.R.E. and after (semper). The same man held it T.R.E., and could assign it to whom he wished. In Wiuca [Wittzy] Hunprer In Henewicu [Hinwick'] Edward holds half a hide of the king. There is land for a half plough. There are 2 oxen? and 1 bordar. It is and was worth 5 shillings, T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land this man’s father held and could sell T.R.E. This land King William granted to the same man in almoin, as to which he has the king’s writ and the witness of the hundred (court). In ScerneBroc [Sharnbrook] Almar holds half a virgate of the king. There is land for a half plough, but it is not there. It is and was worth 2 shillings ; T.R.E. 5 shillings. This land the father of the same man held, and King William gave it back (reddidit) to him by his writ. In Wicuestanestou [WIxAMTREE] HunpDRET In Bisrong [Beeston*] Godmund holds of the king 3 virgates. There is land for 3 oxen (to plough) and they are there and meadow (sufficient) for 3 oxen. It is and was worth 5 shillings; T.R.E. 10 shillings. The same man held it T.R.E. and could sell (it) to whom he wished. In Cuistone* [Ciirton] Hunprer In Hanstau [Henlow] Alric holds of the king 1 virgate. There is land for 2 oxen® (to plough), and they are there and meadow (sufficient) for 2 oxen. It is and was worth 2 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). The same man held it T.R.E. and could sell it. In Arriceset [Arlesey] a certain prebendary of the king, Ulsi, holds of the king two-thirds (partes) of 1 virgate. fo. 218b THE LAND OF THE REEVES (PREPOSITORUM) AND ALMSMEN‘® OF THE KING In ManesHEvE [MansHeapD] HunpReT In Euresot [Eversholt] Herbert a king’s 1 In Puddington or Podington. 2 i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. 3 In Sandy. 4 For Cliftone. 5 i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. 6 The schedule at the beginning of the Survey inserts ‘ bedelli’ between these two classes (J.H.R.) OF LANDS bailiff (prefectus) holds half a hide; in Wo- BERNE [Woburn] 3 virgates of land; and in PorgsGRave [Potsgrove] 1 hide. These three lands he holds in the king’s service (in ministerio regis). “They did not belong to this (jacuerunt ibt) T.R.E., but he states that after Ralf Tallgebosc was sheriff, he had these by grant (concessione) of the king.” ‘There is 1 villein, In all this is worth 6 shillings ; was worth when received 20 shillings; T.R.E. a like sum. This land 5 sokemen of King Edward held and could sell to whom they wished. In the same Porescrava [Potsgrove] a certain groom (eguarius) of the king holds half a hide. There is land for a half plough and it is there. It is and was worth 5 shil- lings; T.R.E. ro shillings. This land Oswi, a man of Earl Tosti, held and could assign to whom he wished. i.° In Prestexat [Priestley ®] a king’s bailiff holds 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough. There are 1 villein, meadow (sufficient) for 1 plough team ; woodland (to feed) 20 swine. It is worth 5 shillings ; (was worth) when received 10 shillings ; T.R.E. 30 shillings. This land 4 thegns held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. In Rarzorcestoc [REDBORNESTOKE] HunpDRET ii. In MEtpong [Maulden] a certain king’s bailiff holds half a hide. There is land for a half plough, and it is there with 2 villeins. Meadow is there (sufficient) for a half plough team. It isand was worth 3 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. This land 2 sokemen of King Edward held and could assign to whom they wished. In BICHELESWADE [BIGGLESWADE] HuNDRET ili. In TamisEFoRDE [Tempsford] Alwin a bailiff holds 1 hide and the fourth part of 1 virgate. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 3 villeins. Meadow is there (suffi- cient) for a half plough team. It is and was worth 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 27 shillings, This land 6 sokemen held and could sell to whom they wished. iii. In Epgworpe [Edworth] Alwin, a 7 The meaning of the text is somewhat obscure, and it is quite possible that this allegation was made by Ralf himself (J.H.R.) 8 The meaning of these numerals is explained lower down in the text. ® In Flitwick. 263 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE king’s bailiff, holds 2} hides. There is land for 2 ploughs, and they are there with 2 villeins. It is and was worth 30 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This manor Branting, a man of King Edward, held and could sell. v. In Horme [Holme] Alwin, a king’s bailiff, holds 13 hides. There is land for 14 ploughs. One plough is there and there could be a half plough (more). There are 2 villeins. It is and was worth 20 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land Alvric and Lemar, bedells, held and could sell. vi. In Suprong [Sutton] Alwin holds 14 virgates. It is and was worth 4 shillings ; T.R.E. 5 shillings. This land 2 sokemen held and could assign and sell to whom they wished. These 6 estates (terras) Ralf Talgebosc assigned to the king’s service (apposuit in ministerio regis) when he was sheriff, for they did not belong to (on fuerunt ibi) this (service) T.R.E. They who now hold them hold them by grant of the king as they say. In FricrHam [Fiirr] Hunprer In Strapier [Streatley] the bailiff (pre- Jfectus) of the hundred holds two-thirds (partes) of 1 virgate for the king’s use, which now belong to (jacent in) Lintone? [Luton] the king’s manor, but did not belong thereto (non jacuerunt ibi) T.R.E. Bondi the staller assigned (them) to (apposuit in) this manor ; Ralf Tallgebosc found them there belonging (ibi appositas), There is land for a half plough. It is and was worth § shillings; T.R.E. 10 shillings. ‘This land Ulmar a priest held and could assign to whom he wished. In Wenesiar®? Hunpret In SupTone [Sutton] Alwin holds 1 hide. On the demesne is 1 plough and there are 3 bordars with 1 plough ; meadow (sufficient) for 2 plough teams and (worth) 12 pence (be- sides). It is and was worth 20 shillings ; T.R.E. 10 shillings. Of this land the same man held 3 virgates, and a certain Edward 1 virgate. ‘They could assign or sell them to whom they wished. In Wince [Wittey] Hunpret In Carientone [Carlton] Chelbert holds 34 virgates. There is land for 1 plough, and 1 In Biggleswade. 2 For ‘ Luitone.’ 3 Half hundred. Now part of Biggleswade Hun- dred. it is there with 2 villeins and 3 bordars. Meadow is there (sufficient) for 1 plough team. It is worth 10 shillings, when re- ceived (was worth) 2 ‘ ores,’ * T.R.E. 10 shil- lings. Of this land the same man held 1 virgate. He was a man of Queen Edid and could assign to whom he wished. ‘Two vir- gates and a half however he took possession of for which he has produced (invenit) neither livery (4beratorem) nora warrantor (advocatum) ; which land Alli a thegn of King Edward held. In Wimentone [Wymington] 5 brothers with their mother hold 3 virgates (de da).® There is land for 1 plough, but it is not there. It is worth 3 shillings, was worth T.R.E. 15 shillings. This land Lant their father, held and could assign and sell. In BEREFORDE [BarForD] Hunpret In CotpentonE [Goldington] Alric Win- tremelc holds half a hide of the king. There is land for a half plough and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for 3 oxen. It is and was worth § shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). He who now holds it held it T.R.E. He was a man of King Edward, and could assign to whom he wished. He afterwards gave it to the canons of St. Paul, under King William, and in such wise that they should have it after his death absolutely (omnino). In WicuHEsTanEstou [ WIXAMTREE] HunpDRET In SranForp [Stanford °] Alric holds of the king the fourth part of 1 virgate. ‘ There is land for a half ox’ (dimid’ bovi) (to plough) and there is a ‘half ox’ (semibos)” there. It is and was worth 12 pence. He who now holds it held it T.R.E., and could assign (it) to whom he wished. In the same vill Ordui holds [ ] and the fourth part of 1 virgate.® There is land for 3 oxen (to plough) and they are there, and meadow (sufficient) for 3 oxen. It is and was worth 4 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). The same man held it T.R.E. He was a man of King Edward, and could sell (it) to whom he wished. * The ‘ore’ was the ounce of silver, namely sixteen pence. The land therefore had been worth, at that time, two shillings and eightpence H.R.) 5 These words are at the foot of the column, and their meaning is obscure (J.H.R.) ® In Southill. 7 ? heifer (see Introduction). 8 “tenet Ordui et quartam partem unius virge.’ 264 THE HOLDERS In Bistone [Beeston’] Alwin holds 14 virgates. There is land for a half plough. There are 2 bordars. It is worth 12 pence, when received (was worth) 4 shillings ; T.R.E. ro shillings. This land was assigned to the king’s service (apposita est in ministerio regis), to which (service) it did not belong T.R.E.; but Dot who held it could assign or sell (it). In Rapsurnestoc [REDBORNESTOKE] HuNDRET In Wescota [Westcote ?*] Ordui holds 1 virgate of the king. There is land for a half plough. ‘There are 5 oxen with 1 bordar and 1 serf. It is and was worth § shillings ; T.R.E. ro shillings. The same man held it then. He was a king’s man and could sell it. In Stopen [SToppEN] Hunpret In Denz [Dean] 11 sokemen of King William hold 7 virgates of land and the fourth part of 1 virgate. ‘There is land for 33 ploughs and they are there. It is and was worth 30 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land T.R.E. the same sokemen held who now hold it, and they could assign it to whom they wished. ‘This land Ralf assigned to the king’s service, to which (service) it did not belong (apposuit in ministerio regis ubi non fuit) T.R.E. In the same vill Goduin Dere?® of Bedeford [Bedford] holds half a virgate of the king and it is and was worth 12 pence T.R.E. and after (semper). The same man held it T.R.E. and could do with it what he wished. In Hanerep* [ ] Saiet holds 1 vir- gate of the king’s soke. There is land for a half plough, and it is there. It is and was worth § shillings; T.R.E. 10 shillings. The same man held it then and could do with it what he wished. In THE sAME HuNDRED OF STODEN [STopDEN] Turgot and his mother hold of the king half a hide. ‘There is land for 1 plough, and it is there with 1 villein and 2 bordars. Woodland is there (sufficient) to feed 4 swine. OF LANDS It is and was worth 10 shillings; T.R.E. 12 shillings. This land the father of this Tur- got held. He was a king’s thegn and could assign and sell his land. In Mitpentone [Milton (Ernest)] a cer- tain bedell of the king holds half a virgate of the king. There is land for 2 oxen® (to plough). It is and was worth 12 pence. This land was held by the father of him who now holds it and he could assign it to whom he wished. In THe Hater Hunprep or Bucuerar® In BrimeHam [Bromham] Osiet holds 1 virgate and two-thirds (partes) of 1 virgate. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there, and meadow (sufficient) for a half plough team. It is worth 10 shillings, was worth T.R.E. 5 shillings) The same man held it then and could assign it. In Witce [Wittey] Hunpret In Torvetr [Turvey] Alwin a priest holds of the king the third part of half a hide. There is land for 2 oxen” (to plough), and they are there. It is and was worth 3 shillings. The same man held it T.R.E. and could do with it what he wished. But King William afterwards granted it to him in almoin. On which account he performs every week on the second day (é feria) a mass for the souls of the king and the queen.® In THE sAME HUNDRET Osiet a king’s bailiff holds half a hide of the king. There is land for a half plough and it is there. It isand was worth 3 shillings T.R.E. and after (semper). This land 1 soke- man held T.R.E. whom King William commended (commendavit), together with this land, to the aforesaid bailiff, to supply food and clothing to him as long as he lived. In Wim[in]rone [Wimmington] Turchil holds of the king 1 hide. There is land for 1 plough, and it is there. It is and was worth 5 shillings ; T.R.E. ro shillings. The same man held it then, and could sell it to whom he wished. 5 i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. 1 In Sandy. 2 See p. 243, note 7. ® Now part of Willey Hundred. 3 The Record Commission’s edition reads 7 i.e. a quarter of a plough-team. ‘ Godwidere.’ 8 This last sentence is added in a note at the * See Introduction. foot of the column (J.H.R.) i 265 34 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE [HERTS] fo. 133 King William holds Westone [Weston- (ing)]. It is assessed at 5 hides. There is land for 14 ploughs. In demesne are 2 hides, and 2 ploughs are on it (éb/) ; and 16 villeins with 3 bordars have 5 ploughs, and 5 more could be (employed). (There are) 4 serfs. (There is) meadow for 7 plough-teams ; pas- ture for the stock of the vill. (There is) woodland for 400 swine and (yielding) 3 shil- lings (besides), Earl Harold held this manor, which did and does belong to (et jacuit et jacet in) Hiz [Hitchin]. But the assessment (Wara) of this manor belonged to (jacuit in) ‘ Bede- fordscire’ T.R.E. (namely) to (#7) the Hun- dret of Maneheve [Manshead]; and the manor is there and always was; and since King Edward’s death it has failed to pay the king’s geld. [HUNTS] fo. 203b In PaRTENHALE [Pertenhall] Alwin’ had I virgate of land (assessed) tothe geld. (There is) land for half a plough. This land is situ- ated in ‘ Bedefordescire,’ but renders (its) geld and service in ‘ Hontedunescyre.’ The king’s officers claim it for his own use (opus). It is and was in King Edward’s time worth 5 shillings. William holds it of Bishop R[emi- gius] and ploughs (the land) there with his own demesne. fo. 205b S.1 In Catssor [Keysoe] Allic (has) 3 vir- gates of land (assessed) to the geld. There is land for 6 oxen. (It is) soke (of Kimbolton). There (are) 1 sokeman, and 7 bordars, and 4 acres of meadow, and 5 acres of woodland for feed ( pastilis). fo. 207 M. In Evrerune [Everton] Ingewar had 7 hides (assessed) to the geld. (There is) land for 18 ploughs. There are now 2 ploughs on the demesne, and 19 villeins and 2 bordars who have 9 ploughs. There are a priest and a church and 15 acres of meadow, and 40 acres of underwood (si/ue min’). In King Edward’s time it was worth 10 pounds ; now 7 pounds. Rannulf brother of Ilger holds it of the king. fo. 207b In Caissor [Keysoe] Alwine had 1 virgate of land (assessed) to the geld with sac and soc. ‘There is land for 2 oxen. It lies in ‘ Bedefordscira,’ but pays (dat) geld in ‘Hunte- d[une]scyre.” He himself holds (it) now of the king, and has there 1 villein with 2 oxen in the plough (én caruca). In King Edward’s time it was worth 16 pence; now the same. fo. 208 Of (the) 1 virgate of land of Alwin Deule in Partenhale [Pertenhall] King Edward had the soc. [NORTHANTS] [WILLIAM PEVEREL’S LAND] fo. 225b In Farnepis [Farndish] (are) 3 virgates of land of soke. (There is) land for 1 plough. of soke. Two sokemen have this (plough) there. In PorinroneE [Podington] (is) half a hide There are 4 villeins with 1 plough. 1 This stands for Soke. 266 HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ee Fi 7 5 , gee ee mse \e Nea eZ iS . t ¢ L "The Ediubrregh Geographical Institute THE VICTORIA HISTORY OF Thr s IWORKS 15' | Wablleyy Co ola at GREY 3 F a f Li SET 7a Sy “iit PANS y; x ie “ ». Monhe y + ) Re ._E foi= PF. Neg a Vf PIR SEI © LS ARAN & |e BETS | { Sos\\e WE, ) A" qu “as ' s sasubooe wig, wt x _, athe, Se \agpsunangnel < Aw es qs uhh say revadvaaat we Fad ws uae whe 2,4 ANU OL) Mean ng HEHE 2g “ny wt GTIACEAITN KN RALL 4, SN Z cA ‘ LR Crys 277 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE broad low external rampart with faint signs of a shallow interior ditch. The rampart averages 35 feet in breadth by some 4% in height, except near its north angle, where it suddenly widens to 51 feet. At this point a ditch runs through a break between the broad and narrow banks in the direction of the brook. In the centre of the enclosure is a low circular mound, about 100 feet across the base, and 45 at the top, with a shal- low trench round it. An old oak, 4% feet through the trunk, stands on its north slope. At the east angle of the external rampart are three narrow oblong depressions, with a lower bank enclosing them, which may have been fish stews. The internal area of the triangle is a little over 3 acres, and there seem to have been three entrances—one near the broad rampart on the north, and two near the ends on the south side. It is difficult to tell whether this place was a station secured by surround- ing marsh or a piece of artificial water with the mound for an island. In the first case it may be of early origin ; in the latter of much later, and perhaps connected with the former manor-house on the hill. (9) Eronsury or StTonsury, ARLESEY.—These curious remains are within a stone’s throw of Arlesey station on the Great Northern Railway, which runs on a great embankment through the western side of the work, thereby making it impossible to decipher its plan. The position occupies the edge and slope of a great plain. The Ivel flows past it on the west, on the other side of the railway. It consists of two features—a main fort near the river, strongly held to the north by great ramparts and fosses, and with a wide expanse of broad moats on the south where the ground is low, probably fed from the Ivel; and a very large oblong outer work, which still has the remains of strong entrenchments to the north and east, measuring about 1,200 feet by 600. The rampart to the north of the oblong is still fine, standing in some places about 8 feet above the bottom of the broad outer ditch. Remains of a second rampart and ditch appear near its eastern end. Much of the larger ditch has been lately filled in, especially where it approaches the main work. There appears to have been an entrance at this point commanded by the towering ram- part and mound of the inner defences, of which the outer fosse is almost a ravine, about 50 feet across and 10 feet down to the water level, above which the rampart rises again to a height of 12 feet, and the mound some 3 feet higher. Each of the ramparts of this inner work ends ina similar mound, and there is another on the east side of the moat, suggesting that there was a bridged main entrance here to all parts of the inner work, strongly commanded by these mounds. On the west, Lyson’s drawing * shows the two ramparts as ending suddenly at the top of the slope down to the river and without any return. This part has been broken through by the railway bank. The broad moat on the south is carried round a large flat area raised slightly above the general level. In many places there are the remains of a low rampart on the outer edge of the broad moat, and on the west a small dam stretches across it, leaving 1 Add. MS. 9460, f. 25. 278 ae) OU series Nyy Nyy "ny, RR (Fe = = = - = cee °c Ne re == -S- -— a cS == == = ae ee ae == -s = -z= 22 ssi s-=s =32 === HVT Vaagdagg tania MOTT ea BEN Arey TTC " “sa YW 2 ANS = s SS ALL, = s all> 5% = s S2= 4% = < = Oot? == s s==> 43 2s laa os SSE F255 Wy, = —-> a’ z= = {} = —_—> Oe = M1, = ang Se =~ 4 = —_—= SS = = == SS = % -=s = . ¢ i sss c= ~ Ss = ca a > S$ ~~ Ga¢ = = z = ZSs = = z = 232F — = % FS A -_ = [a =~ Sa Z = = = ron a ZS ss = = = Bes E = Za. = = ZINN = % =) Nilay Y Ss = N7NSD “yy ye Oy, NZ L PACs \ wt aN \\ Me! NV s Y “amma ibid i Y NlTiMeaaday UT) HEMUEN Mar eg, “nti, Wlidyy ry ' EEE nny ir 279 abagag LS ARLESLEY = STATION Vy Uy; I UTTi\ fin A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE only a narrow mouth for communication with the river. A small stream runs through the lower part of the site, which was a few years ago turned into the outer moat, possibly deepened for the purpose. Formerly it continued into the river, under the railway bank. Whether this stream flows in its original course is uncertain, as it has the appearance of a later straight cutting. There is a short moat-like sinking inside the inner rampart, as though further to divide the ward within. How the work was closed in on the south is not clear. Possibly the road covers the line of the defences. In the present state of the remains nothing can be suggested as to its origin, except that the small mounds at the ends of the ramparts are found in works reputedly Danish, and the shallows cut near the river, which are unlike defensive moats, may have sheltered their shipping. (10) Dray’s Dircues NEAR Limsury.—Following along the old Icknield Way from Limbury, in a north-easterly direction, two isolated hills are reached—Warden Hill and Galley Hill. Under the east slope of the latter is a very large irregular enclosure, with slight bank and ditch, evidently not defensive, all round it. The stretch which lines the Icknield Way is more than half a mile in length. The ground within is a dead level and is under cultivation. On the slopes of the hill above, the ordnance map shows four tumuli. To the south, a strong line of entrenchment runs parallel with Dray’s Ditch, 1,000 feet in length, pierced almost at right angles by the Icknield Way. Much of it has been levelled, but at the western end the rampart rises 9 feet above the bottom of the external fosse to the north, which is here 12 feet across. What was the purpose of this great enclosure it is difficult to conjecture. EARTHWORKS ALONG THE OUSE FROM BEDFORD TO TEMPSFORD There is an interesting series of earthworks along the line of the Ouse from Bedford to Tempsford, 8 miles distant, which appears to be PLAN SHEWING THE COURSE of tHe OUSE = ER BETWEEN RENHOLD, WILLINGTON AND BEDFORD ; The dotted line Indicates Its od bed, tno and present flood-/ine. eee } FROM THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. f connected with the campaign of 921 between Edward the Elder and the Danes and Northmen of East Anglia.’ 1 Anglo-Saxon Chon. (Rolls Ser.), i. 194. 280 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS (1) Tue ‘ Kine’s Ditcu,’ Beprorp.—The Chronicle‘ tells us that King Edward ‘ went with the army to Bedanforda, and gained the burgh, . . . and he remained there four weeks and commanded the burg on the south side of the river to be built (at#méran) before he went thence.’ This was in 919. Previously the town, with whatever fort commanded the ford, was on the north side. Mr. G. T. Clark assumes that this entry implied the rearing of a mound, for which there is no evidence, nor even a tradition. There is however a work on the south of the river which may fairly be attributable to this month of labour. It is a very ancient cutting which describes a circuit from a point on the river to the west of the town to a point on the east, about half a mile dis- tant. It is shown in Speed’s map of 1610. The river still runs through this cutting, and in flood time it is full to the brim, 10 or 12 feet across. In recent times it has been shortened on the east, but the old course is still strongly marked, and flood water takes possession of this too. Some traces of an interior rampart are here still visible. This work goes by the name of the ‘ King’s Ditch,’ and when stockaded would form an effective defence for Edward’s new garrison. The ditch is carefully maintained and is a notable boundary of property. It has also been suggested that this cutting may have been a water- way made at the time of Henry the Third’s great siege of Bedford Castle in 1224, but this siege is described with so much minuteness in the old record* that an important detail such as the making of this ‘ditch’ must have been recorded. Moreover it is evident that the besiegers with their engines were drawn round the castle very closely, and a comparatively remote water-way could have been of little service. It should also be noted that two Norman churches, one very early, stood half-way between river and ditch, on the line of the main road to the bridge. (2) Tempsrorp.—Two years later the East Anglian Danes abandoned Huntingdon, their headquarters, and moved u the Ouse to Tempsford, where they ‘wrought TEMPSFORD a work’ and established themselves. At this place, on the south of the Ivel, near its junc- yuuStees OF FSET tion with the Ouse, there remains a strong : : Q MIME EH little fort, which all our earthwork authori- ssl N = as ~ : |e WiuaWiw6s == es Us i] Ws HS ties assign to this occupation. Mr. I. C. Gould says : ‘ This example is of great value, as we know the date of its construction.’® Mr. J. H. Round describes it as ‘an advanced post of the Danes.’ * It stands about 200 yards from the former bank of the river, and is oblong in shape, being about 120 feet by 84 feet within the ramparts, which remain on three sides to a height of 11 or 12 feet above the bottom of the moat. The moat el feerey NUTS SOM N > 1 Anglo-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i. 192. 2 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii. 86-9. 3 Fourn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. ‘Early Defensive Earthworks,’ p. 22. 4 Quart. Review, July 1894. I 281 36 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE averages 20 feet across, and is strong on all four sides. The eastern rampart has been mostly removed. The entrance appears to have been at the north-east angle close under a small circular mound on the rampart, rising a foot or two above it, and 20 feet across the top, which is edged all round by the root of a small bank which may have been the base of a stockaded tower. The fields to the south and east are scored with traces of other lines, where probably the rest of the station stood, but they are too faint to decipher. The ground slopes from east to west, so that the west end of the little fort rises considerably above the lower levels. It seems to have been a kind of projecting exterior keep. Its local name is ‘ Gannock’s Castle’ or ‘The LS ace inl ee aaterey PRURSLALL LID) sMitte Wea a _—s » ~ S a) be ‘v 9 S Hw i.) L= 4 ve. a 2 w' ¢ a 7 7 pres’ Wz 4 Ss, s 4, ‘ ” ‘ty yaeele uy iy CUAIATTTI LOE) Cin» 23 oN we F A ; vt SS 4 eee N au"* a Tee 2 Ania = = Ne: ~ 1. POSSIBLE HARBOUR ater wl L_ 2.* 00. “wAUsTS”, ‘ “W .) Ly SH/IP- SHEDS OR ag \ DOCKS. AYR AATEC \ \ ws we oe wow WILLINGTON a uuSCALE OF FEET 19) 100 200 300 — Gannicks.’ At the close of the campaign the place was stormed by the English with great slaughter of its defenders. It is very probable that this and other works of the kind became, later on, the site of defended homesteads, as they could easily have been adapted for the purpose. (3) Witiincton.—Four miles nearer to Bedford, still on the south of the Ouse, there is another work with certain unusual features, which appear to mark it also as Danish. It stands on the old original bank of the river, which flows immediately beneath it. The former river bed lies between it and the northern original bank, half a mile across, and is wholly covered in times of flood. The site of the camp is a plain, and all the lines of entrenchment are dug out much on one level. There is an inner ward, an outer ward and a wide exterior enclosure. 282 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS The London and North-Western Railway cut through the work 40 years ago, but the broken lines may be traced on each side of it. A moat, averaging 40 feet in breadth, pierced for the entrance on the south, en- closes the inner ward. There are remains of a strong interior rampart, which on the east side leaves the moat and turns back towards the river, starting from a circular mound commanding the entrance. The same moat then continues in a straight line on the west until it bends at a right angle to enclose the outer ward. It also is stopped for the entrance, and then continues, 30 feet wide, until it joins a much broader flat- bottomed cutting which comes up from the river at a right angle. This measures 68 feet across the top, and gradually widens to 104 feet at the bottom, shelving down towards the water all the way. It is 170 feet long to the point where the railway embankment interrupts it. On the other side of the line, the old river bank of hard gravel, 12 feet high, is sliced through to meet it, some 230 feet in width, and the water bays in at this point as into a harbour. The two other moat ends which appear on this side of the line are stopped before they reach the water, with only narrow runnels in communication with it, which may or may not be original. The Rev. A. Orlebar, vicar of the parish, remembers that before the line was made the water invaded the whole extent of this har- bour, and in winter it used to be a favourite haunt of skaters. At the harbour head there are ramparts on both sides, some 8 or g feet high above its bed ; and also on both sides of the moat which joins it. Outside all these works, and enclosing them, the outermost entrench- ment ran, well preserved on the east side and evident on the south, although a modern road occupies the fosse. The east fosse is 20 feet in width, and the inner rampart 6 feet above the bottom of it. Following down towards the river a curious feature occurs near the railway. The moat suddenly widens into a small oblong 35 feet wide by 72 feet long by 6 feet deep, and then continues down towards the harbour mouth. These dimensions are almost the same as those of the ‘nausts,’ ship- sheds or small docks of the old Vikings in Iceland, such as the Fldka- naust on the Vatsnfiord, intended for the single ship of Hrafn F1dki, one of the earliest settlers in the ninth century. His‘ naust’ was close to his house, and the outer wall of it was an earthen bank, as here. At the head of the harbour is another oblong sinking, 110 feet by 60 feet, and there is a gap in the rampart between it and the harbour of 25 feet to allow of communication. The west side of this enclosure is shelving, but the other two are clearly cut, and its level is slightly above that of the harbour. This may have been another ‘naust’ or dock. The distance between the side of the harbour and the small ‘naust’ is 60 feet. The latter has two shelving entrances at the foot, some 18 feet wide, and there is a similar depression in the side of the harbour.’ Close to the eastern entrance to the ‘naust’ is the root of a circular mound, 25 feet in diameter by 3 feet high. There is a small additional 1 Thorsteinn Erlingsson, Ruins of the Saga Time (Viking Club), p. 87. 2 The Northmen were wont to drag their ships overland on rollers, which they carried with them. 283 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE court to the east of the main enclosure, as though for extra defence to ‘naust’ and harbour. Its bank and ditch are lost in ploughed fields after reaching the hedge, but their return may be traced on the other side of the line. The Northmen were accustomed to provide some such shelter for their fleets when campaigning, and this work is described with some detail because of its situation on the line of their advance on Bedford. They may have left their ships under guard here before crossing to the north bank of the Ouse, where the fighting certainly took place. The harbour would have space for between twenty-five to thirty ships of the Gokstad type, which would allow for a force of about 2,500 men. That there is no reference to Willington in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may be due to the fact that after their defeat the Danes withdrew on Temps- ford, where the next recorded fighting took place. Not having been itself the scene of battle, Willington might easily pass unnamed. (4) Rennorp.—On the north bank of the river, opposite to Will- ington, there is a curious small circular work on a commanding height. It is surrounded by defences RENHOLD of disproportionate size for the scale of the enclosure, which is only 120 feet in HIGH ROAD diameter, whilst the rampart = wt Wp is some 40 feet broad at the = “Onn base, 8 feet high above the A, N : es inner level,and 11 feet above = 3% the fosse outside, which is ae. Ce x 50 feet across, and at present TIC Sy, yyy w of very flat section. This “an uibnus is due to the fact that twenty-five years ago it was Scents ur Feat drained of its water and then 6 100 200-300 filled up. Formerly the depth must have been in proportion to its breadth. Now it is only 3 feet, and towards the rear the ditch has been almost obliterated. Water still stands in a portion to the south. There are entrances at the east and west, through which an old road once ran, the latter being double the width of the former. As the ram- part near it and especially to the north has evidently been tampered with, the gap here may have been widened. The high road between Bedford and St. Neots runs past the north rampart, and the ditch has here disappeared ; no doubt the shovel has been at work to level the sides of the road. An old man of eighty remembers the road before it was hedged, when the work lay open and untouched. On the high flat ground between 1 The Jomsviking Saga speaks of a harbour made by Palnatoki the Viking at Jomsborg, perhaps on the Isle of Wollin. ‘There he had a large and strong sea-burg made. He also had a harbour made within the burg in which 300 long ships could lie at the same time, all being locked in the burg’ (The Viking Age, Du Chaillu, ii. 162). 284 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS it and the steep slopes to the river on the south and west, there are many old lines of trenched work now almost levelled out. As this place is only 3 miles from Bedford, and near the scene of the conflict,’ it is possible that it may have been an outpost of the Danes, by means of which, with Willington, they secured the passage of the river. The older ordnance maps call it ‘a Roman amphitheatre.’ II. PERSONAL STRONGHOLDS; THE FORTIFIED SEATS OF MANORIAL LORDS The county is rich in various types of earthworks ot this class which have certain features common to most of them, such as a strong central posi- tion specially fortified for keep or hall; mills, fishponds, and more often than not, the church ; and, outside all, lines of entrenchment enclosing a wide area. In one matter these sites are much alike : they are either deserted and left to the possession of ‘conies’ and great trees, or they are occu- pied by small farmhouses, often placed in the central hold. The first is nearly always the case with the moated mound series, which are the least adaptable to later habitation. In these the mounds are generally found in one of two forms, either (a) large, conical and flat-topped, often with a smaller mound superimposed ; or (4) small and semi-globular. (c) A third class consists of works with irregular mounds, or merely moated. (2) WORKS WITH CONICAL FLAT-TOPPED MOUNDS (1) Beprorp CastLe.—This was the chief and greatest of these.’ It is first heard of in Stephen’s siege (1136). The only remains now of its great entrenchments are the lower part of the demolished mound, 160 feet in diameter by 25 feet in height, with, on the north and east, a fine seg- ment of surrounding ditch, 50 feet wide by 8 or g feet in depth ; and parts of mounded work further north again, now covered with buildings. Not many years ago the last of its moats was filled in to make a road down to the river, and traces of others have come to light during ex- cavation for the rebuilding of various business properties in the High Street, which stretched back some distance into the castle area. The mound, with the keep, which stood upon it, and the rest of the castle buildings were ordered to be destroyed after the great siege of 1224 ; since which time it has enjoyed centuries of peaceful life as a famous bowling-green. Leland, Camden, Defoe and Lysons all refer to it in this later capacity. There is no mention of any castle in Domesday. It is often stated that some earlier stronghold stood on the site to * Leland speaks of a number of skeletons having been found z miles nearer to Bedford ; and five years ago, whilst the ground was being levelled in making the Russell Park, several more were found, lying east and west, with Saxon swords and spearheads, which are now in the council chamber. Between that point and this Renhold work, also by the river, stands the barrow-like mound of Risinghoe, close to a small bridge, always known as ‘Bloody Battle bridge.’ ? Castellum editissimo aggere vallatum (Gesta Stephani [Rolls Ser.], 32). 285 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE dominate the ford, but nothing can be learned about it, and the descrip- tion of the Norman castle belongs to another section of this work. (2) Furrwick.—Near the church, on rising ground known as ‘Mount Hill,’ stands a small ‘mound and court’ work of the figure-of- eight type. A circular moat averaging 30 feet in width, and 6 feet at its deepest, encloses a mound which is iL 5 | 102 feet in diameter “3 across the top, and raised 4 or 5 feet above the general level. Its surface is fairly flat but slopes gradually up towards the west, where it is = finished by a small z round flat-topped %, mound, which rises melee 14, feet above the 2 2 . 8 bottom of the moat. = There are remains of a strong rampart on the outer scarp of the moat, which towards the south commences its sweep to encircle the base-court, which was considerably larger than the inner enclosure. Towards this court the circular moat is stopped in two places for entrances. There are traces of outer lines in the fields adjoining, but not many years ago these formed part of a large pleasure garden, and the lines have been almost obliterated. This is true also of the north side of the base-court. The small upper mound was the site of a summer house and may have been modi- fied. The river Flitt, an arm of the Ivel, is near. There is Norman detail in the church.’ (3) ‘Concer Hizt,’ Toppincron.—This place occupies the highest oint of a lofty tableland from which wide views of the country are obtained. A great round moat, 30 to 32 feet wide and 5 to 6 feet deep, entirely encircles the mound, which rises 18 feet above the present bot- tom of it, with a flat top of g2 feet diameter. There is no trace of rampart on the summit, but here and there slight sinkings which suggest some sort of small enclosures. There are a few slight entrenched lines to the north-west in the direction of the church, which stands about 100 yards distant, and a considerable length of moat 12 feet wide by 2 feet deep runs past quite close to the great moat edge on the east. THE MOUNT, FLITWICK We Ny oS Fw SCALE OF FEET 4 owewe aan J te) 100 200 300 1 The whole of Flitwick was held in demesne by William Lovet in Domesday. 286 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS This outer moat has no rampart, and proceeds almost due north and south, dying out before it shows any sign of turning. From this moat CHURCH 4 Wipe Wy 2 Se === fe ~G WS S Fs PL, WS SS NS £F e(e WC CONGER HILL, TODDINGTON in SCALE OF FEET . ie 200-300 the site slopes gradually away to the south, where there are remains of a large bank near a brook, which was probably a dam. No signs of the outermost enclosing lines are now apparent. Fisher publishes a view of Conger Hill in his Co/lections (1812). The Lysons* stated that near it were ‘ considerable earthworks’ in their time.’ (4) Tue ‘Bury Hu,’ Tuurteicu.—Fisher’s drawing finely shows the impressive nature of the great moated mound at this place, and its near association with the church, in which is a tower and north door of early Norman date. It also stands on a lofty height, which slopes rapidly down to a low-lying stream on the west and south. The mound was of the conical type with its summit in two levels, the higher of which is crowned by a small circular hold with low ramparted edge. In the centre of this stands a great walnut tree 12 feet in girth. There is no bank anywhere else on the mound, which rises some 23 feet above the bottom of the fosse, on the east, where the work is best preserved. The fosse is about 25 feet across and 8 or ro feet in depth on the east, north and west. Here there are also fine remains of the great rampart on the outer edge of the scarp. On the south side all these features are almost worked 1 Mag. Brit. i. 143. 2 At the time of Domesday Toddington was a large and very valuable manor held in demesne by Ernulf de Hesdin. 287 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE out, and in recent years the mound itself has here been dug away in order to level the ground. This spoliation has now been stopped. During its progress many skeletons were found in the side of the mound, but no signs of masonry. A farmstead, some two and a half centuries old, occupies THURLEIGH SCALE OF FEET N $a Nyy fin, re Care? Hine ony Til air s J “TC _ =] be Pinriys MIsweHLN SGC gy TOS att itd an re} et Sil Ss “Wg, a PA PTT RE aay Siig BMT Ty, = by EI Wes -7(0 = salir Ss E)>= Sio2 SHAS =. 2 zal oF — 303 ai|Ze PR ok a St QF, ASD 4% + much of the site, with the result that no courts connected with the mound can now be traced. The outer enciente however, well defined by bank and ditch, remains almost entire, and encloses a very large area, within which stands practically the whole of the old village. At the north-east angle there are certain strongly marked projecting lines, which 288 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS seem to mark a well-guarded entrance. At the bottom of the valley to the south the stream was originally taken through a pond of great length, now known as the ‘ Black Pond,’ and then outside another, the ‘ Westminster Pond,’ very much wider, scooped out of the hillside to a depth of 12 feet on its steeply cut northern edge. The stream was evidently directed into the upper pond by a strong bank, and then flowed past the lower, between two similar dams. ‘Thus the second pond was supplied from the first, which was slightly higher in level. Domesday names no mill, and these arrangements for the storage of water suggest a sluggish flow which was not always equal to the requirements. (5) YELDEN oR YIELDEN CasTLE.—This is one of the most inter- esting earthworks of its type in the county, both because of the strength of the remains, and because of the presence of masonry revealed during excavations made about twenty years ago. There is also some degree of certainty as to its date and origin. It differs from other examples in not standing on high ground but towards the base of a long gradual slope, which continues to rise beyond the site of the castle. From Domesday down to the thirteenth century, it was the stronghold of the Trailly family. Its main defences consist of a great conical keep mound, ending in a rounded oblong at the summit, and of two extensive baileys, inner and outer. Beyond these to the east and south are several large enclosures with strong entrenched lines round them. The area of the top of the mound at the highest is roughly 130 feet by go feet, and 40 feet above the bottom of its north moat. It is in two levels, and is not surrounded by the moat, its western scarp descending into the inner bailey. Small remains of stone foundations were discovered on the mound in 1882. The moat, which is in places 30, 40, 50, and on the west 100 feet in width, encloses both mound and bailey, and is strongly ramparted entirely round its inner edge. At the north-west angle the base of a stone wall was found during the excavations, and the bases of two small round projecting towers at the south-west angle ; _ also a length of stone foundation lining the south rampart of this wing. The west moat is of great length and of unusual breadth, and is con- tained along its west edge by a long bank, outside of which a small stream, the Til, runs. In two places this bank is pierced to admit the stream. Opposite the two tower bases referred to, a small mound rises out of this west moat, and the excavations revealed the remains of a round tower in stone, 30 feet in diameter and with 4 feet walls. A chamfered plinth stone which came from it was pronounced to be undoubtedly Norman work. There may have been a drawbridge over to the inner bailey at this point. The north end of this moat is closed by a projection from the outer bailey, where was probably another entrance. Where this pro- jection joins the bailey there is the base of another low mound. Exca- vation might have shown that there was another stone tower here to cover the entrance, although in 1882 no stone remains were found in this bailey. From this point a strong rampart encloses the west and north sides of the 1 289 37 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE i s at the mound. bailey, and is returned along the short east end, ata ereacnnan sand che Outside this the moat continues, joining those 4 foioiek Giana tern enclosures. On the west side the brook ru ee ick appears to have been continued outside the long ba YELDEN SCALE OF FEET ioaww rene! ° 100 200 300 4, " a Masson ENE iy SN; Se" "UN en A Me WW aM ~ " WN YY “iy 4 "Wy, “Un "1, Uy ~ ‘ny “ua \ Ww ] Ni ten “TUTTO Gg UY rset . Ye tes SL ae at mi Meee ny Ula, ‘ ‘ ANCIENT EARTHWORKS should be stockaded between stone towers at salient points. The Lysons quote an inquisition of 1360, which states that the castle had then ‘ fallen entirely to decay.’" They also say, ‘ beyond the moat appear traces of walls for a considerable space.’” This may have been on the top of the south rampart already referred to. Nothing of the kind now remains. Much stone burnt red was found in different places, and especially in the round tower in the moat. In the Bedfordshire Architectural Society’s Transactions* there is an interesting account of the castle and the excavations conducted by the writer, Rev. R. S. Baker, with an excellent plan which shows water and mud in all the moats. This is not now the case, but the Til is wont to flood both them and the road every winter. In the old days no doubt the moats were all well filled. By the roadside appear white posts marked in feet, to guide wayfarers as to the depth of water during the frequent floods. (6) TitsworTu.—lIn the rectory garden, which is said to have been formed out of the churchyard, there is a mound of considerable size, perhaps some 15 or 20 feet high, and flat on the top. Its western slope has been cut away in part to make room for a greenhouse, and from this _ a brick tunnel is formed in the heart of the mound. During the work for this tunnel a sword is said to have been found, which has not at present been traced. Other lines towards a stream on the east can be seen, but much broken and reduced. (1) WORKS WITH SEMI-GLOBULAR MOUNDS (1) Catnnozk CasTLE NEAR CLopPHILL.—This strong little work stands on a spur of high ground artificially scarped on the north down towards a small stream which partly envelops it, in old days probably making much marsh around it. The site is commanded by a superior height about 80 yards to the eastward. This may point to the construc- tion of the place before the common use of siege engines. The central mound is small compared with those already described, but its rounded shape rises well above all the rest of the defences, and it is surrounded by a deep fosse some 40 feet wide, except to the north, where it turns out into the steep scarp. This fosse could therefore never have held water. There are two considerable wards to the east and south, facing the superior heights, divided by a fosse which also continues along the greater part of this frontage, which is defended by a strong rampart. The entrance appears to have been on the west side, where the ground slopes up to a re-entering angle, between a small mounded pro- jection on the north and a large rounded platform, about 100 feet across, on the south. There are no signs of ramparts on either, but when stockaded they completely commanded the approach. They are separated from the mound and south ward by the interior moats, and are joined together at the rear by a small platform, slightly lower, which blocked the approach and may have formed the abutment. for a flying bridge of 1 Mag. Brit. i. 156. 2 Tbid. p. 34. 3 Vol. xvi. (1882), 251. The plan forms the basis of the one produced, 291 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE timber to the keep-mound, as described in a passage relating to a French example, quoted by Mr. G. T. Clark. If this entrance were forced, the assailants would find themselves under the necessity of moving round the deep inner ditches to attack the mound and several wards which towered VWs OL Pe “, Wh , "t Mrs RS ee, % 4 4 sei EN = 2G “el 4% ta AS s = \ we M4, wl Z “Vy TT \ \\ Hayy yyvyyyedS MY, 44 4 / G SoS , ANS eS HUT in NY) a *e, < re %, x i \ 4 - % - 2 : " Ps he 4, %, Ws ’, CAINHOE Zz “ise nad opel j | a 7 ° 100200 300 above them, all of them no doubt with stockaded sides. A considerable portion of the lower slopes of the ground is enclosed by the outer enciente, with traces of rampart and ditch. At the western angle is a long piece of standing water towards which the outer lines are tending. There is no church or village here.” 1 Medieval Military Archit. (1884), i. 33. beginning of the twelfth century. 2 This fortress was evidently the head of the barony of ‘ Albini of Cainho.’ 292 The date of the stair and bridge was about the ANCIENT EARTHWORKS (2) ToTrerNHoE CastTie.—This is just such another stronghold, perched on the end of a promontory of the chalk downs two miles to the west of Dunstable, at a point where with very steep sides to the west \N Wii \NW\ Y TOTTERNHOE SCALE OF FEET Labi tigi t 1 sf ‘ ° 100 200 300 ' Vy 4V —— 2S was A, 4, EH SY A — = AS oN — = WB B eS WZ = ee PL Nd ——s oe le —~ B23 YS & 4 NS —— ei 2 oS \ ———- == ‘ ww \ —. = Sy, 0) \ \s iy KEM We —_— I KI ; D B ihe lil) SUULAO Mp! NY &, nN | [iil | lil me Wil teedet actos NEO R Le At o WS — ee i sv pee ram. ~24 E —-_—= 234 —— —s E oh _—. wat Ree ye —_ "= ASC =e = SSUES S —_-_ —= AUP PRR CYT ATT ALS) F — = Fees — ———" — ——"2 See eee SF ee Ja eres ge 74 ‘ly iy ditty, ‘ Mi vy INI OP iat clea a ahs / / Ly Cp ATA Wy CT aa A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE and south the downs rise out of the wide surrounding plain. It is thus only approachable by the old green trackway which leads along the heights from Dunstable past Maiden Bower. The surface of the plateau has been artificially levelled, and fine linches terrace the face of the hill on the east. From this side an oblong camp-like enclosure is first entered, with straight scarped sides and rectangular. There are no ramparts on the north or south, and the steeps on the latter side are precipitous. The east moat remains in good condition, but there is now no proper ram- part, the ground sloping up so as to make a steep scarp to the ditch. It has been maintained that this outer enclosure was originally a Roman camp, but this is not certain since such rectilinear oblongs do occur in connection with manorial strongholds.’ On the other hand these mounded works might very well at times be inserted inside earlier stations, as appears to have been the case at Little Wymondley in Herts, where a moated mound and courts are placed within an almost quadrangular en- closure, in which Roman foundations of some length have been uncovered. Only excavation can settle the point. As to the class of work at the west end of the oblong there can be no question. A great rounded mound with wide enclosing fosse, except where its base touches the scarp of the steep descent, stands in the centre. It rises to a height of some 23 feet above the bottom of the fosse, and is ot the same globular form as Cainhoe, except that the top, 40 feet in dia- meter, is now flattened, and has a slight circular depression at the summit. There are two wards, one small, to the west, the other large and covering the mound both on the north and east, where it ends at the edge of the descent. Both were ramparted, and are separated from each other and the mound by the interior moats. The level of the east ward is some 6 feet above the larger one, and that is about the same above the outer plateau. There is a small stretch of rampart at the north-west angle, outside the exterior moat, and bending inwards, as though to cover an entrance at this point. ‘The inner moat here is twice interrupted to form two banks of communication between the wards. Close to the inner rampart of the large court, near to the mound, is a small circular feature which has given rise to many conjectures. ‘The rampart con- tinues round its edge, producing a central hollow 11 feet deep. It is known as the ‘ Money-pit,’ from an old idea that any one jumping into the hollow could hear the rattle of coin below. The place may be the mouth of a shaft, perhaps leading down to the bottom of the heights near the brook.” A smaller excrescence of the same kind adjoins it. The round outside the work slopes gently away to the north-east. The position is a majestic one, and to those moving on the lower lains for miles round, the Totternhoe mound seems to keep watch on its height like some great conning-tower.’ 1 As at Bletsoe, see p. 301. 2 As at Huntingdon, where the mouth of such a passage was recently discovered leading to another part of the work. 3 Compare for a very similar plan the Chateau de Grimbosc.—Du Caumont, Abécédaire d’ Archéo- hgie, i. 298. 294 mt THE HILLS, MEPPERSHALL S? puSGAbe OF FEET 100 200 300 I) DT AEEU TEEN ie, sae ry sae 3 et Pee NU wl id Gravel NUDED Ea ALL LUD Me : CHURCH wit crete tee eee Nn ry "haa r 4 A 7) SITNIT) ersnene Povpepen tan nld dy, OO feeree 8 pee, “4, long wantey Lal UU = =: ~ ys NTT): YS RAAT Ss S be donernoa, Cree "ty ROAD Oud TAT , » , ” % diterr yy s Wigy, ‘nn B ry a . SS a S: avges ' sine ~ “ty as ANY x a1 vegan! \ 62 Sm array vynseedl WHE r= al) - tas ia, N “\ ‘ E Jan = Y \ - A 1; q Z Ao bed WaT a ae . a ; ; a \ f ypu “, ATTY | i) Mee pvengutel Jeveqvaceeeé a pceneedaael | CT) ee ' 295 ’ SRS oe eC ULE ALEE a) A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE (3) Meppersuatt.—‘ The Hills,’ as they are called, form the central hold of a very interesting work of the ‘mound and court’ type. Its exterior ward is outlined by a great ditch 32 feet wide, with rampart round three sides on the inner scarp, 8 feet high above the ditch bottom. The inner ward, again surrounded by its ditch, is smaller, but several feet above the level of the outer, which is itself 2 or 3 feet above the general field level around it. The rampart of the inner ward is strongest at the ends, where it is 11 feet above the ditch bottom. Higher again is the isolated circular mound, 15 to 16 feet above the floor of the encompassing ditch, which is 35 feet wide towards the ward and about 50 towards the west. Its summit is slightly rounded and measures 26 feet by 30 across its diameters. There is a trace of a ram- part on the outermost edge of its circular ditch, and also outside the north-east angle of the outer ward. There are some moat lines to the east of the hold, but these seem to have been connected with the manor house, as they turn to enclose it. The bank and sometimes the ditch of the outermost entrenchment lines are strongly marked, and form a rough square about the hold, enclosing, if the road to the west completes the outline, not less than 30 acres. The question again arises as to whether this enciente is con- temporary with the main work. There seems little reason to doubt it, as the whole site is bare except for two or three houses at the extreme north-west corner, and most of the village lies away from it. The church, with fine early Norman detail, of the plainest wide-jointed type, stands in close association with the mounded stronghold, and the small intervening manor house of timber and plaster is early Jacobean. There is no mill. With the exception of Bedford Castle this is the only work of its kind in the county which has any direct connection with history. The editor of the Gesta Stephani’ has the following note with reference to it. ‘In the original edition of the AZonasticon (1655)? there is a charter granted by Stephen ‘ apud Maperteshalam in obsidione.? The chronicles mention no such event as a siege of Meppershall ; but there exists at the present day, close to the church of this small Bedfordshire village, a high mound with a double line of outer ramparts, answering in the clearest way to the type of the hastily-built stockaded ‘castles’ of this reign. Stephen, it thus appears, had to capture this outpost, perhaps during the siege of Bedford in 1138.’? It does not follow however that the work was of Stephen’s time, as the detail in the church attached to it is sixty or seventy years earlier. (4) RistincHor Castie.—In Goldington parish, about 25 miles east of Bedford, on the north bank of the river, on ground belonging to the ‘Castle Mills,’ stands the solitary mound of Risinghoe. In its present state it is more like a barrow than anything else, but the tra- ditions and statements that it is the remnant of a former stronghold are too numerous to be passed over without mention. Leland says, ‘The great 1 Gesta Stephani (Rolls Ser.), p. xxv. ? Vol. i. p. 480. 3 In Domesday, Gilbert Fitz Salomon held the manor of Meppershall, and before him Leofwyn Cilt, a thegn of King Edward. 296 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS round hill where the keep or dungeon stood is clean hole.’* The Lysons write, * The keep of the castle is of considerable height, and adjoining it are large earthworks.’* Rev. W. Monkhouse in 1854 wrote to contest the view that there was ever a castle here,’ but he had only a stone structure in his view, and he does not appear to have examined the examples we have just described. No traces of earthworks now appear in connection with the mound, but the fields adjoining have been extensively worked out for brick earth. Old inhabitants describe a smaller mound which stood close to the one remaining, which was actually removed for the purpose named. The mound, about 20 feet high, is semi-spherical, though the summit has a small flat space on it made in recent times. There are no signs of a surrounding moat.’ It should be noted here that the name Hrisingr is Scandinavian, and that Aaugr, pronounced 4oy, is Old Norse and Icelandic for a mound or barrow; in Danish 4%. ‘The many instances of this suffix in the place-names of the county on the Danish side of Alfred’s boundary is re- markable. Thus Staploe, Duloe or Devilhoe,’ Keysoe, Bletsoe, Backnoe, Segenhoe, Sharpenhoe and Silsoe, as well as the mounded sites referred to. Strip Totternhoe and Cainhoe of their outer works, and the result would be similar to the isolated mound of Risinghoe. Excavation only can make known whether these barrow-like mounds may not have been in existence prior to their incorporation with subsequent strongholds. Hows were constructed in Viking times for observation as well as for burial. ‘There was usually a how near the houses, from ‘which the master could look over his estate.’ ° At Roxton there is a mound of unusual shape known as ‘ Round Hill,’ which is a prominent object owing to the fence of large closely planted elms which surrounds it. It is 40 feet in diameter by some 4 feet in height, with slight slopes and a flat top, and it stands in the midst of cultivated fields. It has no ditch and its purpose is unknown. (:) MANORIAL HOLDS WITH MOUNDS OF VARIOUS SHAPES (1) Eaton Socon. ‘ Tue Hitzines.’—This formidable work, which has been illustrated and described by Mr. G. T. Clark, stands on the west bank of the Ouse about 4 miles north of Tempsford, and has certain distinctive features of its own. Its two inner wards are both mounded up some 15 feet above the outside level, and it is without the isolated moated keep-mound of the examples previously described. ‘The work,’ to quote Mr. Clark, ‘is composed of three parts, an inner, northern and outer ward. The inner and northern wards lie side by side upon the river, separated by a cross 1 Dr. Prior on Earthworks of Bedfordshire, Beds Arch. Soc. 1886. 2 Mag. Brit. i. 89. 8 Beds Arch. Soc. (1854), p. 157. 4 Almost all Goldington, in 1086, belonged to Hugh de Beauchamp (who held the mill in de- mesne), his predecessor, Ralf Talgebosc, having obtained it in exchange for Ware.—J.H.R. 5 Alwin surnamed Deule held Pertenhall according to the Domesday Book (see Introduction to the Domesday Survey, p. 215). ® Vigfussen’s Icelandic Dictionary, p. 24.1 ; sustained by passages from the Sagas. I 297 38 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ditch. The two are contained within another ditch, which communi- cated at each end with the river. Beyond this, covering the south- western front, is the outer ward, and beyond this again the outer ditch, which commences at the south-east corner of the mill lead, covers the south-western front, and at the north-western angle sweeps round to join EATON SOCON 2 SCALE OF FEET 1 jceevelaweee 1 ° 100 200 300 iL “SC RY es ATULIT) SS) 2 "hy, Ny = = = = — = = = = = = = \\\! t ae 4 Se 4 RAS ‘ty, Wray ton Wy MI fe, WAI TTT) titty WIA) > » Sy ming, aly M1 pay Aan TRS = mows Mdldaggiyny ys J ty t Ts Nige., ’ wl u \ " a AS “ N LT) tty, My Witreny MI Mbb =/00f€. ROM ITIN ey anntitt \\\l Lyson's Section. KURO \ ws ‘ Scale /inch Fo ' i, reettengs Litvravveny trom Nz the ditch already mentioned, and thus, through it to communicate with the river at the north-east corner of the work.’* Around it the The inner ward is slightly the higher of the two. fosse is some 40 to 50 feet wide, and still has water in the south return. Round three parts of this ward over the ditch the rampart still remains 1 Medieval Military Archit. ii. 36. 298 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS very strong, some 8 to 10 feet high. ‘There was none on the river side. A sloping way enters the ward at the south-east, where the rampart ends, and the outer river scarp bends round to cover it. ‘There is a modern path through the north-west angle, which appears to have been a narrow cut through the rampart, later enlarged. Placed centrally, but nearer the river side, is a flat low circular mound, about 40 feet across by 5 high. The northern ward is also ramparted round three sides, strongly to north and west, and only weakening when it has well covered the junction of the ditches at the south-west angle, and the entrance from the outer ward. At the outer angle to the north of this is the root of a round rampart, about 15 or 20 feet across, mounded up on the very edge of the external scarp. At this point the height and sweep of the work are very impressive. Mr. Clark suggested that there might be the foundations of a stone tower in this mound, but an excavation lately made revealed none. This was the case too on the flat mound in the inner ward. The hole was dug near its edge to the west, but only small bits of broken pottery, a little piece of eighteenth century glass, and a few animal bones, were discovered. No signs of squared stone appeared in either place, and men who have dug about the work in former years report that nothing of the kind was ever found. At the east end of this rampart is a small oblong, slightly banked, apparently like the round referred to, at the other angle the base of a stockaded tower. Again at the south-west angle of this ward there is a low flat platform of irregular shape. There was certainly an entrance where the ditches join, or rather make for each other (for they do not join), with a slight inward and outward bend, at the south-west angle. For between ditch and rampart is a little triangu- lar berm, probably the starting place for the timber passage to the inner ward. Nearly facing this break in the ditches there is also a break in the outer ditch, at a point where its edge turns sharply inwards. Ex- cavation proved that the original bottom was higher here, sloping back on either hand to the ordinary depth of the ditch, and suggesting some- thing of a causeway, which might yet be under water, when emergency required the filling of the moats to a higher level from the river. Even in recent times there was much more water in the moats than at present, and when the stronghold was occupied, the river was much more in evidence. This outer ditch sweeps round all three sides to the river, although, on the north, extensive digging for gravel has obliterated its exterior edge. Lyson’s plan shows it entire, and also continuing round on the river front, with a bank pierced about the centre to admit the water. As the land between this bank and the river was very wet, its level was raised within the last twenty years by cutting down the sides of the mound along this front, thus making the scarp much steeper. A good many years ago skeletons were found in digging near the entrance in the outer ditch, and also certain long swords, which were re- ported to have gone to the St. Neots museum. Inquiry there failed to find any trace of them. Human skulls were also found recently in 1 Add, MS. 9460, f. 25. 299 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE digging for ferrets on the north side of the ditch dividing the two chief wards. Large fragments of coarse badly burned pottery came out of the river scarp of the inner ward quite lately. In the absence of all evidence of any stone buildings, and as there is no mention in the inquisitions of any castle here, in spite of Leland’s “vestigia castelli,’ it seems clear that this was a stronghold entirely of earth and timber.’ Domesday shows that ‘ Ulmar of Etone,’ or Wolfmar, had his chief seat here before the conquest. Certain unusual features in this earthwork, and the absence of masonry, may suggest a pre-conquest origin. (2) Oprett.—The Lysons write: ‘At Odell, a mansion-house has been erected on the site of the castle, the ancient seat of the Barons Wahull, which was a ruin in Leland’s time.’ The house which has incorporated the earlier remains stands on a high mound, but as this has been much modified in recent times its original form cannot be clearly made out. There is a fine stretch of a great rampart proceeding in a straight line from the north of the mound, within which are the grounds, and out- side the high road on the site of the ditch, of which the outer edge can still be traced. To the north, about 80 yards away, stands the church, and round it the roads appear to occupy the lines of entrenchment which connected it with the mound. The site slopes away rapidly to the south, towards the mill on the Ouse. This also appears to have been inside the original enciente. Odell Castle was the head of the important barony of ‘ Wahull’ (Odell). (3) SanpyeE Prace.—Here too the house stands on a fine mound, of which it is difficult, owing to changes due to the laying out of the grounds, to ascertain the original shape. On the west boundary of the property there appear to be the remains of former enclosing lines, tending towards remains of fishponds near the Ivel, which has here been widened. ‘The church stands quite close on the north-east, and the mill on the river to the south-west. (4) ‘Joun or Gaunr’s Hit,’ Surron Parx.—This deserted mound, on which stand great elms, one of them girthing 144 feet, is of quite different form from ee any previously described senile, Y previously described s ”, : JOHN OF GAUNTS HILL, = wn GY % t is oval in plan, measur Z ing 180 feet by 115 feet S aes S ow a : : ‘SUTTON PARK ay a 2 across its diameters. The ww 4 — =: dence ae eeee S % ‘= 3 ground slopes from east to wwe aww 1 ~ . 3 joo 200300 my ww = West towards a small tribu- G \) Manyyw tary of the Ivel, so that the eastern section of the surrounding ditch is much more marked than the western. At its widest the ditch measures 48 feet across by 10 feet in depth, and the mound rises out of it to a height of 16 feet. The surface of 1 It must have been the head of the barony of Beauchamp ‘ of Eaton.’—J.H.R. 300 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS the mound is now level. Red roofing tiles of modern make occur in different points on the south of the oval some few inches below the surface. It is possible that the mound has been occupied for gardening purposes, as the Elizabethan manor house, burnt down eighty years ago, stood near it to the north. The church stands on the south angle of the park, and near the narrow pack-horse bridge of the same date. There are various faint lines of what may possibly be works in the neighbourhood. BLETSOE CASTLE SCALE OF FEET Aus 1 4 100 200 30) (5) BreTsoz Castte.—The earthworks here are of interest be- cause of the fine fosse, averaging 55 feet in width by about 195 feet in depth, which originally enclosed the central hold. About two-thirds of 301 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE it still exists. The space within is an irregular square with rounded angles, of which the west side measures about 2 50 feet. Much of the outer enclosing lines of bank and ditch may be traced in the fields around, and there are two rectangular enclosures jutting out from the main position. One to the north-east is small, outlined by a slight ditch ; the other to the south-east encloses a square of an acre and a half within its fine rampart, which in places stands 5 to 6 feet above the interior level. On two sides there is a small berm and then the outer ditch, averaging 15 feet in width. On the south-west side the ditch has been widened up 7 Ws, Sak re NN es ys 7%, ‘THE CREAKERS SCALE OF FEET Listipiti rt 1 J ro) 100 200 300 \\ \y . vant bat” \ : OA . \ yr » LS” vw aN ~) to the rampart and is full of water. There are remains of two fishponds close to the outer lines on the west, past which a small stream still runs. The ground slopes away in all directions from the centre. The great moat is so lined with trees and undergrowth that it is not possible to be sure whether the level of the central space has been artificially raised, but apparently not. The substitution of a great fosse, about a larger central area, for the moated mound, so as to admit of more space for stone erections, is the most noteworthy feature of this example. At Roxton, in Palace Yard or ‘Splashyard ’ wood, there is a large circular moat, with a short straight one branching off from it. There are traditions of dressed stone having been found on the site, but at present there is no clue to its origin. A 302 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS smaller circular moat is also to be found in a wood near the manor house at Westoning. (6) ‘THe CREAKERS’ NEAR GREAT Barrorp.—The earthwork here stands on almost level ground, which in places collects much water. A considerable moat runs round two sides of an interior central area, after the fashion of Bletsoe. If it ever completed the circuit, the returning sides have been filled in, and a small eighteenth century farmhouse with its garden occupies the position. From this inner area a small mound of irregular shape projects to the south for about 70 feet into what is now alarge pond. This mound, at the highest, rises 4 or 5 feet above the level behind it and g or 10 feet above the water line. It tends to a point at the end of the promontory, and is about 30 feet across at the broadest. On its west side the moat referred to bends round to enclose it and is full of water, being now really a part of the pond. Following this moat along its whole course on both flanks is a large exterior rampart which dies out near the farm to the north and at the edge of the pond on the south. These inner works are covered by strong lines of entrenchment immediately outside them, which now form two sides of a square, the returning angle being still evident on the north-east and a trace of the third side. This square outer work has a large rampart and exterior ditch. Whether the water originally occupied all its present area about the mound is doubtful. There was perhaps a second court below it with surrounding ditch, which may have been converted into a pond for farm purposes. There are other faintly marked lines to the east and south, but nothing very decipherable. HOMESTEAD MOATS There are very many moated sites of this class all over the county, as there are throughout most of eastern and southern England, and but few parishes exist that could not provide us with several examples apiece. The monastic sites were many of them defended by earthen ram- parts and moats, and are of special interest because here we have the help of dates. They are for the most part on low ground near rivers. Newnham Priory near Bedford should be described because its main enclosing lines are still existing, and because in some places they are being obliterated by having the town rubbish distributed over them. The area enclosed is not less than 35 acres. This priory was founded by Simon de Beauchamp about 1165. The rampart and moat which outlined the main enclosure may be seen round all its three sides, in parts of it very strong ; and to the east they are supplemented by a kind of terraced platform with a smaller moat inside it. The Ouse closed up the fourth side to the south. At the north-east and north-west angles the rampart is strengthened by small mounds; in the latter case some 10 feet high and 20 feet across the top, with a circular rim round about it and projecting considerably beyond the line of the ramparts. This type of mound has already been noted in several of the previous descriptions. No doubt both rampart and mounds were stockaded. 393 ni ATT) te ean nqnccegetge euregegeee hy yay appnavod png gepaene + Star searngy yet < X 5 4 SU) Dh Le) COTM CATTLE KLRLMRA LRT RRR LEER Kea Ay gucggaenent J, penne gana tine Pi UTTER) SOUR y " Wu ann BUV AD MHEBDD 3 4 NN s ~ ii Vesuanpensaoa NE IMI a BK Ne eS MASP NOTIN SHINN aS SN MNANA AM ALAB AU SUL AIUD SEHD gan UUM, Le “ty oben } os “119 we My FD = " Chen x, == %, z = q a zs Y a =$ Ne es I~ Ze as %, “4, ae SZ Yy G se My, “y, == 4, 4 =F Cy Y Fi eu, == Or yy =: %, ‘YG r= G 4 = &% dy 1, 4, 4 Ut aay y SwAMIMAAVIRESSUG BOL EDASU ADDISON AMONUAEIOAtT ati yntinininn aaa lei a ee atttetes ATION ERAT ECT RD Wet 4 DULL TOTO CNT eNTTETT TTT TLLLILTY Cit mC mason 22 26 > PU SLOT CT TCL UML NTT TTT TT aed Gin My SNE : an Ue eseeuecagate ote toeasagauguugunsncesuageouanencan evens tutssogucuasosuangangascguus use evaggan eggunyy anesnsgeH Mess ets oe cnegggagnnn vunegnUnMAMAN SCALE OF FEET { 200 304 ° 300 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS On the east of this main enclosure are two great closes, each of them also defended by a vigorous bank and moat. On the south near the river are remains of large fishponds. There is no doubt that we have here the original enclosing works of the priory, for at some time in the sixteenth century they seem to have been considered insufficient, and a wall was added outside the exterior moat, built of rubble and clay and coped in red brick. This may have been done when the mansion was erected after the suppression. ‘The cottage belonging to the monastery mill still stands. At Warden (1135), Elstow, Biscot, Harrold and Ruxox there are similar remains of the enclosing ramparts and moats, and no doubt on other monastic sites which have not been examined. rampart is always inside the moat. There are a few instances of moated works on high ground, with the central hold mounded up a few feet to a uniform level, and with a wide deep moat surrounding it. ‘The area thus outlined averages some 100 to 150 feet each way. These works have all the extensive outer enceinte of bank and ditch common to both manor and monastery, and often church and fishponds. ‘There are examples at Hockliffe, Colm- KEYSOE PARK. SCALE OF FEET aE n Libitios ame alu, ° 100 200 +300 In these cases the Z Yj Z ¢ 5S Z Cay Y wenden yoeb ' pee’ a ’ "SO aabueanss MAA AAIIK REIT E ac “ ° ¢ - - - - - ° bw - ° o - - ~ Yeni, f ” IN Pvt ya ger ysses worth and Podington. They are evidently manorial, but being of the weaker transitional type are included in this class. Amongst later works on lower ground are the castle sites of Someries near Luton, and Eaton Bray, where there were fifteenth-century brick buildings, with considerable remains of quadrangular moats. Later medieval manor houses also, on low-lying ground, with considerable moats still remaining, stood at Netherstead, Beggary, Chawston, Wybos- I 305 39 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE ton, Cotton End, Bassmead, Cardington and in many other places. Sometimes the moat forms a simple oblong; sometimes another moat divided the space into two. Many of these examples have exterior banks, which from their breadth and flatness apparently formed promen- ades. Sometimes another ditch is found outside these again, as at Riseley Old Domain and at Mavourn. In the latter the moat has a flat berm under the water line, and then suddenly drops to a depth of g feet, an ingenious device for embarrassing intruders. Most of these later works suggest enclosure rather than defence. A large number of works are found with the -éury in their names, and many of these stand on heights. Brogborough near Lidlington, a small stronghold originally of oval shape, is perched on a little hill-top, and has the remnant of a really mighty rampart turning round its south end, and also remains of a fine fosse. Here too are the remnants of an exterior rampart. Keysoe Park, or Berrystead, as it used to be called, is another example. This resembles Mr. Gould’s ‘ stirrup-shaped ’ works" in plan. The ditch was a formidable one, 40 to 50 feet across, with a low ram- part inside, of which considerable lengths remain, and a very large one MOSSBURY or MOWSBURY SCALE OF FEET 100 200 300 M1, > ia < reyqant® TOU) Wigy sihsuons 3 4 , hy ' i) ry, ’ Tray ty Fs eenny outside, continuing round every side of the enclosure. It is best pre- served in a small spinney, where it is some 15 feet in height by 50 broad. ‘There is a narrow berm on both sides of the ditch, and the 1 V.C.H. Essex, i, 303. 306 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS space intervening between the tops of the two ramparts is at least 100 feet. Yet the inner area is only about 300 feet from the top of the stirrup to the bottom, and somewhat more across it. Mossbury, near Bedford, also stands very high on the end of a ridge, rising out of once swampy ground to south and east. Old trackways crossed the plain at its foot. There is a long stretch of exterior bank to the south and traces of it on the west. Its interior ditch is 35 feet in width, and the rampart top rises 14 feet above its base. On the northern flank the remains have been much levelled, but here there seems to have been a ditch outside the bank. Within this again at the east end a small en- closure 88 by 120 feet is cut off from the rest of the interior space by a narrower cross ditch. The hilltop near it, on the south, seems to have been levelled, thus producing a very visible terrace line round the work. Small bits of Romano-British pottery were extracted from a rabbit hole about a foot below the surface.' Water often stands in parts of the moat. Shillington Bury and Holwellbury are both remains of strongly ramparted and moated sites. They stand on flatter, less elevated ground, as do also Newton Bury and ‘ Grimesbury,’ miscalled Greensbury, both with fine exterior ramparts. There are many other ‘bury’ sites in various parts of the county, and the whole group should be carefully examined and compared. The examples described have all the appearance of being very early home- steads, with a fallacious show of strong defence. Another type of early enclosed homesteads have a square moat in- side one corner of a larger square or oblong ; as at Moggerhanger, and WL) ” S Nin $6 " M4 T P RR H E CAM S TQM, yg = M7 oy SSW aR My SSO yy alin yt BUSHMEAD =s°. z% My iy = Ea "Wu Zeer WS Ae ME * aw as > SCALE OF FEET bane tt at oO 100 200 300 iM LOL LLULLOLL COT au CURRAN TK ed HN WOUIMELS ANAL Lita TOT Nersie tags! = Trvsnnens Sis the ‘Bigginwood’ near Tempsford. Sometimes the two moats are quite distinct, as at ‘The Camps’ at Bushmead, with only a bank between. This example has also curious rounded banks inside two of its angles, and three or four small mounds. It has an exterior rampart. * Over much of the ground rough morsels of coarse burnt brick earth occur. The surface earth below the soil also shows signs of fire. These puzzling appearances may have been due to the burning of the clay of the ramparts dug down for ballast, a practice reported in various parts of the county. 307 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE At Yarlswood near Thurleigh there is a strange little work of the kind, with a fair sized flat mound in one corner, and four other smaller tumps round about it outside. This site has certain strange tales told about it and is avoided by the villagers at night. It is known as the * Devil’s Jumps.’ All the moated places so far mentioned are distinct and isolated, but along the Wyboston road, on both side, for more than a mile, there is a continuous series of lesser moated sites, which must have be- longed to much humbler inhabitants. Domesday notes the former presence of twelve sokemen at Wiboldestune. This coincidence led to the special examination of other places where the settlements of soke- men are recorded ; as at Keysoe, where there were twelve, and Har- rowden (Herghetone), where there were fourteen. In both these places the same series of small, slightly banked and moated enclosures occur, over a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. If these sokemen were of Scandinavian origin, it would be quite in keeping with their custom at home to surround their small ‘tunes’ or farms with banks of earth. At any rate the coincidence is suggestive, and worthy of further examination. At Holme there is a small square moat about 100 feet each way, with a circular raised platform in the centre some 50 feet across and about 3 feet above the rest of the ground. There are also several de- tached traces of moat lines in the fields near. At this place Domesday mentions two batches of sokemen, one of three, and the other of two. All these positions have small streams running past them. Curious works remain behind Limbury Manor farm, consisting of certain moats, which, with their dividing banks, interlace in a maze of squares and triangles, a little after the fashion of what is called the Etruscan, or ‘key pattern.’ These were certain fish-stews which were the subject of a lawsuit in the time of Edward II. As time goes on it may become possible, by means of further ex- amination and research, to bring our various earthworks more into relation with the periods of human life to which they belong. The spade is, however, the agent most in request to let in fresh light on the subject, and the only one that can really help us to any certain knowledge of those earliest works which are amongst the first achievements of man on the surface of our land. 308 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY HE name of Bedfordshire is not connected with any of the more striking memories of early English Church History ; nearly all that can be said of its religious institutions before the Conquest is by way of inference and conjecture rather than solid fact. Some of the reasons for this will be found in its political history, and in its position as a border territory up to the tenth century ; but perhaps the most important is one which belongs properly to the present subject—it did not produce at that time any great religious houses like those which made the neighbouring counties of Hertford, Hunting- don and Northampton famous at an early date, and consequently had no chronicler specially interested in the details of its local history. It is not surprising that there should be little or no evidence found of Roman Christianity, which has left so few traces of its presence and influence anywhere. But when we reach what is usually the surer ground of the second conversion in the sixth and seventh centuries, there is still great poverty of information, and an approximate date can only be provisionally fixed. It is possible that the conversion of Bedfordshire had a double origin. If the boundaries of Mercia and Wessex given by Florence of Worcester’ are correct, and the county was roughly divided between the two kingdoms by the River Ouse in the early part of the seventh century, it may have been partly evangelised by monks of the Roman school, coming from the West Saxon centre, and partly by the Scotic monks who were working for the conversion of Mercia. In any case its turn would probably come a little late, as it lay on the border of both kingdoms ; and its conversion is not likely to have been begun much before the reign of Wulfhere of Mercia (659-75). But as he extended his kingdom far beyond its previous southern limit, and ‘utterly destroyed the worship of demons, and made the name of Christ to be preached throughout his dominions,’* we may safely conclude that the conversion of Bedfordshire was well advanced before 675, and that it had already some established centres of the usual monastic type for teaching and administration of the sacraments. Where these may have been it is not possible to say with certainty. One might perhaps be connected with the town of Bedford, which was already a place of some importance in the days of Offa (757-96) ; and it is just within the bounds 1 (Engl. Hist. Soc.) i. 279. 2 Ibid. i. 32. 309 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of possibility that he bequeathed to a church in Bedford some valuable lands in Kent, which had originally been part of the endowment of the see of Canterbury." There may have been another centre in the southern district, where the name of Bissopescote (the modern Biscot) points to an assignment of Church property in the neighbourhood, and is tradition- ally older than the time of Offa—if indeed it is rightly numbered by the compiler of the St. Alban’s Book of Benefactors among the original gifts of the royal founder to that abbey.’ It is also stated in one of Offa’s charters* that the ‘ five manses at Lygetun,’ which he was pre- senting to St. Alban’s, had belonged to the Church before his time ; they had been given to him by Abbot Ahlmund by way of reparation for an attempt to elude the obligations of the Fyrd. Ahlmund’s name occurs among signatures to several charters between 791 and 796, but there is no evidence to show what monastery he ruled ; it may quite well have been in some other county, though part of its property was in Bedford- shire. No certain conclusion can be drawn from indications such as these ; the utmost that can be said is that the earliest assignments of Church property, the earliest signs of Church life in this county, were probably connected with the town of Bedford and the neighbourhood of Luton. The tradition that Offa himself was buried at Bedford” is of fairly ancient date; the chapel containing his tomb, which was outside the town on the bank of the river Ouse, is said to have been overthrown by the violence of the stream, after long use, and finally submerged.° Matthew Paris evidently thought that this happened soon after the Con- quest; for he blamed not only the earlier abbots for failing to secure to St. Alban’s the bones of their royal founder, but also the first Norman abbot, Paul of Caen.’ By his own time its memory only survived in popular legend.’ Such churches or monasteries as there were in Bedfordshire pos- sibly suffered from the plundering raids of the Danes in 870 and 877, and even after Alfred’s second partition treaty the county was still the natural battlefield of Danes and English ; not until after 921 could there have been much opportunity of restoration. It is therefore all the more interesting to find, only fifty years after the last attack, reference made by the English chronicler in 971" to an abbot of 1 Kemble identifies the place referred to in a charter of Archbishop Athelheard (Cod. Dip/. mxix. ‘ ecclesia que sita est apud Beodeford’) with Bedanford or Bedford, and is followed by the Rev. H. Cobbe in Luton Church ; but Mr. W. H. Stevenson is of opinion that the identification is extremely doubtful, and is inclined to locate ‘ Beodeford ’ somewhere in Kent. ‘The text from which the charter is printed is a late copy, and it is not at all certain that the name has been correctly transcribed from the original. 2 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 4. 3 Kemble, Cod. Dip/. dccclxxxiv. This charter is however of doubtful authenticity. « Ibid. clv., clvii., clix., cluvi., clxvii. The Rev. H. Cobbe calls him the constant companion of Offa in his later years, and suggests that he may have been abbot of Bedford. 5 Matth. Paris, Chon. Majora (Rolls Series), i. 363. § Ibid. 7 Gesta Abbatum Mon. 8. Albani (Rolls Series), i. 7, 62. 8 He says that in his own day bathers sometimes saw in the depths of the waters the appearance of a sepulchre ; but no one who deliberately looked for it could ever find it. ® Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Rolls Series), ii. 61, 64. 10 Thid. 96. 310 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Bedford, without further comment, as if there had been a monastery there for a long time. It is introduced as the burial-place of Oskytel, Archbishop of York, who was translated from the Mercian see of Dorchester in 956." His kinsman Thurkytel* was at that time abbot of Bedford; he brought the archbishop’s body from Thame, to bury it in the monastery. Almost immediately after the Conquest we find the county well provided with parish churches. Only four are named in Domesday ; but it is well understood that this survey was never intended to supply a complete list of churches; they are only mentioned incidentally in connection with the tenure of land. Complete lists can be made out for the thirteenth century, correcting the returns from the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas by the Episcopal registers at Lincoln and the chartu- laries of the religious houses ; and with the help of these it is possible to work a good way backwards. The total number of parish churches in 1291, not counting the seven® in Bedford town, was 115; and of these about eighty can be clearly proved to have been in existence in the twelfth century, and a few are mentioned even in documents of the eleventh. Actual proof is impossible without fuller records ; but it seems probable that in the century before the Conquest Bedford- shire was as well provided with churches as other counties,’ and the archeological evidence will probably tend to the same conclusion. The four churches of the Domesday Survey—Luton, Houghton (Regis), Leighton, and St. Paul’s, Bedford—were probably the best en- dowed. Luton had belonged in the time of King Edward to Morcar the priest, and now William the Chamberlain held it with five hides of land, a mill and a wood ; the whole property being worth 60s. The same man also held Houghton church of the king, with half a hide of land, worth 12s. a year. Leighton had become a part of the endow- ment of Lincoln Cathedral, and was held of the king by Remigius the bishop. The foundation charter of the Cathedral granted by the Con- queror” names the four churches of Aylesbury, Buckingham, Leighton and Bedford, as having all belonged to the ancient see of Dorchester ; but the church of Bedford here mentioned (St. Mary’s) is not named in Domesday, which speaks only of St. Paul’s and the secular canons there. The account of church property in Domesday ° is of much interest in relation to later history. Already several important manors and portions of land were claimed by religious houses, as well as by the Bishops of 1 Florence of Worc. (Engl. Hist. Soc.), i. 139, 142. ? The dates make it impossible to identify this Thurkytel with the rebuilder of Croyland Abbey under Edred, as Canon Venables did in the Diocesan History of Lincoln (S.P.C.K.), p. 37. 3 St. Paul’s, St. Mary’s, St. Peter Merton and St. Peter Dunstable, St. John’s, St. Cuthbert’s and All Saints’. They are all found in documents of the twelfth century. 4 The Chronicle of Dunstable records under the year 1220 (p. 56) the dedication of churches at Studham, Chalgrave and Pulloxhill ; obviously after rebuilding, for there had been old churches in all three places, which were given to the monastery in the twelfth century, and they would scarcely have required rebuilding if they had not been Saxon churches. ‘These are small and unimportant places. 5 Confirmed by Henry II. and embodied in the Inspeximus of Henry VI. (Dugdale’s Moz. vi. [3] 1250. 6 See Introduction to Domesday. 3II A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Lincoln. Remigius held in seven different townships altogether 8£ hides and 22 virgates, valued at £7 115., besides the church of Leighton, worth £4, and the church of St. Paul’s, Bedford, which men said he had wrongfully taken from the canons there. His property has however no special interest, except the church of Leighton, which soon after furnished a prebendal stall to the cathedral ; and he did not long hold the church of St. Paul. The Bishop of Durham’s property is small, but has an interest of its own. He held in Millow 44 hides, and in Arlesey 8 hides, together worth £7, which the canons of Holy Cross at Waltham’ had held in alms of Edward the Confessor. Both Millow and Arlesey were afterwards recovered by Waltham Abbey.” The abbot of St. Edmund’s held land in three places ; altogether 74 hides and 4 virgates, value £7 6s. His property has no further interest in church history. The abbot of Peterborough had the manor of Stanwick, 24 hides, worth 30s., which still belonged to the abbey in 1346. This manor is now part of Northamptonshire. The abbot of Ramsey had very extensive and valuable property ; the five manors of Cranfield, Barton, Pegsdon, Holwell and Shillington, besides land in Wyboston, Barford, Clifton and Standon. It amounted to 501 hides, and was worth £48 6s. 4d.“ Cranfield, Barton and Shil- lington belonged to the abbey till the dissolution. The abbot of St. Peter’s, Westminster, had only half a hide in Hol- well, worth 1oos. He still drew a pension of ros. from Holwell church in 1291. The abbot of Thorney had 2 hides and 1 virgate in Bolnhurst, worth 60s. The church remained under the patronage of the abbey till the dissolution. The abbess of Barking held the manor of Lidlington, 10 hides, worth £8, and continued to do so until the dissolution. The canons of St. Paul’s, London, held Caddington ; the Dean and Chapter retain the patronage of the church until this day. The prebends of Caddington, Major and Minor, were endowed from their property in this neighbourhood. The manor was in extent 5 hides and worth 4os. ; it had been given to the canons by King William. Canon Osmund of St. Paul’s, Bedford, held 3 virgates of the king in Biddenham, worth ros.° Canon Ansfrid of the same church held another virgate worth 3s., of the gift of Ralf Taillebois. Ernuin, a priest, held 1 carucate in Harrowden. 1 See Domesday Studies, ii. 420-1. It is not clear how these two manors came into the hands of the Conqueror, whether by an exchange or by violence, as they seem to have been part of the original endowment of Waltham Abbey. 2 Feud. Aids, i. 19, 20. 3 Ibid. i. 8, 25. * The history of nearly all these acquisitions may be found in the registers of Ramsey Abbey (Rolls Series). 5 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 49. 8 One virgate was bequeathed by Leuiet, who held it in alms of King Edward ; the other two were the gift of Ralf Taillebois. 312 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY These are all who held land for the church i capite. The property of the Bishops of Bayeux and Coutances was not held for the church, and was moreover very soon forfeited. The manors of Elstow and Wils- hampstead with part of Maulden, amounting to 114 hides 14 virgates, and worth £20 5s. in all, were held by the nuns of Elstow, but under Countess Judith. They need not be further noticed at this point, as their history is bound up with that of Elstow Abbey.’ In the case of Arlesey, Cranfield, Barton, Shillington and Lidling- ton, where the whole manor belonged to a monastery before the Con- quest, and afterwards until the dissolution, it seems most probable that the parish churches were built by the religious. To the period immediately after the Conquest belongs not only the transference of the episcopal seat of the diocese from Dorchester to Lincoln, but its fuller organisation. Hitherto the bishops had needed but one ‘eye’ ; but now almost every county was provided with its own archdeacon.” The names of the first archdeacons of Bedfordshire are found in Henry of Huntingdon’s letter to Walter, ‘de contemptu mundi’ :° Osbert, the first ; Ralf, ‘miserably slain’; Hugh and Nicholas. The name of Hugh occurs also in the Dunstable chartulary;* but that of Nicholas is very well known. Being archdeacon from 1145 to 1181, he was in office nearly all through the long interregnum that followed the death of Bishop Robert de Chesney in 1166, and consequently he was called upon to ratify or witness a great many charters granting land or churches to the religious houses of the county. He witnessed the foundation charter of Chicksand Priory,” and various donations to Beaulieu,’ Newnham’ and Dunstable.” He had held one of the pre- bends of St. Paul’s, Bedford,’ before the founding of Newnham Priory, and is named more than once among the old secular canons. He was succeeded by Laurence, whose name appears under the year 1185 ;” and Richard was archdeacon under St. Hugh.” The institution of the rural deans is usually assigned to the same period,” but the time when their territorial limits were fixed is uncertain ; a complete list of rural deaneries cannot be made out until the end of the thirteenth century. : A very large majority of the parish churches were in the twelfth century granted to various monasteries of the neighbourhood, either at their foundation or later ; the tithes were usually given with the advowson or very soon after. The consideration of these gifts in detail is more appropriate in connection with the ordination of vicarages in the next century. The bestowal of the advowson of a church on a monastery 1 It seems strange that the abbey of St. Alban’s should have held nothing in this county, where afterwards it had so much valuable property. 2 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 117. 3 Anglia Sacra, ii. 696. * Harl. MS. 1885, f. 20. 5 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950. ® Lansd. MS. 863, f. 83b. 7 Harl. MS. 3656, £ 65. 8 Ibid. 1885, f. 19, 21b, 24. ® Thid. 3656, £. 47. 10 Tbid. f. 17b, and ibid. 1885, f. 24. 1 Tbid. 3656, f. 60. 12 Stubbs, Const, Hist. i. 233. 13 See p. 344. I 313 40 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE was a real act of generosity on the part of the owner, as he thereby lost what was then and afterwards considered as a natural provision for the cadets of his own family ; and it was often resented by his imme- diate successors. A long series of suits on the subject of advowsons, between monasteries and lay patrons, begins in the twelfth century. The earliest we know of in Bedfordshire was between the abbot of Thor- ney and William Peverel, concerning the church of Bolnhurst, which lasted from 1113 to 1151 ;* the priors of Dunstable,” Chicksand’ and Newnham‘ had their rights to certain churches very early called into question. The chartularies of Newnham and Dunstable, both of which houses possessed a great many churches, point very clearly to difficulties of this kind; every grant is fenced about with charters—from the original grantor ; from his lord if he had one; from the bishop or archdeacon; and, if possible, from the king and the pope. The bishop’s charters were indeed necessary to the validity of the grant since the Council of Westminster in 1102, which forbade the religious to possess themselves of parish churches without the consent of the diocesan. Suits are also recorded, though not in such numbers, between differ- ent religious houses ; both parties having received some grant of tithes which seemed to justify a claim to the advowson. The abbey of Elstow came in for a large share of these disputes ; both the abbot of Newhouse and the prior of Dunstable had to resort to a papal mandate before they could arrive at a peaceful settlement with the ladies, who seem to have been very determined in the effort to secure their rights.° The most interesting of these disputes in the twelfth century was the one which gave Luton church back again to the abbey of St. Alban’s. It had been held, jointly with Houghton Regis church, by William the Chamberlain, who, though he may well have been in minor orders, yet held these churches and their lands by knight service, and transmitted them to his heirs under the same tenure. In the reign of Stephen they were no longer however held 7 capite, but of Robert, Earl of Glouces- ter ; the desire of this nobleman to put a kinsman of his own into Luton church, and the subsequent complications arising from the Civil War, led at last to the transference of the advowson to St. Alban’s abbey. It cost the abbot however 110 marks before he finally secured it from 1 Dugdale, Mon. ii. 602. 2 Hugh Britton impleaded the prior in 1197 about the advowson of Studham (Feet of F. [Rec. Com.], p. 5)- } Bia oe Astwick brought a suit against the prior and Simon de Beauchamp about the chapel of Astwick, 1198 (ibid. p. 21). 4 The prior recovered Hatley church from Adam de Port, 1197 (ibid. p. 8). There was a suit also between the Hospitallers and Stephen of Souldrop about the church of Souldrop, 1197 (ibid. p. 17). 5 Rev. E. L. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People, p. 98. 8 The Bishop of Ely, by mandate of Alexander III., settled the dispute between Dunstable and Elstow concerning the churches of Flitton, Westoning and Pulloxhill (Harl. MS. 1885, f.23b). The same pope issued a bull forbidding the nuns of Elstow to lay any further claim to a church which be- longed to the abbot of Newhouse (Harl. Charters, 43 G, 23, 24). The church of Melchbourne was also claimed both by the prior of St. Neot’s and the prior of the Hospitallers (Gorham, History of St. Neo?’s, II. cxiii.) 314 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY the de Clares, to say nothing of the sums that must have been paid for the assent both of Stephen and of Henry II.’ The beginning of the next century brought a considerable change to the position of a great many of the parish churches. Since the Conquest nearly four-fifths of the total number had been granted to religious houses. Some of these had been given to monasteries outside the county ;* but a much larger number to the Bedfordshire monas- teries.” 1 The whole story is set out in full in the Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 113-8. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, wishing to put in his kinsman Gilbert de Cimmay, became much shocked at the idea of these churches being held by a layman. The Bishop of Lincoln (Alexander) refused however to dispossess William the Chamberlain without legal forms ; but after three days had been appointed for the hear- ing of the case, and the defendant refused to appear, he was disseised, and Gilbert de Cimmay presented. The disgrace of Robert of Gloucester put the manor of Luton for a time into the hands of Robert de Wanudari, a kinsman of the abbot of St. Alban’s, who was thus able to mediate between him and Gilbert de Cimmay. A serious illness of the latter, combined with the persuasions of the abbot, moved him to resign the benefice into the hands of the archdeacon, Nicholas of Bedford ; it was then conferred on the abbot’s nephew. As soon as William de Clare was restored to his father’s property, the abbot approached him, and obtained from him first a grant of the church for 80 marks, and a discharge of knight service for another 30 marks (Cott. MS. Otho, D iii. f£. 115b). This was confirmed by Stephen (ibid, f. 116), so its date must be between 1151 and 1154 ; and afterwards by Henry II. There is another point of interest in this case, bearing on the tradition of Offa’s connection with Luton. At the first trial of the matter, when William the Chamberlain was disseised, the jury declared ° that § hides of land had belonged to the church from the time of its first foundation ; but at the beginning of Henry II.’s reign some were found ready to swear that the church was built ‘super domin- icum regni fiscum,’ which was equally true in reference to the eleventh century (see also for all this Cobbe’s Luton Church). ? Bolnhurst to Thorney Abbey ; finally in 1151 (Dugdale’s Mon. ii. 602). Dunton to Haliwell Priory, before 1189 (ibid. iv. 393). Eyworth to St. Helen’s, London ; before 1225 (Linc. Epis. Reg., 16 Hugh de Wells). Potton to St. Andrew’s, Northampton ; about 1094 by Simon de Senliz (Dugdale, Mon. v. 191). Sharnbrook to St. Mary de Pré, Leicester ; before 1162 by W. Tricket (ibid. vi. 468). Tillsworth to St. Giles in the Wood. Podington and Thurleigh to Canons Ashby. Meppershall and Felmersham to Lenton ; confirmed 1205 (Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 18). Edworth, Knotting, Tempsford and Turvey to St. Neot’s (Gorham, History of St. Neor’s, II. cxii. cxiii. cxiv. cxv.). (Knotting in 1176 was a chapel appendant to Melchbourne church; in that year the Bishop of Exeter as arbitrator assigned the church to the Hospitallers and the chapel to St. Neot’s. Turvey church is named in the charters of Newnham Priory, but the Lincoln Registers show that the advowson certainly belonged to St. Neot’s.) Eaton Bray, Whipsnade, Upper Stondon, Milton Bryant to Merton (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 247). Luton, Houghton, Potsgrave to St. Alban’s (Potsgrave by W. de Blancfront, Cotton MS. Otho, D iii. f. 120b). Toddington to the abbey of Couture, Le Mans. Langford and Little Stoughton to the Templars (Cotton MS. Nero, E vi. f. 137). (Where no reference is given, the evidence of the earliest institutions in the Lincoln Episcopal Registers may be assumed.) 3 To Elstow: Elstow, Wilshampstead, Maulden, Flitton with Silsoe chapel, Kempston and Westoning. To Dunstable: Dunstable, Chalgrave, Harlington, Studham, Husborne Crawley, Pulloxhill, Segenhoe, Totternhoe, Steppingley with St. Cuthbert, St. Mary and St. Peter Dunstable at Bedford. To Newnham : St. Paul’s and All Saints’, Bedford ; Ravensden, Renhold, Great Barford, Willing- ton, Cardington, Goldington, Southill, Hatley, Wootton, Stagsden, Aspley, Lower Gravenhurst, Salford, Wrestlingworth and Hulcote. To Caldwell: Bromham, Roxton and Sandy, Oakley with the chapel of Clapham. To Chicksand : Chicksand, Haynes, Cople, Keysoe and Stotfold with the chapel of Astwick. To Beaulieu : Millbrook, Clophill and Ampthill, Campton and Milton Ernest. To Harrold : Harrold and Stevington. To Markyate Priory : Sundon, Streatley and Higham Gobion. To Melchbourne Preceptory : Dean, Eaton Socon, Risley, Eversholt and Melchbourne. Most of these churches may be found in the foundation charters of the religious houses ; the rest may be gathered from the early institutions in the Lincoln Registers. 315 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The original arrangement in the case of such grants was for the monastery to present a rector in the same way as the lay patrons had done, receiving from him a fixed pension. And the intention of the donor was for the good of the church as well as the monastery ; he might well hope that the monks would have higher motives in the selec- tion of rectors, and better opportunities of finding suitable men. But when the tithes were granted as well as the advowson the temptation to look upon their churches as mainly a source of income proved sometimes too much for the religious. Chaplains removable at pleasure might be put into the rectory at a small stipend ; monks might be sent merely to perform the necessary duties ; and in either case the parish had no one with a continuous interest in its welfare. Between the worst and the best that might come of such arrange- ments there were doubtless many grades. But the bishops seem to have been early dissatisfied with the way in which the cure of souls was under- taken in the appropriate churches, and they succeeded in obtaining from the Lateran Council of 1179 the power to provide a remedy. It was to this end that the Council of Westminster in 1200 ordered the establish- ment of perpetual vicarages. Certainly among the earliest in England was the vicarage ordained at Pulloxhill in 1204* by William, Bishop of Lincoln. And in the Liber Antiquus of Hugh de Wells those at Henlow, Arlesey and Dun- ton are said to have been ,‘ exdudum ordinate,’ presumably before his own episcopate began in 1209. In Bedfordshire before 1235 there were thirty-six besides the four already mentioned.” The usual amount fixed for the vicar’s income was 5 marks; only a few were more or less. This was made up from the small tithes, and the altarage of the church ; a competent manse was usually added. The vicars were bound to pay the synodalia, but the religious the archdeacon’s fees (except in the case of Luton, where the vicarage was worth £16). There was no attempt to fix any proportion between the value of the whole rectory and the vicar’s stipend ; the principle being simply to provide the vicar with a proper maintenance, not to give him a fair share in the profits. The benefice might be worth 10, 12 or 15 marks, but still the vicar’s portion was 5 or 54 marks; the monastery took the residue, small or great. The rule was the same for very poor churches. The bishop fixed the stipend of the vicar of Ampthill at 5 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series) iii. 28. 2 Appropriate to Elstow : Flitton, Westoning, Kempston. To Chicksand : Haynes, Stotfold, Cople, Keysoe. To Dunstable : Husborne Crawley, Segenhoe, Chalgrave, Totternhoe and Studham. To Newnham: Salford, Goldington, Cardington, Willington, Barford, Renhold, Ravensden, Stagsden. To Beaulieu : Ampthill, Clophill, Millbrook and Potsgrave. To Markyate : Sundon. To Harrold : Harrold and Stevington. To Caldwell: Bromham and Roxton, To St. John’s Hospital : St. John’s, Bedford. Besides these, Luton, Houghton, Tillsworth, Eaton Bray, Langford, Podington, were appropriated to monasteries outside the county. 316 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY marks, though the rectory was only worth r1oos. ; and he ordered the canons of Newnham to make up the vicarage of Ravensden to 5 marks, even if the tithes greater and less did not amount to so much. Only occasionally, if the rectory was of considerable value, the vicar’s portion was made larger; the rectory of Great Barford, worth 22 marks, the vicar received 8 ; the rectory of Luton, worth 100 marks, the vicar had 24. The arrangement for Harrold is different to the rest and may serve as an example of the treatment of a case where the parish church be- came conventual.' The vicar was to have his living at the prioress’s table, with 2 marks yearly for his clothing, hay for his palfrey, and the oblations at great festivals. His manse might be within the priory en- closure or out of it, according to what was most convenient for his parishioners ; and the prioress was to provide him with a deacon and a boy to serve his mass.” Bishop Grossetéte continued the work of his predecessor, ordaining however only one vicarage in Bedfordshire—Caddington,’ the property of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, London. Bishop Gravesend ordained a vicarage for Wootton in 1272, Southill* in 1264, and pro- bably Sharnbrook.* He also ordained vicarages for the two prebendal churches of Leighton Buzzard and Biggleswade.’ Streatley’ was ordained before 1289, and Eaton Socon* before 1291. The last of this century was Oakley,” ordained in 1296. Mention has been made incidentally already of the parochial chapels, which served for the devotion of villages and hamlets remote from the parish church. They are a special feature of the twelfth century, being built in large numbers all over the country during the reigns of Henry I. and Stephen. They are mostly due to the generosity of lords of manors, who wished to provide not only for themselves and their own households, but also for the villagers amongst whom they dwelt ; and the chapels thus built were usually appendant to the parish church. The building of private chapels became common in the thirteenth century, as the bishops’ registers show ; but the parochial chapels were nearly all earlier. It is probable that there were several, even in a small county like Bed- 1 No other church of this type in Bedfordshire had a vicarage ordained, except Elstow in 1345 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Bek. 102) ; and that was revoked almost at once. The canons of Newnham ap- pointed one of their own brethren as warden of St. Paul’s, Bedford (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Grey, 199) and so did the canons of Dunstable (4%. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 220) until 1392 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 411). ® All from the Liber Autiquus, Alfred Gibbons, pp. 20-5. 3 A vicar was instituted in 1250 (Excerpta from Linc. Epis. Reg., Harl. MS. 3650). The church had two rectors before. * Wootton and Southill are both in Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Gravesend ; but the pope had ordered the reservation of a vicar’s portion for both in 1255 (Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 314, 316. Sugmele is evidently a misreading for Sugivele). ® Vicarage vacant in 1283 (Harl. MS. 3650). § 1276 and 1277 (ibid.) 7 Ibid. ® Vicarage noted in Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), p. 35 ® Hugh de Wells had compelled the prior and convent of Caldwell to present secular clerks, who were to receive half the tithes (total value, 244 marks), but Oliver Sutton preferred to ordain a vicarage in 1296 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 100). 317 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE fordshire, of which no record—not even the name—remains. Some are only mentioned once, and nothing further is known of their history. Of those which are known to have existed the chief were :— The chapel of Astwick,’ appendant to Studham church. re m Cainhoe” bs Clophill 22 me - Silsoe® = Flitton = m - Pavenham )* i id Radwell J” Felmersham ,, se i. Knotting® m Melchbourne,, = iP Roxhill® bie Marston 2 ds a Clapham’ - Oakley om x eu Barwythe® o Studham ade a Tebworth’ a Chalgrave _,, Whipsnade” and Woburn are never described as dependant on any church, and may have been free chapels. Of these, Knotting, Astwick,” and Whipsnade had become parish churches before the Taxatio of 1291. Pavenham and Silsoe were not independent parishes until the nineteenth century. Woburn and Clap- ham were still chapels in the reign of Henry VIII. The others have disappeared. The occasion of a suit in which the abbot of Woburn was in- volved, with reference to the chapel of Hunderigg in Buckingham- shire, serves to explain very clearly the purpose for which these chapels were intended, and their relation to the parish church ; it is interest- ing also as showing what was then considered a proper provision of services for a small hamlet in the country. The monks undertook to send a clerk three days in the week"—Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, and in Advent and Lent Saturday also; he was to sing mass (probably mattins also) on these days ; he was to say the office of ‘ Tenebre’ on the three last days of Holy Week, and at Christmas to sing the midnight mass, and mattins, and the second mass at dawn.” Ifa feast day were to fall in September, there was not to be an extra mass, but one of the ferial 1 Earliest mention in the foundation charter of Chicksand. ® Only in the foundation charter of Beaulieu ; this priory also served the chapel of St. Machutus in the parish of Haynes (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 92; Claudius, D i. f 135b), said to have been given by Robert d’Albini with the cell of Beaulieu. 3 Earliest mention in the Liber Antiguus ; noticed afterwards frequently in the Lincoln Registers. 4 Rarliest mention in 1205 (Cal. of Pap. Letiers, i. 18) ; Radwell for the last time in 1363 in the Register of Bp. Gynwell. 5 Farliest mention in 1176 (Gorham, Hist. of St. Neor’s, II. cxiii.). 6 Earliest mention in 1280 (Linc. Epis. Reg.). 7 Earliest mention in a charter of St. Hugh, quoted in the Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 100. ® Harl. MS. 1885, ff 51, 57. ® Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 277 ; already of long standing. Harl. MS. 1885, f. 52b. It has a rector, not a chaplain only. 14 Astwick was still a chapel in 1242 (Cur. Reg. R. 125, n. 22). The chapels of Sharpenhoe and Humbershoe (4a. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 141, 257) were probably also parochial. The chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr near Chicksand Priory belongs to the thirteenth century (Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 534) and had disappeared before the sixteenth. 12 Three days was the usual allowance at these chapels. 13 In order that the parishioners might fulfil their obligation of hearing three masses on Christmas Day. we ° 318 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY days was to be omitted. On all principal feasts of the year, i.e. Christ- mas, Candlemas, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and the Dedication of the Church, the parishioners were to attend the solemn high mass at Chesham, to save the rights of the mother church.’ As early as 1213 troubles began to arise between the monastic tenants and their lords on the subject of feudal service. There was a suit brought forward in the summer of this year in the Curia Regis’ between the prior of Leighton* and his men. Later in the same reign the prior summoned five of his tenants for not rendering the customary services.. They in their turn appealed to the judgment of the three towns of Luton, Houghton and Leighton. The result is not recorded, but suits went on between the prior and his tenants up till 1290." The difficulty at Leighton seems to have been mainly concerned with feudal services ; at Dunstable it was of a different character, and far more serious. In 1219° the prior of Dunstable proved his right to hold a court in the town for all pleas of the Crown. In the follow- ing year the archdeacon of Bedford, John Houghton, was called in for the first time to witness a composition between the prior and his bur- gesses on the subject of fines, tithes of trade,’ etc. But it was not till 1228° that the townsmen drew up a formal list of grievances. As at Leighton, they said that the prior demanded of them many things contrary to the liberties which they had always enjoyed. The jus- ticiars before whom they laid their grievances sent them on to the King’s Court. There they failed to prove their case, in spite of bribes to Hubert de Burgh and others ; and the prior had his charters confirmed by Henry III., securing the same rights over the men of Dunstable as the king himself had in his own towns. The ill-feeling of the burgesses was not likely to be lessened by the prior’s demand of 100 marks towards the £100 he had to pay for this confirmation. Blows and wounds were exchanged by the tenants and the servants of the prior over the collection of the money. ‘Then the burgesses began to withdraw their offerings from the church ; excommunication from the prior they wholly disregarded, and paid only a temporary reverence to the threat of excommunication delivered from the pulpit by the bishop himself. For more than two months the solemn high mass in the parish church was discontinued.” 1 Cur. Reg. R. 2 John 24, n. 26. 2 Ibid. 56, n. 17 in dorso. . 3 The priory of Leighton, afterwards called La Grave, was a cell of the order of Fontevraud. * Cur. Reg. R. John incerti temporis, 35, n. 2. 5 Ibid. n. 5. A jury was impanelled to decide between the prior and William, a certain clerk; who, being required to send his men for given services, pleaded that he and his predecessors had held their land free of the lord king, before the manor was given to the nuns of Fontevraud ; and moreover, some of the. jury were disqualified, by the fact of being customary tenants of the prior. In 1260 (Cur. Reg. R. 168, n. 2 in dorso) the men of Leighton summoned the prior for distraining them on similar grounds ; the prior refused to appear. In 1290 (Coram Reg. R. 18 Edw. I. n. 22) Henry Child impleaded the prior on the same grounds. 8 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), ili. 54. 7 Ibid. 65. 8 Tbid. 105. ® Tt was sung instead in the infirmary of the monastery, to which the townspeople would not have access, from 1 August to 9 October (dam. Mon, [Rolls Series], iii. 110). 319 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE A year later * the king’s visit to Dunstable found the town still in revolt. He was entreated by the prior to mediate, and in his presence the burgesses indeed consented to submit; but as soon as his back was turned they resumed hostilities. The case went to Westminster ; the amount of fine was limited to 4d. as the burgesses had asked, and after a second appeal it was granted that only those who held of the prior m capite should pay the tallage. | Peace seemed at last to be secured ; but the manner in which the tallage was collected by the burgesses appointed for the purpose provoked a fresh outbreak. Again the people withdrew their offerings, refused to use the prior’s mills, and harried his servants in every way they could. Men and women rose in a body against the bailiff who tried to distrain any man’s goods; they said they would rather go to hell than pay the tax. They even went so far as to negoti- ate with William de Cantelow, lord of Eaton Bray, to give them forty acres where they might build another town and leave Dunstable for ever. At this juncture, when justiciars were weary of the matter, and the town was in a state of anarchy, ‘the Lord visited the spirit’ of John Houghton the archdeacon, and the tempest was turned into a calm. An agreement was made by which the burgesses were to pay £60 down instead of the tallage, and were no more to be taxed individually.’ From this time there seem to have been very few difficulties, and the relations between the prior and the tenants were on the whole quite friendly,’ until the end of the fourteenth century. John Houghton, who plays such a prominent part in this dispute, was one of the most notable of the early archdeacons. He held office from 1218 to 1231 * (when he was transferred to Huntingdon), and was employed as a mediator in several matters more important than this. He was sent to Rome in 1228° with the dean of Lincoln, who had to render an account to the pope for his boldness in summoning to his chapter one of the canons who was a cardinal and an alien. He had been one of those who were sent to negotiate between the king and the followers of Fawkes de Bréauté ° before the taking of Bedford Castle in 1223. In 1224” he was busy collecting a loan for the king in Eng- land, and the next year® in France. He was employed with others by the pope to inquire into the case of the abbot of Tewkesbury, who was suspected of having forged papal letters.’ All these commissions would call out the same qualities as the troubles at Dunstable ; he must have been a man of considerable tact and sympathy, and ready to take some pains to understand both sides of the question at issue. Another archdeacon of Bedford who did important public work 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. p. 118. 2 Ibid. p. 122, where the concordia is printed in full. 3 e.g. in a quarrel between the king’s falconers and the prior’s men in 1276. The townspeople were quite ready to take the part of the prior (ibid. pp. 273, 274). 4 Ibid. pp. 53, 128. ; 5 Ibid. p. 109. ® Ibid. p. 88. 7 Pat. 8 Hen. III. m. 10. 8 Ibid. 9 Hen. III. m. 3. ® Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 88, 95. 320 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY besides his ordinary duty was John de Crachely, treasurer to the king ; he died in the year 1260, leaving considerable sums of money in charity and also for the endowment of chantries.’ Complaints of the usury and fraudulent dealings of the Jews appear early in the thirteenth century. The chronicler of Dunstable records in 1221” the case of a certain ‘ Mossy filius Brun’ who tried to pass off a forged charter on the prior, claiming the sum of £70. He was detected, and his brethren had to pay £100 to the king before they could get his death sentence commuted to banishment. Later on, in the reign of Edward I.,’ certain Jews were hanged and their property confiscated at Bedford. In 1278 Jews were caught clipping the coin* there, as in so many other places. In the same year” commissioners were sent to open the chirographer’s chest in the King’s Jewry ; to make a scrutiny and take note of all charters and deeds found there. The expulsion of the Jews in 1290 is recorded with approval by the chronicler of Dunstable ; but he preserves also an instance of kindness shown to those who were converted.” The same chronicler describes at some length the general senti- ments of English churchmen as to the papal provisions common at this time ; he also records a typical instance (not altogether to the credit of his own house) of the way in which English benefices fared when farmed out by foreign rectors. Peter de Vitella de Ferentino, an Italian, had been presented to the church of Steppingley by the prior of Dunstable in 1247." In 1250° he came to Dunstable to arrange his affairs ; and finally let the church to the dean, Gilbert of Tingrith, to farm for 100s. a year, ap- pointing a canon of Dunstable as his proctor. In five years” he returned to implead Gilbert, who had only paid his rent twice. He recovered some part of his money, and now let the church to a certain clerk in- stead of Gilbert, at the same rate as before, departing as soon as this was done for another five years. This case is not however so unsatisfactory as some others, for the church and its ornaments were kept in good repair by the canons, and the expenses charged to the rector; and it may be assumed that if these things were cared for, the services at least were properly performed. But in the long list of complaints drawn up by the king against the Italians, it was alleged that even books and vestments were wanting in some of the churches they held.” In spite, however, of papal provisions, and the exactions from Rome 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 216, ? Ibid. p. 66. The deed was detected by its bad grammar, and also by the fact that it had been washed. 3 Pat. 13 Edw. I. ; Harl. MS. 3656, f. 28. * Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 228. 5 Pat. 4 Edw. I. m. 36. ® The prior of Dunstable was directed in 1275 to provide complete maintenance for a converted Jew and his family ; the Bishop of Lincoln ultimately found them a home (4un. Mon. [Rolls Series], ili, 265). 7 Ibid. p. 176. 8 Ibid. p. 181. ® Ibid. p. 197. *0 Lidlington was farmed by the canons of Dunstable for a foreign rector, who was so little known in England that in 1277 he was thought to be dead. I 321 4I A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE under which all the clergy suffered so severely at this time, the spiritual life of the diocese which included Bedfordshire was by no means in a languishing condition. The great bishops of the thirteenth century— Hugh de Wells, Grossetéte, Gravesend, Oliver Sutton—were all vigor- ous and active in their visitations, both of the churches and of the religious houses, correcting abuses, and seeing that vicars were properly provided and paid. Grossetéte raised the income of some vicarages which had been ordained by Hugh de Wells; notably in the case of those which belonged to Newnham Priory.’ The chronicler of Dunstable explains how careful he was in examining the title deeds of appropriate churches, and how he disapproved of the farming system : ‘scarcely,’ he says, ‘could we obtain from him churches which we had undertaken to farm for three years.’ * His visitations were especially severe ; he was ready not merely to depose abbots and priors, but to suspend unsatisfactory rectors also. He did not however depose any heads of houses in Bed- fordshire ; though the prior of Caldwell and the cellarer of Dunstable fled to the Cistercians rather than abide his coming.” He chose Dun- stable as a meeting-place for the bishops who desired to protest against Archbishop Boniface’s visitation in 1250, and canons from Dunstable filled up three of the posts left vacant by his depositions ; it is pro- bable, therefore, that he found the religious houses of Bedfordshire in a satisfactory condition. Bishop Gravesend was also watchful against abuses of the farming system. The canons of Dunstable had been farming the church of Lidlington since 1273, for a foreign rector, Payn by name, at 18 marks a year. They were careful to pay their rent and to make the necessary repairs.. But in 1276, as no one claimed any rent, and the rector was thought to be dead, they began to appropriate the whole fruits of the living. They were not suffered to do this with impunity for any length of time. In 1277° the bishop came and ejected them altogether from the church, and appointed a clerk as to a vacant living. The visitations of Oliver Sutton were equally energetic, as the same canons had reason to know.’ The coming of the friars during this century must also have had its influence upon the spiritual life of the county, especially in the towns. They settled at Bedford and Dunstable; Grey Friars in one, Black Friars in the other. Their mission was to the poor and outcast of the towns; but their example fired with enthusiasm all classes of society. Even among the monks, who were usually jealous of their in- 1 The canons however appealed to the pope and obtained a confirmation of the original assessment (Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 313). 2 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), ili, 14.7. 3 Ibid. 178. * Ibid. 183. 5 Ibid. 256, 266. 8 Ibid. 276. The rectory was appropriate to Barking Abbey ; the abbess and convent pre- sented again in 1283. 7 Ibid. 283. 8 The second vicar of Luton, Adam of Biscot, resigned his benefice in order to take the Dominican habit ; and four other incumbents in Bedfordshire entered religious houses between 1248 and 1251 (Rev. H. Cobbe, Luton Church, 122 [from Linc. Epis. Reg.]) 322 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY fluence, they found some disciples: two young canons of Dunstable fled away by night to join the Friars Minor at Oxford in 1232.’ But their great popularity as confessors—partly due indeed to their holiness of life, but partly also to other reasons less exalted—brought them into collision sometimes with the parish clergy. In the memoranda of Bishop Sutton,” side by side with similar admonitions to certain priests of Lincoln, is a mandate to the official of the archdeacon of Bedford to bid the canons of Dunstable (where the conventual church was also a parish church) desist from forbidding and impeding the Friars Preachers from hearing the confessions of the people of that place. Only a few years later,’ however, it was the bishop who complained of the number of friars presented to him for licences as confessors ; giving as his reason for refusing some of the candidates that those already licensed were surely enough, and that the rectors and curates of his diocese were suffi- cient for the cure of their subjects. The dealings of Edward I. with the clergy at the end of the cen- tury are matters of general rather than of local history. The names of most of the religious houses of Bedfordshire appear in the lists of those who sought the king’s protection in 1295 ; and a few of the clergy also. The ‘ Placita de Quo Warranto’ of 1290 contain also much of local in- terest. Nearly all the religious superiors, as well as many laymen and one parish priest in Bedfordshire, were required to show by what title they exercised manorial rights, took court fees, and tolls from markets and fairs. The charters brought forward in defence were repeatedly pronounced too vague and undefined ; the plea of immemorial custom had to be supported by evidence. Of the religious, only the abbot of St. Alban’s and the prioress of Haliwell* seem to have clearly proved their rights in Luton and Dunton; the abbot of Waltham and the vicar of Potton lost theirs®; the other cases were many times postponed. It may be added that under the similar inquiry of the fourth year of Edward III. the same parties were again summoned, showing that they had all resumed their rights in the meanwhile ; and this time nearly all, including the vicar of Potton, and the parsons of Sandy, Toddington, Eversholt and Old Warden® were reinstated formally on payment of fine. The Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV. in 1291 requires a special notice, as it was the first clear summary of church property in the county since Domesday. The archdeaconry was divided at this point into six rural deaneries ; 111 churches were named, 4 in Bedford and 107 in the county besides. The revenue of two prebendaries was drawn from Bedford ; one from 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 133. 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 217. 3 Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 19d. Ten friars from Dunstable were presented at this time amongst others, by the provincial. * Plac. de quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 2 and 7. 5 Ibid. 8, 9. 6 Ibid. 62, 69, 75, 78, 86. 323 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Leighton Buzzard, one from Biggleswade and two from Caddington.’ The total value given was: spiritualities, £1,204 145.; temporalities, £811 115. As the list of churches is not complete,’ the valuation cannot be quite accurate. The poorest endowments were those of Ampthill, Chicksand, Goldington and Willington, which were only £2 135. 4d. each; the richest—those over {20—were Leighton Buzzard, £96 135. 4d. ;° Luton, £66 135. 4d.; Biggleswade, £46 135. 4d.; Shillington, £40 ; and Felmersham, £26 135. 4d. The rest of the benefices vary from £4 to £5, with a few at £10, £12 or £20. £4 to £5 was evidently considered a sufficient maintenance. Many of these churches were already held in plurality, though not to the same extent as in the next century. In 1294 the prebendary of Leighton Buzzard had four other churches ; in the same year the rector of Shillington had thirteen others." Master Walter of Wootton, pre- sented to Marston Moretaine in 1282, received a canonry of Lincoln and two prebends in 1292 ; and in 1295, when he became archdeacon of Huntingdon, the chronicler of Dunstable, though looking upon him as a real friend to the monastery, notes with a little touch of disapproval that he resigned none of his former benefices.° There is abundant evidence that until the time of the Great Pestilence the generosity and devotion of the English laity to the Church was the same as it had always been. The number of religious houses already built was amply sufficient for the needs of the country ; fresh endow- ments and direct benefactions were discouraged by the Statute of Mortmain ; but there were other ways open. The rebuilding of parochial and conventual churches at the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Bedfordshire and elsewhere, shows how ready men still were to give to objects of this kind. A few chapels were still built for districts not well served ; as at Upper Gravenhurst before 1369,° and at Stanbridge before 1344. The bridge chapel at Biddenham was built in 1296,° and that of St. Thomas the Martyr at Bedford not long after ;° these were in- tended for the convenience of travellers, to provide them with an early mass, and sometimes even with a place of refuge from thieves.” But the 1 These two were and still are attached to St. Paul’s, London. 2 Eleven are missing : St. John’s, St. Cuthbert’s and St. Peter’s at Bedford, with the parish churches of Tillsworth, Arlesey, Langford, Chellington, Harrold, Stevington, Tingrith, Gravenhurst ; and of nine churches only the pension is mentioned which they paid to some religious house, and not the whole income. A few churches have the value of the vicarage set down as well as the rectory, but by no means all. The total valuation is therefore lower than the real value. 3 As complaints were so often made of the small stipends allowed to the vicars of appropriate churches, it is worth noting that the vicar of Leighton Buzzard only received from the wealthy preben- dary £4 6s. 8d. a year ; while the vicar of Luton received £16 from St. Alban’s, * Both these are found in the Ca/. of Pat. Rolls, 22 Edward I. 5 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iti. 401. § Linc. Epis. Reg, Memo. Gynwell, 84, 87. Licensed for masses to the inhabitants of the vill of Shillington. 7 Ibid. Memo. Bek. 74d. Annexed then to the prebend of Leighton Buzzard. 8 Ibid. Memo. Sutton, ii. 162. Licence to grant lands in mortmain. Pat. 28 Edw. I. m. 12. ® Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Burghersh, 107 (1323); mentioned as lately built with sumptuous work, and since damaged by the water. In Pat. 13 Rich. IT. pt. 2, m. 2, it is called ‘ the king’s free chapel.’ 10 Stated in the licence to the chapel of Biddenham Bridge. 324 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY most popular form of benefaction at that time, and onwards to the Re- formation, was the foundation of chantries. There had been a few in the thirteenth century and even earlier; in 1234° and 1236 * the canons of Dunstable had undertaken to provide anniversaries for certain of their benefactors, and other instances might be named ; but they did not become common till the beginning of the fourteenth century. They might indeed be only a form of legacy to monasteries, but most often they were attached to the parish churches. Such legacies were not necessarily selfish, as at first sight they may appear to be. Certain lands and tenements, etc., were set apart for the maintenance of a chaplain, to sing mass for the souls of the founder and his relations ; but the practi- cal result was the fresh adornment of some altar in the church, and the provision of an assistant to the parish priest. Besides those founded in parish churches or chapels,’ a few were undertaken by the religious in their own churches. The canons of Dunstable conceded a perpetual chantry in 1272 to the archdeacon, John de Crachely ;* another was founded by Thomas Marshall, the prior, about 1379, for his own parents ; a third was granted to Sir Neel Loring in 1390." The canons of Caldwell had also three chantries to serve: in their own church one was granted to Adam Flaun, vicar of Newnham, Herts, 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 141. 2 Ibid. 144. 3 In the chapel of Barwythe, Studham, for William de Eltesdon, 1236 (Harl. MS. 1885, f. 5r ; Ann, Mon. [Rolls Series], ili. 144 ; Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte A® 2). In the chapel of Silsoe, Flitton, for Thomas de Bray,1275 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Gravesend). In the church of Elstow, founder unknown, before 1277 (ibid.) In the chapel of Tebworth, Chalgrave, the parishioners claimed an ancient chantry, 1286 (Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 329). In the chapel of Biddenham Bridge, for Matthew of Dunstable, rector of the moiety of Elstow, 1296 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 162 ; ibid. Inst. Dalderby, 267). In Toddington Church, a chantry of the blessed Virgin, under Bishop Sutton (Linc. Epis. Reg.) In the church of Dean, by Walter of Ireland, the rector, 1301 (ibid. Inst. Dalderby, 270d, 271). In the church of Bletsoe, for the lords of the manor, 1305 (ibid. 305). In the chapel of Silsoe, for Ralph son of Richard, 1327 (ibid. Inst. Burghersh, 314d). In the church of Westoning, for William Inge, 1328 (ibid. 395d). In the church of Renhold, for John Picot, 1336 (ibid. Inst. Bek. 149d, 150). In the church of Sandy, for Roger de Beauchamp, 1337 (ibid. 153-7). In the church of Eaton Socon, for Roger de Beauchamp and John Engayne, 1337 (ibid.) In the church of Elstow for Thos. atte Brugge, rector of Campton, 1349 (Inq. p.m. 21 Edward III. No. 72). In the church of Chalgrave for Sir Neel Loring (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Repingdon, 81). In the church of Wootton (founder unknown) before 1260 (Harl. MS. 3656, f. 22). In the church of St. Cuthbert, Bedford ; Chantry Cert. 1 gives the date 14 Edw. II. Chantries were also founded in a few private chapels, e.g. :— In the chapel of the manor of Bletsoe by Sir John de Pateshull, 1278 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Gravesend). In the chapel of Sir John de Grey on his manor of Thurleigh, 1320 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burg- hersh, 294). In the court of William de Cantelow at Eaton Bray (Auct. D. [P.R.O.] A 106). In the chapel of St. John Baptist, within the court of Paulin Peyver at Toddington, thirteenth century (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Russell, 47-50). * Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 255. This chantry is interesting as being the only one of this period which includes a definite charity ; i.e. the maintenance of a blind clerk in the monastery ‘ for the sake of the soul of John Crachely.’ 5 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 82d. 8 Ibid. 367. 325 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE in 13213 another in the same year to Sir John de Grey; * and a third, to be kept in the chapel of St. Leonard’s Hospital® for Sir John Spark, clerk, of Caldecote, in 1328. The canons of Newnham granted a chantry in 1303‘ to Roger Brown of Rowell, and another in 1379° to Henry of Bedford, in the conventual church. The list of chantries founded at this period has a special interest in connection with the history of the county families, and with the spiritual life of the county as a whole. It will be noticed that the founders were nearly all descended from the men who built and endowed the religious houses, and many of their names occur again in the lists of benefactors to St. Alban’s, Dunstable, Elstow, etc.; so that it would seem that these foundations sprang from the same impulse as that which produced the monasteries—the desire to be remembered in some way that should be for the glory of God and the advancement of the Church. Very few chapels seem to have been built with the primary inten- tion of perpetuating chantries ; there are only three in Bedfordshire— those which once stood in the churchyards of Flitwick,’ Elstow’ and Wilshampstead “—which seem to be clear instances. All the rest, whether they lasted on till the suppression or fell into decay before, were in the first instance parochial or domestic, and the chantries were merely ap- pended to them.” The position of the parish churches with relation to the religious houses was little altered during the fourteenth century. Two more were appropriated—Biddenham to the Nuns Minoresses of Waterbeach” (after- wards of Denny), and both moieties of Elstow to the monastery which already held the advowson.” The churches of Felmersham”™ and Potton™ were taken for a time into the hands of the king, but only to be granted away again soon after." Four more vicarages were ordained - at 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh, 292. 2 Ibid. 294d. 3 Ibid. Inst. Dalderby, 302. * Ibid. 260. 5 Ibid. Inst. Buckingham, 182. ® Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Gynwell, 29 Edw. III. Ordination of a chantry in honour of B.V.M. and St. George by Edmund de Bulstrode in the chapel newly built by him in the churchyard. 7 Ibid. Memo. Burghersh (1334), 273. Indulgence for the chapel of St. Helen in the church- yard of Elstow, and for the soul of . . . Ivota, foundress. 8 Ibid. Memo. Burghersh, 108d, 1323. ‘For the fabric of the chapel of St. John Baptist in the churchyard of Wilshampstead.’ To these should perhaps be added the chapel of Wyboston in Eaton Socon parish (Chant. Cert. Nos. 1, 4), but its original purpose is uncertain. 9 The chantries granted to James de Caus ‘in his chapel of Sharpenhoe’ (1234) (4a. Mon. [Rolls Series], ili. 141), and to Bartholomew Young ‘in the chapel which he erected at Humbershoe’ (1273), which are only once mentioned, are described in similar terms to that of William de Eltesdon at Barwythe, which is distinctly stated to have been a parochial chapel (Harl. MSS. 1885, f. §2b), and also disappears from this time forward. 10 After a long suit with William de Kirkcby (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 98, and Inst. of Dalderby, 259) there was an appeal to the pope for appropriation (Ca/. of Pap. Letters, ii. 413). 11 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. of Bp. Bek, 102 (1345). 12 Pat. 11 Edw. I. m. 4. 13 From 1330-1413, when it was granted to the Nuns Minoresses near Aldgate (Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Repingdon, 301). 14 Felmersham to King’s Hall, Cambridge ; vicarage ordained at the same time, 1365 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Gynwell, 48). 326 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Eyworth, Felmersham,’ Elstow* and Harlington. The Bishops of Lin- coln during the fourteenth century were not men of such a high type as their predecessors of the thirteenth, but there is no evidence that they were neglectful of their duty : the religious houses were still visited ; no grave scandals among the clergy were allowed to pass unnoticed ; * care was taken that the parish churches should be regularly served, even when they were in the hands of absentee or pluralist rectors. Clergy who wished, as many did at this time, to devote themselves for some time to study of canon law were obliged to appoint chaplains to do their parish work,° and it seems probable that the pluralists were obliged to do the same for their additional churches. ‘There is no doubt however that pluralities were at this time very seriously on the increase, and that the results of leaving the cure of souls to chaplains, whose scanty stipends were apt to make them unsettled, and naturally led them to look out for preferment, could not have been satisfactory. The worst cases of plurality in Bedfordshire, as in the previous cen- tury, were connected with the richest benefices—Leighton Buzzard, for instance, and Shillington. It will be enough to mention a few : Simon de Northwood,’ chaplain and confessor to Queen Philippa, rector of Colmworth, a moiety of Houghton Conquest and two other benefices, besides a prebend of Hereford, and a canonry and prebend of Shaftes- bury ; Gilbert de Roubury,’ king’s clerk and canon of Auckland, the holder of eight benefices including Shillington, and Matthew de Asshe- ton, a successor of his somewhat later, who held Shillington in plurality and was clerk of the privy seal. A good instance of how Italians were still provided for in England may be found in the case of John de Podio Barsaco, canon of Lincoln, prebendary of Leighton Buzzard and arch- deacon of Stow ; and afterwards, resigning Stow, archdeacon of Alava in the diocese of Calahorra, and also of Winchester at the same time. Earlier popes had condemned the practice, and more than one legate 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh, 310d (1334). 2 Ibid. Memo. Gynwell, 48. 3 Ibid. Inst. Bek, 102 (1345). This ordination seems to have been revoked at once. In petition to the pope under 1345 the Prince of Wales states that the appropriation was of little avail, on account of the small value, and the reservation of a vicar’s portion ; wherefore the bishop ordered the cure of souls to be performed by a priest paid by the religious, and the parish church to be transferred to the chapel of St. Helen in the churchyard. The pope was asked to confirm this arrange- ment ; and as no vicars’ names occur in the registers, it seems that the church was served by the chap- lains of the monastery and the chantry priests until the dissolution. Harlington was ordained 1310 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. of Bp. Dalderby, 266). 4 W. de St. Neot’s, vicar of Luton, was deprived and imprisoned, and a substitute appointed in his place, for non-residence and immorality, 1358 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Gynwell, 120d). In 1315 a coadjutor was appointed to an earlier vicar, who had become infirm. ‘The parishioners of Souldrop complained in 1356 of their rector, who was evidently quite mad (‘he overthrows the barns and buildings of the rectory, and daily sets it on fire !’), and a coadjutor was appointed within a year (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Gynwell, 63d, 87). 5 The rector of Potton (Cad. of Pap. Letters, ii. 311), absent for five years; the vicar of Bletsoe absented himself twelve years for study (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, ccxlv. [1313]). & Cal. of Pap. Letters, iii. 96, 1344, and under ii. 276, 292, 521. 7 Ibid. ii. 3, 25. 8 Ibid. iti. 430. ® Ibid. ii. 124, 185, 232, 268 ; Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 22. His brother, Pontius de Podio Barsaco, had a somewhat similar career. 327 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE had tried to check it; but in the fourteenth century, in spite of the bull Execraéilis and its threats, it was no longer an offence to hold benefices in plurality : the only fault was to do so without dispensation from Rome. At this time, and indeed afterwards, those who held the largest number of benefices were those who had the money or the in- terest to procure them—the royal clerks and chaplains, and the cathedral clergy. There is no doubt that the county of Bedford suffered at the time of the Great Pestilence as much as the neighbouring counties. It must have been especially violent in and about the town of Bedford, as the names of the masters of both hospitals, and the priors both of Caldwell and Newnham, are found amongst those who died in 1349. The prior of Bushmead, the prioress of Markyate, and the rectors of Biddenham, Sutton and Shillington died in the same year.’ The period between the Great Pestilence and the Reformation is uneventful in the history of the Church in Bedfordshire. Movements which affected other parts of England were doubtless felt here also, but the records are very scanty. There is a brief account in the Annals of Dunstable * (no longer kept with the same care as in former years) of a rising in the town in the year of the great peasant revolt, similar to those at St. Albans and Bury St. Edmunds, but marked by much less violence. The old ill feeling between the prior and the townsmen was stirred up again—it had probably never quite died out—and the indus- trial problems raised by war and pestilence had doubtless affected this neighbourhood as much as others. A crowd assembled at the. priory gates and demanded a new charter of liberties, ‘such as the burgesses had in the days of Henry I.’ Knowing what had happened at London and St. Albans, the prior had the tact and prudence to receive them courteously, and to issue the desired charter. It was revoked when the revolt was suppressed ; but the prior interceded for his townsmen that they might not suffer the same penalties as the rioters in Hertfordshire and the eastern counties. A few years later an old dispute between the religious and the townsmen, as to their respective rights in the parish church, was brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the efforts of Sir Reynold de Grey and other gentlemen of the neighbourhood. The lower part of the building was set apart for the use of the parishioners, and a new altar erected, where a secular vicar might minister to them on all ordinary occasions ; but on the principal feasts of the year they were to hear mass at the altar of St. Peter.’ The visitation of the prebendal churches by Bishop Henry Beaufort in 1399° brought to light a very unsatisfactory state of discipline, which however cannot cause much surprise when it is remembered how the 1 The chronicler of Dunstable notes under this year, and in connection with the Great Pestilence, that the townsmen made a new bell (probably as a votive offering). 2 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), ili. 417. 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 411. This arrangement was not permanent, no vicar- age or vicar being mentioned in the Vafor Eccl. 1535. 4 Ibid. Memo. Beaufort, 67. 328 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY prebends were often bestowed. At Biggleswade the vicar was accused of living in his mother’s house the life of a common tradesman, of brewing and selling ale there. This however he denied, and purged himself by oath; but there must have been something unsatisfactory in his service of the cure. Further, the chaplains who belonged to the church did not attend the canonical hours, or, if they came, they only stood in the chancel and took no part in the office. They were ordered by the bishop to remain in choir in future, under penalty of a fine, and to provide themselves with surplices by the coming festival of Easter, unless they wished to be suspended. The high altar of the church had never been consecrated, and the rectory was in ruins owing to the non- residence of the prebendary. At Leighton Buzzard also some complaints were made. The pro- per vestments were not provided, and there was no holy water clerk kept for the parishioners. The stipend of the vicar, always very small, had now become quite insufficient ; it was augmented by Bishop Grey in 1436. Chantries were still founded from time to time, especially in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; the civil wars no doubt gave a fresh impulse to this form of devotion. Some well known names still occur among the founders—Sir Neel Loring’s chantry at Chalgrave was re-endowed by Robert Braybrook, Bishop of London, at the beginning of the fifteenth century,’ and Sir John Trailly and his son made Northill church collegiate, and established a chantry there about the same time ;° but the rest of them bear the names of men of the middle class, or else their founders are unknown.* It is expressly stated of the chantry of Biddenham, which belonged to the Grocers’ Company, that it involved a distribution of money to the poor; while the priests who served those of Houghton Regis and Tempsford were to keep schools for poor men’s children ;* and probably others had like charities attached to them. The establishment of gilds and fraternities at this period is also connected with the history of the middle class. The object of these was quite as much social as religious ; and yet the religious element in them was sufficient to class them, a little later, among foundations whose 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Grey, 183d. The last vicarages ordained in Bedfordshire were Lidlington, 1413 (ibid. Inst. Repingdon, 305) ; Biddenham, 1527 (ibid. Inst. Longland, 248). 2 Ibid. Memo. Repingdon, 81 (1413). 3 Chant. Cert. i. * These were :— A new chantry in the chapel of Biddenham Bridge, 12 Edw. IV. ; the chantry in the chapel of Wypboston, Eaton Socon, 16 Edw. IV (both in Chant. Cert. i.) The chantry of Corpus Christi in St. Paul’s, Bedford, 20 Henry VII. (ibid.) The chantry in the church of Tempsford (ibid. and Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 262). The chantry in the church of Houghton Regis, 1519 ; and in the private chapel of Sewell in the same parish (Chant. Cert. i.) The chantry of St. Anne in Northill church (ibid.) The chantry of St. William in Biddenham church (ibid.) 5 Chant. Cert. i. The founder of the chantry of Houghton Regis, a citizen and mercer of Lon- don, left provision in his will that if the licence for alienation in mortmain could not be obtained, the lands he left were to be sold, and the proceeds used for the ornaments of the church, for the mending of the highways, for the assistance of poor folk, and for poor maidens’ marriages. I 329 42 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE funds were devoted to superstitious uses. Every gild had its altar where a priest was maintained to sing mass for the good estate of the brethren and sisters while living and for the repose of their souls after death. They were found in Bedfordshire at Blunham, St. Paul’s Bedford, Biggleswade, Dunstable, Eaton Socon, Houghton Regis and Luton ;* their favourite dedication was to the Holy Trinity. The richest and best known of these was the Gild of the Trinity at Luton ; records of its expenses, etc., are still preserved among the MSS. of the Marquis of Bute.” The object was to maintain a priest and poor brethren. The gilds of Eaton and Dunstable also had funds set apart for distribution to the poor and other charitable purposes. There are scarcely any records to help us to form an opinion as to how far the teaching of the Lollards was known or welcomed in Bed- fordshire. Ata time when Bishop Buckingham complained that heresy was rife in Northamptonshire,’ when Leicestershire was the centre of Wycliffe’s teaching, it is difficult to believe that Bedfordshire remained untouched. ‘There was however only one prosecution in this county re- corded by the Lincoln registers: that of John Langeley, vicar of Pullox- hill, in 1417." His arrest is noted, but nothing further. There is the same want of detailed information for the first half of the sixteenth century as for the fifteenth ; so that it is impossible to gather any clear impression as to the state of popular feeling in Bedford- shire with regard to the many and great changes which were taking place. In a county where so much land and so large a proportion of the churches belonged to religious houses, there must surely have been strong feelings either for or against the dissolution; but very little is re- corded. We possess however one vivid picture of the way in which the Act of Supremacy was discussed, not only amongst the religious but amongst some of the clergy and laity in one part of Bedfordshire. The depositions of the abbot of Woburn and others at the surrender of the abbey in 1538° contain references to many well known people. The abbot had evidently discussed the subjects of the supremacy, the royal divorce, the death of More and Fisher, the suppression of the smaller monasteries, quite freely with all his neighbours ; with Sir Francis Bryan, though he was in the king’s service, and inclined to the new learning ; with Lord Grey of Wilton and Lady Grey of Wrest (with whom he never could agree); with Sir Francis Bryan’s physician; with the parson of Milton Bryan, some doctors of Cambridge and the warden of Toddington Hospital. All these people had listened to his arguments, 1 All in Chant. Cert. i. The gild of Dunstable also occurs in Ing. a. gq. d. 19-23 Henry VI. No. 81. It maintained (Chant. Cert. 4) a house with three chambers containing beds for poor travellers passing through Dunstable ; and four tenements under the same roof for brethren of the gild fallen into poverty, where they might dwell without paying rent. That of Eaton (ibid.) had merely a distribution of money to the poor. 2 Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 207. 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 393 (1392). 4 Ibid. Memo. Repingdon, 184 (1417). 5 L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. pt. 1, No. 981. The depositions were taken 11 and 12 May 1538; the abbey having been surrendered 8 May. 330 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY and agreed or disagreed with a freedom which is rather striking at a time when treason in word only was liable to the same penalties as con- spiracy or open rebellion. The physician of Sir Francis Bryan had re- buked the curate of Woburn chapel for loyally railing against the pope and against images; while the same gentleman’s servant had fallen out with the schoolmaster of the abbey on the subject of the royal supremacy. In consequence of all these revelations articles were drawn up by the royal visitors against the warden of Toddington, the doctors of Cam- bridge and the ‘ doctor of physicke,’ and an attempt seems to have been made to implicate Sir Francis Bryan also ; but only the abbot and two of his monks suffered the extreme penalty of the law at this time.’ The parish churches’* certainly suffered a great loss in the suppres- sion of the chantries and gilds ; the reports of those who drew up the certificates show plainly how much the services of these additional chap- lains were valued by the parish clergy. The chantry priests may have been ‘ meanly learned’ (whatever that may actually imply), and ‘ not able to serve a cure” in most cases; but in nearly every report it is added that there is ‘ none other priest to help the vicar,’ and that many of the parishioners live at considerable distances from the church. In the case of Northill Collegiate Church, it is explained that there are seven hamlets in this parish, ‘ whereof two are three quarters of a mile from the church, and every one as distant from the other’ ; and ‘ it is thought that one priest shall not be able to serve the same.’* They were never- theless suppressed ; and though a part of the money thus secured to the Crown may have been put to good uses, the immediate sufferers received no compensation. The chapels of Gravenhurst, Roxhill and Silsoe, originally parochial chapels, fell under the same condemnation because of 1 Stow, Annales, p. 573, Speed, Chronick, 1026, and Add. MS. 27402, f 47 (a list of those executed under Henry VIII., once in the possession of Hearne, probably drawn from the chroniclers) state that the parson of Podington, Beds, suffered with the abbot and one monk. ‘The Controlment Roll, Trin. term, 30 Henry VIII., gives the record of the attainder of the abbot and swo monks, with no other companion. Ifa further example had been needed the choice would naturally fall upon Sir John Mylward, the warden of Toddington, who had brought himself well under the treason law by refusing to preach the king’s supremacy, and compiling a book from the fathers called De Potestate Petri ; and in- deed it seems very unlikely that he should escape at this time. But the record of his attainder is want- ing, and the traditional number of victims is complete without him. Moreover the Chantry Cert. of 1546 (No. 4) states that the hospital of Toddington was dissolved ‘ without the king’s warrant, immedi- ately on the death of the last master John Mylward,’ which does not suggest an attainder. There is no record either of a parson of Podington, though the Epis. Reg. show a fresh institution in 1539. Amongst other partisans of the old learning in Bedfordshire we may note Lord Mordaunt, who gave evidence in favour of the unfortunate Friar Forrest in this same year (L. and P. Hen. VIII. Xiil. pt. 1, 1043) ; and Sir John Gostwick, a knight of the shire, who had the courage to accuse Cranmer of heresy in open Parliament in 1544 (Canon R. W. Dixon, History of the Church of England, ii. 344-5). Members of the same two families are found amongst the recusants of Elizabeth’s reign. 2 Before the end of the reign of Henry VIII. the town of Bedford had lost two very old parish churches, Of the church of All Saints there is no institution recorded after the year 1446; but the Valor Eccl. records under the head of Newnham Priory ‘Epé. Lincoln’ pro indemnitate ecctie Omfi Scr Bedd. 3s. 42.” The Church of St. Peter Dunstable is said to have been destroyed about the year 1545, and its stones used to repair St. Mary’s, the bridge and the streets, as well as the other church of St. Peter (Beds Archaeol. and Archit. Soc. ix. 260). ‘SS, Peter and Mary Dunstable’ appear as one rectory in the Valor Ecc/. (Rec. Com.) 3 Chant. Cert. Nos. 1, 2, 4. 4 Ibid. 1 ; No. 4 adds, ‘And it were right necessary for an almshouse, if it pleased the King.’ 331 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the chantries attached to them. Endowments for lamps and obits, offered in nearly all the churches by those who could not afford the com- plete pay of a chaplain, were swept away at the same time. Some further local details may be gathered from the scanty remains of the inventories taken, at the end of the reign of Edward VI., of the movable goods of the churches. Only fourteen lists relating to Bedford- shire are still preserved." They serve to show that nearly every church was still in possession of some of the vestments, etc., allowed by the first Prayer Book of the reign. But they are so incomplete that they could not have been still in use ; if they were, the services of the church must have presented a curious appearance. Most churches still retained the two prescribed candlesticks ; some had copes, two or three had censers and pyxes for the reservation ; one had a holy water stoup of ‘ lattyn,’ more than one a sanctus bell, another a pax, another a processional cross. Stagsden had a nearly complete set of Eucharistic vestments, but no candlesticks ; Houghton Regis was the richest in plate, having three chalices, two pyxes and a pair of censers still, although it had been lately robbed—a misfortune not peculiar to this church by any means. In the Suffragan Bishops Act of 1534” the town of Bedford was included amongst the proposed sees for suffragans ; and, in accordance with the provisions of the Act, John Hodgkins was consecrated Bishop of Bedford on 19 December 1537.. As however he was suffragan to the Bishop of London, he had no jurisdiction in this county, and could have no influence on its history.“ A greater (though melancholy) interest is attached to the plan, formed a little later, of erecting a new bishopric for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire® out of a portion of the spoils of the religious houses ; its see was to be at Dunstable,” and its revenues were to be obtained from the property of the dissolved monasteries of Dunstable, Elstow and Newnham. Full details of the proposed cathe- dral establishment are still preserved’; but the plan was never realized. So far as can be discovered, the county of Bedford received no com- 1 Printed in Beds N. and Q. 277-311. These entries give some examples of the way in which smaller men in those days followed the example of their betters. One good lady had helped her- self to a pair of bells which had been left in the churchyard of Sandy at the last inventory—for the payment of her husband’s debts. At Meppershall the mutual accusations of present and past church- wardens leave only one thing clear—that some one had been plundering the church. __Holcutt was re- duced to one broken chalice ; Husborne Crawley to one of tin. 2 Documents Illustrative of English Church History, pp. 253-6. 3 Rymer, Fadera, vi. (3), 12 ; Beds N. and Q.1. 40. 4 The only other suffragan Bishop of Bedford was the Rev. W. Walsham How, consecrated 1879 ; he was also suffragan to the Bishop of London. 5 From the draft in the king’s own handwriting, of which a facsimile is printed as frontispiece to Cole’s King Henry VIII.’s Scheme of Bishopricks. 6 In the first draft (from Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv.) ‘Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire’ are bracketed opposite the three monasteries mentioned above ; but in the detailed scheme (printed in the same volume, from a MS. in the Record Office) the name of Dunstable appears. 7 Cole, King Henry VIII.’s Scheme of Bishopricks, pp. 60~6. The scheme for Dunstable is similar to the rest, only it does not begin with ‘ First a Busshope,’ like some of them. It includes a dean, six prebendaries, a reader and four students in divinity, twenty scholars and a schoolmaster, six ‘ peticanons ’ to sing in the choir, with six singing men and eight choristers, a gospeller and a ‘ pisteler,’ besides such minor officials as two porters ‘to keep the gates and shave the company.’ There were also sums of money set apart for distribution to the poor. 332 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY pensation of any kind for the losses suffered under Henry VIII. and Edward VI. There is no record of any trial for heresy in Bedfordshire under Henry VIII. or Mary ; it is indeed generally agreed that the whole dio- cese of Lincoln was free from persecution during the latter reign ; though the episcopal registers, if they existed, might show some cases of depri- vation among the clergy. But the majority both of clergy and laity probably conformed at this time (as it has been shown that they did later) to the established order, whatever it might happen to be. Such a course does not argue a lofty ideal of life and duty ; but it was a very natural one for ordinary men, at a time when the learned held such differing views even on fundamental points, and when the next change of govern- ment might mean loss of livelihood, even of life itself, for those who were not willing to adopt the prescribed forms of religion. Lofty ideals of life were rare in those unrestful and unhappy years, when change fol- lowed change in swift succession, and toleration was neither admired nor desired by the leaders of any party. There is very little to awaken our admiration in the personal char- acter of such of the clergy as are known to us at this time. A typical instance of the general conformity may be found in John Gwynneth, vicar of Luton from 1537 to 1558. He kept his church through all these changes, but his real opinions found expression at last in 1553 in AA declaration of the notable victory given of God to Queen Mary, showed in the Church of Luton in the first year of her reign. His death in 1558 saved him from further difficulties; and he was succeeded after a few years by a man of the exactly opposite type, Thomas Rose,” ranked by Foxe among the martyrs. The narrative of Rose’s sufferings does not belong to the history of Bedfordshire ; it shows him forth as one of those fiery preachers who were more earnest to bring men to a right be- lief than to a better life ; and his first arrest under Henry VIII. in 1533 came of the part he took in the destruction of a rood out of Dovercourt church. Coming only four years after Gwynneth, he must have found work to do at Luton after his own heart. Some of the results of the general confiscation of church property were revealed by the visitation of Cardinal Pole in 1556.’ It was then stated that many of the vicarages had been void for years,’ because of the smallness of the means of livelihood; and that the chancels of six churches—Harlington, Salford, Potton, Eyworth, Riseley and Wootton— were in ruins. The chancel and rectory of Ampthill were almost down to the ground ; the rector explaining that the tithes of the greater part of the parish and its best land had been taken from him by the enclosure 1 Luton Church, by the Rev. H. Cobbe, p. 183. He also wrote: 4 declaration of the state wherein all hereticks do lead their lives, and A playne demonstration of Fohn Frithes lack of witte and learning. 2 Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, viii. 581-90. : 3 Strype, Eccks. Mem. iii. 482-6. Strype states that nearly all these livings were then in the gift of the cardinal himself ; but he can scarcely be blamed for their poverty and neglected condition, which must date further back. 4 The Elizabethan Clergy, Dr. Gee, 125, 126, 256. 333 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of King Henry’s parks, as they were also from rectors and vicars of neighbouring parishes ; and the curates were so impoverished that they could scarce live upon them. It may be noted that the churches men- tioned had all belonged (except Ampthill) to various monasteries before the dissolution ; and the king or his grantee, while appropriating the rectorial tithes, had evidently forgotten the rector’s duty of repairing the chancel. Another sign of the times appeared at Dunstable. The churchwardens complained that their town was populous, but neither rector nor perpetual vicar was found there ; and ‘he that was hired could not preach.’ The loss of the ideal of the pastor in the ideal of the preacher is always the outcome of an age of controversy, and the balance sometimes takes a long while to readjust. There were probably very few deprivations in Bedfordshire in the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. Of the higher clergy two were found ready to subscribe to the new Act of Uniformity—the archdeacon, Richard Barbar, and the prebendary of Biggleswade, Giles Forster— while two refused and were deprived—Anthony Draycot,’ prebendary of Bedford Major, and George Hunter, prebendary of Leighton Buzzard. No names of the lesser clergy are found on the lists of those deprived before 1562. The earliest documentary evidence as to the state of Bedfordshire in ecclesiastical matters during the reign of Elizabeth is the report of the visitations made by the archdeacon in 1578.’ He held his court at Ampthill, Bedford and Woburn; and the presentations do not give a very happy impression of the state of the archdeaconry. In three churches both nave and chancel were out of repair; in eight others only the chancel, by the default of the parson or patron.” Of these some had the windows broken, and others wanted paving. Two or three church- ards were in disorder, with broken hedges. Four of the clergy were called to show by what licence they served ; one could show none at all. Three or four did not preach ; only one however is presented for not wearing the surplice. A large number of people were presented for not coming to church, or for not making their communions at Easter. Sometimes the parish priest failed to give his people proper opportuni- ties: at Biddenham there had been ‘only one communion this year’ ; but at Clophill there was almost certainly a weekly celebration.” Only about thirty parishes are named in this report, and it would be rash to draw conclusions too melancholy from such premises as these ; espec- ially as the object of the visitation was to find out what was wrong, and not what was normal. There was probably a great diversity of practice as to the number of services ; and the amount of reverence and 1 Draycot was also archdeacon of Huntingdon, and held another prebend and four livings besides. 2 At present in the office of the archdeacon’s registrar at Bedford. Some extracts were printed in Beds N. and Q. iii. 16-18, 36-40. 3 Wootton had the chancel in decay in 1556, when it was in the gift of Cardinal Pole; now it is ‘ by the queen’s default.’ 4 There is mention of a celebration on Palm Sunday ; and one who had lapsed promised to prepare himself for nex¢ Sunday. 334 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY devotion amongst the people would vary greatly, as it has done ever since, with the character of the parish clergy.’ A few years later political causes drew attention to the recusants who still clung to the Roman obedience, and lists were drawn up in some places to show their numbers and status. In 1585 a seminary priest, Thomas Freeman, was arrested and examined by the justices of Bedfordshire and sent up to London with his papers and books.” There is a curious list among the State Papers of fema/e recusants* in Bedford- shire, giving the names of seven wives and three widows of gentlemen of the county, whose incomes varied from £200 to £10 a year. Besides these a few names of servants and poorer people were known to the writer, who was ready when the queen’s pleasure was signified ‘ to take such order with them as I hope shall avoid all inconveniences as hereafter might happen by them or any other.” What these measures were can only be guessed, for they were never taken ; but the tone of the letter is very characteristic of the times, and shows clearly the suspicion* with which such recusants were regarded. Nothing © however seems to have happened to these ladies, and in the lists of 1591 ° only four names are given of recusants in Bedford- shire. Indeed it seems probable that they never had much influence in the county beyond the little circle of the Mordaunts and their friends at Turvey, where’ a little later than this, Secretary Coke discovered that William Smith, the titular ‘Bishop of Chalcedon,’ had a place of resi- dence. When Lord Mordaunt was reconciled to the Anglican Church in 1625, by the influence of his wife and Archbishop Usher, Turvey ceased by degrees to be a gathering place for recusants ; and though there were still twenty people presented to the archdeacon for this offence in 1642,’ none of them was a person of any note. From this time forward the air of Bedfordshire could scarcely be called congenial to popery. 1 At the end of the same book there is an entry under 30 April, of the institution of the rector of Clophill, in the church of Ampthill, ‘inter horas 3 a.m. et 4 a.m.’ It would be interesting to know if this hour was exceptional or otherwise. There were a few inscriptions (since destroyed) existing in 1583, to witness that one pious cus- tom, commonly supposed to have passed away with the Reformation, was still sanctioned by law and by public opinion. Such were: In Dunstable church—Hic jacet Ric’us Denton qui obiit 18 March 1564, et Elizabetha uxor eius guor’ an’ etc. ; and in Sutton, North Chapel—Of your charity pray for the souls of Thomas Burgoyne and Elizabeth his wife ‘ w’che Thomas deceased 9 Aug. 1576 on whose sowle and all Xtane sowles Jesu have mercye’ (printed in Beds N. and Q.i. 71, 74, from the MS. of Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald ; Cotton MS. Cleop. C iii.) 2 §. P. Dom. Eliz. clxxviii. No. 26. 3 Ibid. cxcv. No. 116. They are the wives of W. Mordaunt of Oakley, J. Fortescue of Eyworth, J. Charnock of Holcote, Oliver Skroges and Richard Skroges of Renhold, W. Hewet of Millbrook, Robert Willowes of Barford ; and widows—the old Lady Catelayne of Dunton, Edith Bredyman of Tin- grith and Alice Gostwick of Bedford (the last presented to the archdeacon in 1578 for not coming to church). 4 «The above-named John Charnock . . . is son of Richard Charnock of Holcote . . . a man greatly noted and suspected in religion ; and hath as I am credibly informed great and often repair to his house of such as are not to be liked nor trusted in these dangerous times.’ 5 There is a letter from the Earl of Kent to the Council in 1588, asking what shall be done with them ; no answer is recorded (Ca/. of S. P. Dom. Eliz. 22 Jan. 1588). 6 §. P. Dom. Eliz. ccxxxviii. No. 126. 7 Ibid. Chas. I. xcix. March 1628. 8 History of the Willey Hundred, W. M. Harvey, p. 182. ® Beds N. and Q. ii. 16 ; from the parish registers. 335 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE The clergy list of 1605 * throws light on one point of interest : it seems that the parish priests at the end of the Elizabethan period had at any rate the best education that the times could afford; more than three-quarters of them were University graduates. ‘Their stipends were very small: £7 was the average, and very few rose above £12 ; Melch- bourne, Bletsoe and Stotfold were less than £6; while Cranfield with £33, Luton with £35, and Blunham with £46 2s. 10d. were the richest. Pluralities were still common, as indeed they continued to be till very recently ; and with more excuse than in the pre-Reformation period. The archdeacon’s visitations of 1610-20” show a few churches (not the same ones as before) out of repair. ‘Totternhoe in particular is reported ‘in great decay and like to fall down,’ Ridgmont in 1616 had not a ‘sufficient Bible.’ There are several cases of irreverence, open quarrelling and fighting in church, and presentations for immorality are very numerous. One or two clergy are accused of not being in orders, or not licensed to preach; two for not wearing surplices ; two for neglecting their cure ; two for not reading prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays (in one case Saturdays). The presentations which sound strangest to modern ears are those for various forms of Sabbath-breaking, showing the prevalence of Puritan ideas. The open exercise of a trade, or stopping away from Sunday services to join in ‘a football play,’ we might expect to see condemned, but one man is accused of ‘travelling his horses,’ another for ‘ going towards London’ upon the Sabbath day ; and we are reminded of arch- deacons’ visitations of a much earlier date by the presentation of one for fetching a load of wood upon a wagon upon a ‘ holliday, about Christ- mas,’ and another for carting on S¢. Luke's Day,’ and several for marrying in Lent. The accusation of ‘ keeping company with one excommunicate’ shows that the ancient discipline of the Church was still occasionally exercised’; but the repetition of several of these presentations two or three months running shows that it had become difficult to enforce. At the Commissaries’ Court in 1606 the churchwardens of Poding- ton presented their vicar, Thomas Whytbie, for not catechising and in- structing the youth and ignorant persons of the parish according to law, ‘being thereunto required by J. Barnes, one of the churchwardens, and made a tushe and skorne thereat.’ Whytbie was at the same time pre- sented for not wearing ‘a typpet, hoode and square cap at the time of 1 Transcribed by Mr. Alfred Gibbons and printed in Beds N. and Q. The only notable man among the clergy in Bedfordshire at this time was Thos. Archer, rector of Houghton Conquest, and chaplain to James I. He was a great preacher (ibid. i. 89-98). ; 2 The reports are dated ~ one book, 1610-11 and 1620, at Bedford ; in 1616-17 at Ampthill, med to be monthly. ae OC Maa Ernest one Walter Griffin was accused of ‘setting his nets and catching larks upon a holiday’! At Elstow a woman was presented for ‘ churching Jersed/f,” and stated that she had given the minister warning over night, but as he did not come she took the Book of Common Prayer and read the Thanksgiving openly herself. She was dismissed with a warning. ; 4 Another illustration of the survival of ancient discipline is found in a licence dated 22 March 1632 (and renewed 30 March and 7 April) from the parish priest of Clophill, to ‘ Sir Henry More and his lady Dame Elizabeth,’ ‘ for eating flesh for the space of eight days, upon a Certificate fro is John More, Dr. of Physicke, y* Abstinence from Flesh would be very pr iuditious to there health’ (Beds N. and Q. ii. 257) ; from the parish register at Clophill. 336 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY divine service,’ and for not wearing a surplice at the time of common prayer. Oliver, the vicar’s son, was also presented for being absent from evening prayer on Sundays and robbing an orchard. The quarrel between the vicar and churchwardens continued for a long time, as similar pre- sentments were made against the former in 1616, which were not pro- ceeded with. At the same time the vicar presented John Barnes, the churchwarden, for refusing to forbid the playing of ‘stooleball,’ football and swearing on Sunday.’ The visitation of Archbishop Laud in 1634 (deputed to Sir Nathaniel Brent) showed Puritan influence to be strong in the county ; but only one deprivation is recorded at this time—that of Peter Bulkley, rector of Odell, ejected for refusing to wear the surplice or to use the sign of the cross in baptism. The visitation was especially directed to the restora- tion of the chancels ; but very few details are preserved.” Conspicuous among those who sympathized with the reforms of Laud were Hugh Reeve, rector of Ampthill, Dr. Pocklington, rector of Yelden and fellow of Pembroke Hall, and Giles Thorne of St. Mary’s, Bedford ; the two latter were deputy commissioners for the archbishop in the ecclesiastical courts of the county.” It was therefore not surprising that when the tables were turned, and the Parliament undertook to reform the Church by measures even more drastic than Laud’s, these three men should be reckoned under the head of ‘superstitious, innovating and scandalous ministers,’ and removed accordingly. The county of Bedford was one of those which sent in a petition for the abolition of episcopacy on 25 January 1640-1." Several private petitions came in at about the same time. The first was against Dr. Pocklington, whose books, A/tare Christianum and Sunday no Sabbath had made him a marked man. The Lords were asked to call him to answer the charge of idolatry and superstition, and for defending in his pamph- lets those ‘innovations unhappily introduced into the Church.’’ The next was a petition from one parishioner of Ampthill, on behalf of the rest, praying for an inquiry into the popish doctrines and practices of Hugh Reeve, and annexing articles ‘ whereby it doth plainly appear that he is at heart a popish recusant.’® A third came from John Wallinger, churchwarden of St. Paul’s, Bedford, complaining of the treatment he had received from Giles Thorne, Dr. Pocklington, and others in the ecclesiastical courts.’ Another was sent in by the vicar of Stevington against Dr. Walter Walker, late ecclesiastical commissary for Bedford- shire, because of his exactions, and his enforcing of ‘ceremonials of bowings, wearings of surplices, officiating within the communion rails,’ 1 Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 275. 2 Cal. of 8S. P. Dom. Chas. I. 1634 p. 205 ; and History of the Willey Hundred, W. M. Harvey, p- 366 (for the deprivation of Peter Bulkley). The entry in the parish register of Pertenhale under the date 1634, recording that the church possessed ‘a Communion table and rails, a silver chalice and paten, a pewter flagon and a holland surplice,’ has evidently some reference to this visitation (Beds” N, and Q. ii. 319). 3 §. P. Dom. Chas. I. ccccxcix. No. 89, 1643 (Depositions of John Wallinger). 4 Hist. of the Engl. Church under the Commonwealth, Dr. W. A. Shaw, i. 26. 5 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 39, 13 Jan. 1640-1. ® Ibid. 16 Jan. 7 Ibid. p. 48, 8 Feb. I 337 43 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE and many other persecutions.’ Another came from an ‘aggrieved parishioner’ at Caddington.? A complaint also came from the parish- ioners of Wootton and Quinton (Northants) against Jeremy Stephens, the prebendary of Biggleswade.’ It does not necessarily follow, because these petitions were many and urgent, that they were really the voice of the people ; but there can be no doubt, in the light of later events, that there had been discontent in the county, and that the influence of Cal- vinistic teaching was widespread. Dr. Pocklington and Hugh Reeve were arrested and deprived of all ecclesiastical preferments early in 1641°; John Gwyn, the vicar of Cople,” and Giles Thorne of St. Mary’s, Bedford,’ in 1642. Subsequent deprivations were as much political as religious; the charge brought against the deprived was as a rule simply ‘malignancy.’ The exact number of these is not easy to obtain, as they have to be collected from different sources. But the largest number that can be made out for Bedfordshire, between 1643 and 1648, reckoning all doubtful cases, is twenty-six, and there were certainly over twenty at the lowest estimate.” If we add to these the names of those deprived before the civil war began, it will be no exaggeration to say that about one-fifth of the clergy of this county were ejected either for Royalist sympathies or for refusal to conform to the modes of Church service and government ordained by Parliament. It is only fair to say that not all those who were thus deprived were left quite destitute. On petition to the local ‘Committee for Plundered Ministers ’* it was possible to secure one-fifth of the profits of the sequestered rectory or vicarage for the wives and children of the late incumbent ; and this pension was actually secured by Mrs. Thorne, and also by the children of the rector of Tillbrook.’ An entry of 25 February 1644” orders a rector to pay ‘what the Parliament ordered’ out of the tithes to a curate from whom the living was sequestered. But that many suffered extreme poverty and distress there is little doubt. One of the hardest cases was that of Hugh Reeve of Ampthill, who 1 Hist. MSS. Com. p. 94, 5 Aug. 1641. 2 Ibid. p. §3, 23 Feb. 3 Ibid. iv. 74. 4 Shaw, Hist. of the Engl. Church under the Commonwealth, ii. 296, 297. 5 Ibid. p. 298. 8 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 45. Christopher Slater, vicar of Leighton Buzzard, would probably have come under the same condemnation if he had not died this year; his parishioners said he was a ‘ pro- moter of superstitious innovations,’ so that they had to pay a lecturer besides to instruct them in the way of godliness (ibid. v. 4). 7 In Add. MSS. 15669-71, a rough minute book of the ‘Committee for Plundered Ministers’ names sixteen livings as sequestered ; two other incumbents are summoned to appear, but the result is not recorded. Walker in his Sufferings of the Clergy names six other cases. The parish register of Toddington records in 1654 the burial of Thomas Claver, rector, ‘but unjustly sequestered.’ Other such registers might possibly yield more ; none of the other lists pretend to be complete. The arch- deacon, John Hacket, and Jeremy Stephens, prebendary of Biggleswade, are not counted above, because they only lost part of their preferment. 8 There had been a local committee for Bedfordshire ‘for the discovery of malignant ministers’ appointed by the Central Committee for Plundered Ministers in 1643 (Shaw, Hist. of the Engi. Church under the Commonwealth, ii. 194). 9 Add. MS. 15670, 4 Apr. 1646 ; although he had ‘inveighed with fearefull curses’ against the Parliament and said there were none in it but ‘rogues and rascalls.’ (Add. MS. 15669, 5 July 1645). 19 Thid. 25 Feb. 1644. 338 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY had been rector there for nearly forty years.’ During all this time he had been visited by each successive Bishop of Lincoln, and no fault found with him’; the archdeacon’s courts had been often held in his church ; he had been visited by Laud’s commissioner, Sir Nathaniel Brent’ ; and now in his old age he was deprived of his rectory as being ‘at heart a popish recusant’—the very words of the accusation displaying the ignorance of the accuser. A pension of £10 a year was indeed given to him by a noble parishioner ; but he ran the risk of losing it by his determined refusal to leave the rectory house, whence he was at last ejected by a fresh order of Parliament.‘ The case of Giles Thorne of St. Mary’s is also noteworthy. He was arrested as he came out of the pulpit by a party of Lord St. John’s troops,’ and carried to the Fleet prison, on the petition of justices of the peace and inhabitants of Bedford. He was accused of being ‘ turbulent and profane’ and causing divisions and factions in the town ; but the true cause of enmity against him was probably found in the fact that he had ‘ prosecuted in the High Commission Court those who desired to abstain from profanation.’* On the strength of this petition, and the annexed affidavit of one witness that he had in the pulpit used ‘blas- phemous words’ (i.e. had preached in favour of confession), he was im- prisoned for more than five years, without any trial,’ only being released once for six weeks in 1646, after repeated petitions, to go and see his sick wife and to try to make some provision for himself and his family. Returning to prison when he found his friends had become too poor to help him, he sent up yet another petition for release or relief of some kind, and was finally discharged on 23 August 1647.” What he did for a living until the Restoration is not known; but his wife had been allowed a pension from his two rectories from November 1646, limited in October 1647 to one-fifth from St. Mary’s only.” The rector of Houghton Conquest, Dr. Edward Marten, was also imprisoned five years; but as he was master of Queen’s College, Cam- bridge, and had two other rectories besides, he does not reckon with the 1 He was parson in 1604 (Parish Register). ? William Barlow came three times in 1612; George Montaigne once. John Williams held his visitation for the whole county there, August 1635 ; all stayed at the rectory house. (From entries at the back of the parish register, kindly noted by the present rector of Ampthill, who says also that Reeve’s registers are well kept and in good order.) 3S. P. Dom. Chas. I. cclxxiv. 12 ; and on parish register. 4 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 19, 30 Apr. 1642. 5 Walker, Sufférings of the Clergy, p. 44. 6 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 45. 7” Walker says he was tried and acquitted, and that there was a petition sent in by his parishioners on his behalf; but from his last petition it is clear that he was never tried at all. 8 One in 1642 and two in 1643, for bail or a speedy trial ; one in 1644, and one in 1646, to go and see his wife who was sick ; two in 1647, for release or relief (Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 53, 87, 155, 179, 193). ® Ibid. 179, 193. 10 Add. MS. 15670, f. 230; and 15671, f. 104. A certificate was signed by churchwardens of the parish and others in 1642, declaring that Thorne had ‘ engrossed the rectory of St. Cuthbert’s over the head of the incumbent’ ; but the proceedings of the committee do not corroborate this. His wife was first granted one-fifth from both benefices, and then given her choice as to which she would retain ; nowhere is it implied that her husband’s claim to St. Cuthbert’s was not as good as to St. Mary’s. 339 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Bedfordshire clergy as strictly as Hugh Reeve or Giles Thorne. His case is chiefly interesting because the accusation is given in detail; he ‘adored the altar, having his eye fixed upon a crucifix in the east win- dow over it’; he insisted on a woman coming up to the altar rails to be churched; and he prayed for the departed.’ How the county really fared during the Presbyterian régime it is not easy to say ; the witnesses on both sides are so prejudiced that it is hard to arrive at truth between them. Thus, Thomas Holden, who was appointed temporarily to St. Mary’s in the place of Giles Thorne, was asked for by the parishioners as a ‘ godly and painful minister’ ; while Thorne from his prison petitioned the Parliament to commit his flock to a better man than Holden, who was ‘ ridiculously ignorant’ and incapable of discerning truth from error.’ But it is clear that there was a large majority ready to conform to the new order ; most of the Puritans among the clergy would naturally welcome it, and others would accept it from the same necessity which always wins a certain measure of conformity. Nominally the whole country became Presbyterian ; but so long as the majority of the clergy were men who had been trained in the old ways, it is likely that in many places the order of service, the words of the extempore prayers, had a strong affinity with the ancient liturgy. There is no more striking evidence of the little change of which the less in- structed were aware than that which is found in the autobiography of John Bunyan. ‘At this time,’ he says, ‘I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition,’ that ‘I adored and that with great devotion’ all things in the church—‘ High Place, Priest, clerk, vestment and what else ’—‘ counting all things holy that were therein contained.’* What other frame of mind could Laud himself have wished? Yet this was in 1649-50, when the ‘high place’ must have been bare enough ; when the only vestment Bunyan could have seen for six or seven years was the Geneva gown. The popular phrase itself—‘ high place ’—is not with- out interest; it seems out of keeping with days when the altar was nothing but a table which was moved according to the convenience of the minister and congregation. Two things at any rate may be placed to the credit of the Presby- terians. One was the stand they made against plurality ; even those who 1 Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 154. In connection with these prosecutions for ritual it should however be noted that they were made by men who objected equally to other points of church custom which no churchmen have ever since attacked. The lists of ‘ innovations’ drawn up by the committee which sat at the Bishop of Lincoln’s house in 1641 is very instructive. There the ‘turning of the table altarwise,’ compelling the communicants to come up to the rails to receive, standing for the hymns and glorias, reading the litany in the body of the church, are set side by side with the adornment of the altar with crucifix, candlesticks and curtains, bowing to it, turning to the east at the creed, using a credence table, etc., and could only be condemned by those who wished not merely to reform, but to break altogether with the church and all its traditions. The fact that 2 these things could be called ‘innovations’ throws light backwards over the previous half-century, and shows how wonderfully successful the Puritans had been in opposing royal and episcopal authority. * Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 100. Holden was only a short time at St. Mary’s (Add. MS. 15671, f. 104). On 19 July 1647 certain parishioners were again appointed to take the tithes, and pay Mrs. Thorne’s fifth, until a fit person was appointed. 8 Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Clar. Press ed. p. 301). 340 JOHN BUNYAN. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY conformed sufficiently to avoid ejection were only allowed to keep one benefice ; so the archdeacon of Bedford, John Hacket,’ remained rector of Cheame in Surrey until the Restoration ; losing St. Andrew’s, Holborn, which he had held with his archdeaconry before. The other was the attempt they made to increase the revenues of some of the poorer livings out of others which were better endowed. Thus the vicarage of Leigh- ton Buzzard * was increased by £55 from the funds of the impropriated rectory, which had belonged to Sir Thomas Leigh, whose estates were now confiscated by Parliament. From the same source the chapelries of Stanbridge, Billington, Eggington, and Heath and Reach* were freshly endowed, as well as the vicarages of Biddenham and Houghton Regis." The stipends of the ministers of Southill, Cople, Goldington, Dunton, Biggleswade, Potton, Sundon and Flitton-cum-Silsoe * were in- creased at the same time; the last four from-the rectorial tithes of Luton. But nowhere are there signs of any fresh energy of devotion, any new outburst of spiritual life within the established church, to justify the great changes that had taken place. ‘The most severe criti- cism of the Church of the Commonwealth is found indeed in the lives of men like Bunyan and George Fox. Bunyan was never persecuted by the Presbyterians ; once indeed he speaks of hearing a sermon in his parish church that helped him; but it remains a fact that at the time when he was first trying to lead a better life and was a regular church- goer, and again afterwards in his deeper need, when the agony of spirit- ual conflict for two long years had well-nigh driven him to madness, no hand was ever held out from his own church to help him. He had to turn aside to an obscure sect to find what he wanted—the assurance of pardon, the promise of a new life, and a work todo for God. So also George Fox in his ‘fourna/ describes the ‘ steeple houses’ and the ‘ hire- ling priests’ of 1655° as a hindrance to the working of the ‘ free spirit’ quite as great as the Church of the Restoration proved to be in later days. It appears to have been under the Commonwealth in 1655 that John Crook of Luton lost his magistracy because of his connection’ with the Quakers ; while other persecutions of that sect are alleged to have taken place in this county. They nevertheless increased rapidly ; Fox speaks of ‘many hundreds’ of them in his account of his third visit to Bedfordshire in 1655.° There are only a few records of any active discontent in Bedford- shire at the sequestrations and the abolition of the liturgy. Five’ of 1 Walker’s Suferings of the Clergy, p. 44. 2S. P. Dom., Interregnum, F 2, f. 223, 10 May 1644. 3 Ibid. F 1; Stanbridge in July 1646, Billington in March, Eggington in June, Heath and Reach in August. The existence of the chapel in Stanbridge in the fourteenth century has been already noticed ; the other three chapels appear here for the first time. « Ibid. F 2, f. 520; Fr, f 337. 5 Ibid. F 2, f. 655; F 1, ff. 247, 338, 142, 143, 144, 147. ® Fox, Fournal (ed. 1694-8), i. 149. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. i. 170. ® The incumbents of Cockayne Hatley, Tempsford, Marston, Potton and St. Cuthbert’s, Bedford (Add. MSS. 15670, 15671 ; from 1645-7 ; and Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 100 ; 1643). 341 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the ministers appointed by the Assembly of Divines complained that they could not get in their tithes from the parishioners ; while at Temps- ford, Flitton, Marston, Potton, the ejected incumbents refused for a long time to leave their parsonages, and in two cases were clearly supported by parishioners in their refusal. At Luton the minister who held the living in 1658 (Thomas Jessopp) complained that for eight years a malicious and prelatical party had withdrawn from his church and wor- shipped in the prelatical form.” The same thing may very likely have happened elsewhere. But this much is clear: though the numbers of those appointed by Parliament (and therefore probably without episcopal ordination) went on steadily increasing, by sequestration or the death of the old incumbents, during the five and twenty years between the out- break of Civil War and the Restoration of the Monarchy, there were only eleven * in this county who resigned their livings on St. Bartholo- mew’s Day, 1662, rather than submit to the new act of uniformity. The rest conformed and were ordained, if not already in orders. But, as it had been proved before under similar circumstances, such enforced con- formity was bound to be very half-hearted in many cases. Calamy tells us of the old vicar of Arlesey, who had kept his living all through the Commonwealth, how he conformed by reading just such parts of the liturgy as he approved of, and leaving out the rest ;* it cannot be doubted that others did the same as they found opportunity. The only university men among the Nonconformists of this year were William Dell, master of Caius College, Cambridge, and rector of Yelden ; Samuel Fairclough, fellow of the same college, and rector of Houghton Conquest ; and John Donne, of King’s College, rector of Pertenhall.* Dell was a remarkable man in his way, though apparently of shifting views. He had been chaplain to the Parliamentary army before he came to Yelden. In 1660 his parishioners sent a petition to Parliament accusing him, among other things, of neglecting to adminis- ter the sacraments ; but the parish registers prove that he certainly had his own children baptized. The rest of his accusations need not be detailed, as they are probably worth about as much as those made at an equally convenient time against Giles Thorne, Hugh Reeve and the ejected of an earlier date. But one of them is of historical interest ; he had allowed ‘ one Bunyan, a tinker,’ to preach in his pulpit on Christmas Day.” It is probably true that he thought lightly of all outward cere- 1 At Tempsford Mr. Rolt complained that the late incumbent still kept the parsonage house, and ‘prohibited’ the parishioners from paying tithes, 9 July 1647 ; at Potton the late incumbent had in- truded himself with violence into the vicarage house, and also prohibited the payment of tithes, 2 Sep- tember 1647. At Marston Dr. Cookson, though he left the vicarage, went ‘from house to house’ and told the people not to pay their tithes, 17 August 1647. The ‘prohibitions’ of ejected parsons would not have had much weight with unsympathetic parishioners, 2 Luton Church, by the Rev. H. Cobbe, p. 215. ® Appendix to the Life of Baxter, Calamy, ii. 91-5. As Dr. Fowler of Northill, though not satisfied at first, afterwards conformed and became Bishop of Gloucester (p. 95), while Shepherd, rector of Tillbrook, conformed at first but afterwards resigned his living (edition of 1727, p. 130), they balance each other, and neither has been counted. * Ibid. 93. 5 Ibid. 91, 93, 95. 8 Hist. MSS. Com, vii. 102. 342 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY monies of religion, and was also a republican in politics, so that his resignation in 1662 was quite natural. A few of the old incumbents, who were still living in exile or re- tirement, returned, with the king, to enjoy their own again. Giles Thorne came back to St. Mary’s, Bedford, which he held with the arch- deaconry of Buckingham until his death.’ Jeremy Stephens, the learned prebendary of Biggleswade,’ had the additional prebend of Ilfracombe bestowed on him in compensation for his losses ; the rector of Houghton Conquest, Dr. Edward Marten, became dean of Ely*; Francis Walsall, rector of Sandy, received a prebendal stall at Westminster*; the arch- deacon, John Hacket, became Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. The old rector of Tempsford came back to his parish,’ as did the rector of St. John’s, Bedford,’ and there may have been others also; but it is probable that most of them had died in the interval. But besides the Presbyterian and Independent ministers established by the Parliament under the Commonwealth, there were others to be dealt with; others who were already Nonconformist, and even less likely to be reconciled to the church than Baxter and his friends. It was a difficult matter ; but in the seventeenth century, and in the reaction of the Restoration period, it was scarcely likely to find any but one solution. It is nevertheless a great loss to the Church that she had nothing to offer men like John Bunyan but silence or a prison. The steady growth of Nonconformity of all types, from this time forward, is due to more causes than one ; but the violence of the repressive measures taken at this time has always been reckoned among them. The imprisonment of Bunyan from 1660 to 1672, though much less rigorous than popular fancy once painted it, made him a martyr in the eyes of many who did not share his opinions, and has left its mark, not merely in Bedfordshire but much further afield, up to the present day. While Bunyan preached,’ by word or suffering, from his prison, George Fox was as energetic as ever on his missionary tours, passing through Bedfordshire eight different times during the reign of Charles II., holding meetings and making disciples everywhere.” Many of the ejected ministers of 1662 had their little secret congregations, meeting where they could.” The parish registers of this period bear marks of the dis- 1 Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 44. His will, quoted in Beds N. and Q. ii. 242, shows the conviction which to the last remained uppermost in his mind: ‘I, having lived, by the grace of God will die in the true religion established by law, and in the true, ancient, Catholic and Apostolic faith professed in the Church of England: . . . having lived, and by the grace of God will die, as to her external discipline and commands a dutiful son of the Church of England my dear mother.’ 2 Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 45 ; Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 47. He had helped Sir Henry Spelman in editing the Coxcilia before the civil war. Walker’s Sufférings of the Clergy, p. 154. Ibid. p. 390. 5 Ibid. p. 44. Appendix to Life of Baxter, Calamy, ii. 94. From the list of rectors in Cole’s MSS. ; Add. MS. 5832, f. 89. During the first six years of his imprisonment he was let out constantly to preach, and once even went to London (Grace Abounding, Clar. Press, p. 428). ® Fournal of Fox, passim (ed. 1694). 10 Appendix to Life of Baxter, Calamy, ii. 92-5. 343 o 1.2 > 8 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE cipline vainly exercised to check the spread of Nonconformity. Names are entered of those buried ‘without Christian burial’ for being ‘schis- matics, and despisers of church discipline’ ; Quakers and Anabaptists are ‘hurl’d into a grave.’* The Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 only revealed the extent of a mischief which it was too late to help or hinder. The Baptist congregation of Bedford was one of the first in the kingdom to apply for a licence to hold its meetings ; it was granted on 25 July 1672." Bunyan had already taken out his preaching licence as a ‘congregationall parson, being of that p’swasion ’ in May, and was using it at Leicester in October of the same year.’ The Baptists of Luton claim to have erected a meeting house at the same time." All kinds of Nonconformity have been well represented in the county ever since. It is not so easy to get any satisfactory details to show what the churches of this period offered as a counter attraction to the fervid preachings of the new sects. At Toddington there is an interesting record of briefs, copied at the end of one of the parish registers, dating from 1661 to 1668, which not only shows clearly that there was a weekly Eucharist, but also that the parishioners were encouraged to give alms to the necessities of many of the poor and suffering besides those of their own parish.” It is however to be feared that this was an ex- ceptional case ; the visitations of Bishops Gardiner and Wake show very plainly that a quarterly Communion was the common custom of the whole diocese very soon after the Restoration. The prevailing order at Luton early in the eighteenth century—four Eucharists a year, two ser- vices on Sunday, and a catechising in Lent "—represents what was then the average conception of a parson’s duty towards his parish. At the same time it must not be forgotten that at this time considerable efforts were made in many places to beautify the chancels, and to enrich the churches with handsome plate, as at Ampthill, Harrold * and elsewhere ; and that several charities were endowed, in the form of schools, almshouses, and doles of bread to the poor at the end of the church services.’ But it cannot be a matter of great surprise that the various sects gained ground steadily. In 1744 a Moravian congregation was founded at Bedford ; and the autocratic behaviour of the ‘ chief labourer,’ and the squabbles that arose on the building of the chapel, were one of the chief causes of John Wesley’s final break with that body. He visited them in 1750, and 1 Registers of Dunton and Toddington quoted in Beds N. and Q. 2 Ibid. i. 240. 3 Hist. MSS. Com, viii. 440. 4 Non-Parochial Registers and Records in custody of the Registrar-General, 1859 ; printed in Beds N. and Q. ii. 199-201. 5 History of Toddington, by the Rev. F. A. Adams. The collections were for churches and parishes all over the kingdom ; several for the sick of the plague in 1665 ; one for the ‘ captives of Algiers.’ 8 S.P.C.K. Diocesan History of Lincoln, pp. 317-33. 7 Luton Church, by the Rev. H. Cobbe, p. 230. 8 Beds N. and Q. p. 219; Beds Archeol. and Archit. Soc. X. xlviii. ® Cobbe’s Luton Church, p. 238. 344 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY wrote very severely of them afterwards.’ The next time he came to Bedford it was upon his own mission, in 1758, when he also preached the sermon for the Bedfordshire assizes, in St. Paul’s church.” The Methodists of that time, though not separate from the Church, had a small room for their own services, replaced a few years later by a chapel.’ Wesley himself was in Bedfordshire again four times*; but the main work of the Methodists in this county was done by two of his disciples, John Berridge, vicar of Everton, and Hicks of Wrestlingworth ; their ‘circuit’ embraced the counties of Bedford, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Essex and Hertford.” The people of Bedfordshire, as in the previous century, seemed to be specially favourable to missions of this kind. John Crook of Luton had been the first magistrate to join the Quakers ; Parker, the mayor of Bedford, was the first of such officials to call him- self a Methodist... He mingled preaching with his public duties for forty years, and to such effect that Wesley wrote of him, between 1750 and 1760: ‘Mr. Parker hath not borne the sword in vain.’ There was no cursing and swearing to be heard in the streets of Bedford, no work done on the Lord’s day, no open wickedness of any kind.’ There was also in Bedfordshire an unusual display of those extra- ordinary phenomena which accompanied the preaching of the early Methodists ; they attended the ministrations of Berridge and Hicks quite as much as those of Wesley himself. At one of Hicks’ preachings at Wrestlingworth fifteen people fell down ‘as if dead’; while Berridge preached ‘ some shrieked, others roared ; but the most general sound was a loud breathing like that of people half strangled.’ In one case at the church of Everton (where the congregation was always drawn in part from Bedfordshire) as many as two hundred people were crying for mercy at the same time: ‘the groans, lamentations, prayers and roarings were indescribable,’ as also the shouts and songs of those who had found peace.” These things passed away with the novelty of the preaching ; in his visit of 1761 Wesley notes that few were affected in this way any more.” It is easy to criticise the methods and the work of the field- preachers ; but their extraordinary success is a searching criticism on the Church of the eighteenth century, and points to the same conclusion as the lives of Bunyan and of Fox a hundred years before. It is only too plain that religion was not set forth as a vital principle: that the preaching of ‘passive obedience’ and of loyalty to the Established Church had overshadowed or displaced the preaching of the Church’s most dis- tinctive doctrines of regeneration and of grace, with their never-failing * He said the elders claimed more authority than the pope himself, and used the lowest means to gain it; and that they thought theirs was the only church on earth (L. Tyerman, Life of Wesky, ii, 159). 7 Ibid. ii. 300. 3 Ibid. 340. * In 1760, 1761, 1762. 5 L. Tyerman, Life of Wesley, 309, 310. 6 Ibid. 274. 7 We are not told how long these happy results lasted. 8 L. Tyerman, Life of Wesley, ii. 310-3. 9 Ibid. pp. 397, 444. I 345 44 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE appeal to the heart and conscience. At the same time it must be borne in mind that these missions were not intended to supplant the services of the Church, or to draw men away from them ; they were only meant to re-awaken the careless and ignorant to a sense of the real demands of religion upon daily life. Hicks and Berridge remained churchmen and retained their livings to the end ; and though their parish work must have suffered during their travels, yet their lives do not contrast un- favourably with one or two of the contemporary clergy described by Cole the antiquary’—such as Mr. Christopher Hatton of St. John’s, Cambridge, rector of Marston Mortaine and of Maulden, who lived en- tirely at Ampthill ‘in a very elegant house’; or the vicar of St. Paul’s (and rector also of Barton), who left his beautiful church to a curate, allowing the chancel to be in a slovenly condition, and entirely unused except atCommunions. And the work of Wesley and his followers, in spite of the separation, had a profound effect in rousing the Church to her responsibilities. The most distinctive mark of renewed vigour in the Church of the nineteenth century—the formation of new parishes, and the building of new churches to meet the needs of an increasing population—is not wanting in Bedfordshire. While the county was still a part of the diocese of Lincoln, the old chapelries of the Leighton district were made into separate parishes ; and since it was made an archdeaconry of Ely, a large number of new churches have been built. The town of Bed- ford, which had only five parishes from the sixteenth century onwards, now embraces eight *; while at Luton (as indeed it should be in the chief industrial centre of the county) the old parish church of St. Mary is supplemented by six others—three within the town, and others in the districts of East Hyde, Stopsley and Biscot. The organisation of church work generally during the last thirty or forty years, the increased number of services on Sundays and week days, the frequent administration of the sacraments even in churches where the clergy do not hold advanced views, the reawakened interest in church fabric and church ornaments, all suggest points of contrast with the previous century ; but it is too early yet to judge of the results of these things in any particular county or district. That will be better done by a later generation. APPENDIX I ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTY The churches in Bedfordshire must have been in their earliest days under the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Mercia, until the division of that diocese, planned by Archbishop Theodore in 679 at the Council of Hertford, was complete. They would then fall naturally to the new see 1 Add. MS. 5834, ff. 125,125. Cole went to hear Berridge preach at Tempsford, on a table under a tree outside the church, and was more impressed by his ‘ wry faces’ than his eloquence (Add. MS. 5832, f. 85). 2 It is interesting to note that one of these new churches has revived the memory of an old hospital, being dedicated to St. Leonard. 346 Poe ESIASTIC 7 “ go’ ah Map 4 OF ao OM ie. ee E D F O R D . Showing Ancient Rural Deaneries and i. i ae eee Rehgious Houses. ° 5 oO Baars BUSHMEA D Scale < 2 Mnues 2° 1 © 2 4 6 8 Mines ra “ { HARRQLO. Darbishire & Stanford Ltd. {por 4%, "S ; re a CISTERCIAN MONKS. (BEDFORD r ee - . Wardon Abbey. is ALDWER RE” SEIN . Woburn Abbey. AUSTIN CANONS. . Dunstable Priory. . Newnham Priory. Caldwell Priory. oa . Bushmead Priory. ZCHICKSAND / v a AUSTIN NUNS. : ‘ 10. Harrold Priory. aie GILBERTINE HOUSE f 11. Chicksand Priory. KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS. 12. Melchbourne Preceptory. FRIARS. 13. Bedford, Franciscans. 14. Dunstable, Dominicans. HOSPITALS. 15. Bedford, St. John. 16; 45 St. Leonard. 17. Luton, St. Mary Magdalene . ; : 18. ,, St. John Baptist. o£ 19. Farley. 20. Dunstable, St. Mary Magdalene. 21. Hockliffe, St. John Baptist. if Q u z np ‘ : = \” ELSTOW, 2 3 eo* an QO - NORTHILL 23 WARDON 3 : 7 O CONN BENEDICTINE MONKS. 22. Toddington, St. John Baptist 1. Beaulieu Priory. , COLLEGES. BENEDICTINE NUNS. 23. Northill. 2. Elstow Abbey. ALIEN PRIORY. 3. Markyate Priory. 24. Grovebury. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY of Dorchester, while it was distinct from Leicester and Lindsey.* At the union of these three under Leofwin towards the end of the tenth century,’ the county became part of a diocese very much larger, though retaining for some time the same name and centre of government. From 1075° until 1837 it formed a single archdeaconry within the diocese of Lincoln, being finally transferred at the latter date to the diocese of Ely.‘ The names and limits of the rural deaneries were fixed certainly before the Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV. in 1291 ; but how long before it is not easy to say. In 1199 mention is found of deans of Bedford and Ravensden®; of a dean of Luton in 1232,’ a dean of Westoning in 1232, and in 1249 a dean of Pulloxhill;° but it is possible that these places were only the parishes of which the various deans were at the time incumbents, and do not represent the names of their rural deaneries. In 1291 there were six deaneries :— Eaton, containing 18 parishes Clopham _,, 18 ,, Bedford ,, 17 Dunstable _,, 20 yy Fleete 5 22° Shefford _,, 27 yy In 1535, the date of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, these divisions re- mained unaltered ; even the total number of parish churches (122) re- mained as before.” The same names of deaneries are given in the earliest clergy lists till 1880, with the same schedule of parishes; though from 1870 each deanery has two divisions—Bedford and Dunstable a first and second ; Clopham, Fleete and Shefford an eastern and western, and Eaton a.northern and southern division. But on 27 February 1880” the deaneries were completely reconstituted, with a new schedule of parishes: — The deanery of Ampthill, containing 11 parishes 5 Bedford % TI 355 ne Biggleswade __,, 15 55 Pa Dunstable $5 rs &. ” Eaton ” 8 yy 55 Felmersham __,, ra ” Fleete ” 14 yy ” Luton »” 9 » ” Riseley ” 9 » 5 Shefford 5 12 ” Haynes ” 9 » There has been no further change, except by the addition of two parishes to the deanery of Bedford and two to that of Luton. 1 Florence of Wore. (Engl. Hist. Soc.), i. 36, 339. ? William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontif. (Savile ed.) p. 290. 3 The year when Remigius first signed as Bishop of Lincoln (S.P.C.K. Diocesan History, p. 48). * London Gazette, 30 May 1837. 5 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 60 ; Add. MS. 24465, f. 2gb. ® Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 108. 7 Harl. MS. 1885, f. 52b. 8 Linc. Epis. Reg., 11 Grossetéte. 9 The chapel of Clapham is a rectory in the Valor, and the churches of St. Peter and St. Mary Dunstable are reckoned as one ; so that these two items balance each other. 10 Londou Gazette, 27 Feb. 1880; Clergy List, 1881. 347 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE APPENDIX II A seal of John Houghton, archdeacon of Bedford from 1218 to 1231, is attached to a charter in the British Museum.’ It is not of an ecclesiastical type, but the impression of a beautiful antique gem, the figure of a bull at bay. Legend: S(icirum) Maer Jonis pe Hov- TUNE. ' Add. Ch. 18198 ; a composition between the abbot of Waltham and the archdeacon, concern- ing rights of visitation, with reference to Arlesey church. 348 THE RELIGIOUS HOUSES OF BEDFORDSHIRE INTRODUCTION The county of Bedford was unusually rich in religious houses in proportion to its size, but none was of very ancient date. The abbey of Elstow was founded before the compiling of Domesday, and followed the Benedictine rule, which was as yet the only one introduced into England ; other houses of the same order were the priories of Beaulieu and Markyate, both founded about 1145. The two Cistercian abbeys of Warden and Woburn were founded respectively in 1135 and 1145. Austin canons had been introduced into this country some twenty-seven years, when Henry I. founded the priory of Dunstable about 1132; the canons of St. Paul’s, Bedford, were transferred to Newnham and brought under the same rule about 1166 ; Bushmead Priory was founded a little later. Under the general heading of the Augustinian rule should be reckoned the priory of Caldwell, of the order of the Holy Sepulchre, founded some time during the reign of Stephen or of Henry II. ; and the priory of Harrold, which followed the Arrouasian form of the rule, was founded about 1140. The Gilbertine priory of Chicksand dates from about 1150. ‘There was one alien priory, La Grave or Grovebury, at Leighton Buzzard, which was founded under Henry II. ; this, with the Preceptory of Hospitallers at Melchbourne, makes a total of twelve houses in all. The Templars had lands in Sharnbrook’ and elsewhere, and the churches of Langford and Little Stoughton ; but they had no Preceptory in this county. Besides these, there were certainly eight hospitals : four for lepers or the sick at Bedford, Luton (two) and Dunstable; and four for the destitute poor at Bedford, Farley, Hockliffe and Toddington. All of these were probably founded in the twelfth century except Toddington, which be- longs to the reign of Henry VI. In the thirteenth century the Friars Minor settled at Bedford, and the Friars Preachers at Dunstable. And in the reign of Henry IV. the church of Northill became collegiate. It may be noted here that besides these regular and ordinary forms of the religious life, Bedfordshire had also from time to time its hermits and anchorets. The distinction between these two forms’ of solitude is 1 Rot. Charta (Rec. Com.), 1 John, p. 2b; Chart. R. 37 Hen. III. pt. i. m. 3. 2 It has been so often made that there is no need here to repeat it; e.g. Dalgairns’ essay on ‘ The Spiritual Life of Medieval England,’ which is the preface to Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, ed. 1901. 349 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of course not primitive, but it was clearly marked in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From the time when the religious life in com- munity began first to be well organised, we know by the testimony of Cassian and later of St. Benedict’ that men were always discouraged from attempting solitude until they had been first exercised in the ordinary discipline of the canobium ; but it was not found possible to enforce this rule in all cases. Roger of Markyate had been a monk of St. Albans* before he was a hermit, and was carried back after his death to the abbey church, where the place of his burial is still marked by an in- scription ; but of Ralf the hermit,’ whose oratory and cell were granted by Robert d’Albini to the priory of Beaulieu ; of Simon the hermit,‘ who bequeathed his little property to Newnham Priory ; of the hermit of Bletsoe* and of the hermit who was traditionally the founder of Bushmead,’ nothing further is known. Amongst solitaries of the other type (more severe in its restraint, but less apart from the common life of men) were ‘Simon anachorita,’ who came from Lichfield to Dunstable and lived six years beside the priory church,’ and doubtless others whose names are not recorded. This form of solitude was as a rule the only one possible for women ; ‘ Isabella inclusa,’* who died at Bedford near the beginning of the thirteenth century, was probably an anchoress of the ordinary type; but Christine of Markyate, for many years a strict recluse, was not attached to any church. Her career belongs to the history of the house of which she was first prioress. The Religious Houses of Bedfordshire, if we except Woburn and Dunstable, have few points of contact with general history, and only one produced a chronicle. Little that is definite can be said even of their local influence. The abbey of Elstow had its school, and the Austin canons were patrons of a large number of churches, and must have been well known figures in the county. The canons of Dunstable had many difficulties with their tenants; but these were connected with their feudal lordship of the town rather than with any matter of religion. One point however may be worth noting: in spite of much that has been said of the mutual jealousies of the different orders, in this little county they lived together for the most part’ on very friendly terms. The Chronicler of Dunstable, who records all the gossip of his neigh- bourhood, as well as much genuine history, has seldom anything to say of his brethren in other orders but what is sympathetic and kindly.” He 1 Rule, cap. i. Anachoritz vel Eremitz, horum qui non conversionis fervore novitio, sed monasterii probatione diuturna didicerunt contra diabolum ... pugnare’, 2 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 97-105. 3 Foundation Charter of Beaulieu Priory. 4 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 11. 5 Cat. of Anct. Deeds (P.R.O.), C. 2188. His name was Robert Parage: and as he had ‘brethren’ with him in the hermitage, it does not seem likely he had been previously a monk. The same might be inferred of the hermit of Bushmead, if he really existed. Those who began as solitaries were more likely to gather a following than those who had left a monastery to seek solitude. ® Leland, Collect. i. 68. * Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 77, 109. 8 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 22b. ® Except Elstow, of which a great many suits with other houses are recorded. 10 Between the four houses of Austin canons there seems to have been much intercourse, and their constant general chapters must have had the effect of promoting corporate feeling amongst them. 359 RELIGIOUS HOUSES is on the whole least friendly to the Cistercians : he says once that the monks of Warden ‘did us much harm,’’ and there were occasional disputes with Woburn about tolls and tithes,” but he has plenty of sympathy with the misfortunes of both.’ Suits there were occasionally amongst them all, and they must have been difficult to avoid, when fields belonging to different houses lay so close together in the same parish, as in many parts of the Bedford, Fleete and Dunstable deaneries ; but they are in very small proportion to the suits with seculars. Especially noteworthy is the fact that though the monks of St. Albans had a school in Dunstable, and wide lands at Luton close to those belonging to the canons, not a single suit between the priory and the abbey is on record. The friars indeed, here as elsewhere, were the object of much jealousy to the old religious : and yet their intercourse with Dunstable and Mark- yate priories was not altogether unfriendly, as will be shown in detail under the history of their houses. HOUSE OF BENEDICTINE MONKS 1. THE PRIORY OF BEAULIEU at any time. Early in the thirteenth cen- The priory of Beaulieu was founded be- tween 1140* and 1146 upon the site of a hermitage at Moddry in the parish of Clop- hill, granted to Ralf the hermit by Henry d’Albini, and afterwards by his son Robert d’Albini to the abbey of St. Albans as a cell of that monastery.® A small cell had already been founded at Millbrook under Richard, the fifteenth abbot ® (1097-1119), and this was merged in the new priory.” The house was never an important one, as it was always small and poor. The original endowment only provided for four or five monks,® and it is not likely that their number was increased 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 180. 2 Thid. 74, 93, etc. Mostly about the tithes of Chesham. 3 Ibid. 32, 140, 192. 4 The date falls between the death of Henry d’Albini (who founded Sopwell Nunnery 1140) and that of Geoffrey, abbot of St. Alban’s (1119-46). 5 Foundation Charter, Arundel MS. 34, f. 32; Lansd. MS. 863, f. 83b. 6 Granted by Neel de Wast, and confirmed by Henry d’Albini (Foundation Charter, and Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls Series], i.67). Henry @Albini and his brothers had also given to St. Alban’s the church of Clophill, and tithes of Cainhoe and Cotes (Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 98 ; Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls Series], i. 68). 7 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 78. 8 The inquisition held in 1433 (J. de Amunde- sham, Ann. Mon. 8. Albani [Rolls Series], ii. 109) proved that the manor of Beaulieu in the parish of Clophill was granted to sustain for ever four monks to serve the chapel of Cainhoe ; and another carucate of land given later was to support one 351 tury the prior was involved in a long suit in the Curia Regis,® concerning the church of Milton Ernest, which the son of the founder wished to recover for himself; but it re- mained finally with the religious, and was granted to them afresh im proprios usus by Bishop Gravesend in 1275 on account of their poverty.’° At some time in the four- teenth century the house was partially de- stroyed by fire;** it suffered probably also from the general depreciation of property after the great pestilence. Finally, near the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Abbot John of Wheathampstead ‘ went down into the garden of nuts, to see if the vines were flourishing and the pomegranates were bearing fruit’*?—in other words, made a visitation of the cells—he found Beaulieu in such a poverty-stricken condition '* that it more to serve the chapel of St. Machutus in Haynes. ® Cur. Reg. R. 15 John, 58, No. 4. 10 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte. 11 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii.f. 111. Margaret, Coun- tess of Norfolk, among other gifts, ‘dedit celle nostre de Bello Loco vastate per incendium, xx marcas.’ 12 J.de Amundesham, 4nn. Mon.S. Albani (Rolls Series), ii. 105. 13 § Adeo collapsa et facultatibus per sinistros eventus diminuta’ (Supplication to the pope, in Arundel MS. 34, f. 33b). The priory had been unable to contribute anything to the abbey be- tween 1396 and 1401, and a wall built round it about this time was erected at the expense of the abbey (Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls Series], iii. 455, 456). A HISTORY OF could scarcely support two monks. After reflection he decided to unite the cell with the parent abbey, and apply its revenues to other purposes. There were two things necessary before he could do this. He had to gain the consent of the patron of the house, Lord Grey de Ruthyn; and also to obtain a bull from the pope. Lord Grey signed a full surrender of all his rights in the priory in May, 1434 ;1 and the papal bull which had been asked of Martin V. was granted at last by Eugenius IV.? at about the same time. But it was an expensive matter to claim and use the bull; and while the abbot hesitated, and tried to find out from lawyers whether after all an ordinary prelate could not grant him the necessary licence, the king’s escheator stepped in and declared that the house had escheated to the Crown. A jury was summoned to inquire into the abbot’s title, which was probably ® proved without difficulty; for in a short time he was able to carry out the whole of his original plan. Lord Grey de Ruthyn was granted an anniversary, and a rent of 20s. a year ;* the vicarage of Clophill was re-instituted a rectory, on condition that the rector should say mass three times a week for the soul of the founder, Robert d’Albini® ; and the income of the priory, amounting to £18 a year, was divided amongst the students from the abbey of St. Alban’s at Oxford, so that each might receive a pension of 135. 4d. annually,® and pray for their benefactor at mass. ‘These arrangements were completed before the death of John of Wheathampstead in 1464, and the priory disappeared so com- pletely that even its site was for a long time forgotten.” 1 12 May, 13 Henry VI. in Cott. MS. Claudius, D i. f. 134b; Arundel MS. 34, f. 33 has 12 May 6 Henry VI. 2 A short summary of the whole story is given in Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 33b. The account of John de Amundesham does not explain that the abbot finally released and used the bull, though it names the two popes. 3 The narrative of John de Amundesham ends abruptly without giving the verdict (Aum. Mon. S. Albani [Rolls Series], ii. 105-12). « Ibid. 6 Ibid. and Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 33b. ® A notice of the payment of this pension to the students and its purposeis found in the Appendix to J.de Amundesham (Ann. Mon. 8. Albani [Rolls Series], ii. 292). 7 The reference in the inquisition of 1433 to * quoddam manerium vocatum Belewe in parochia de Clophulle in dicta comitate Bedf.’ fixes the site. BEDFORDSHIRE The original endowment* gave to the priory the demesne land in the parish of Clophill afterwards called the manor of Beaulieu (including the hermitage, the church of Moddry and 15 acres for the service of the chapel of Cainhoe three times a week) ; the churches of Millbrook, Ampthill and Clophill ; the mill of Turnhall, the wood of Hazeldean, with other parcels of land and meadow, and certain rights of pasturage on the founder’s demesne. Cecily, mother of the founder, added the church of Milton Ernest ;° and Aumary de St. Amand a carucate in Wilshampstead for the service of the chapel of St. Machutus in the parish of Haynes (Hawnes).’° ‘The temporalities of the priory in 1291 were valued at £26 7s. 10d.; the spiritualities at £17 6s. 8d.,"" out of which four vicars’ stipends were to be paid. Only two small fractions of a knight’s fee in Clop- hill and Flitton are entered as held by the prior in 1302, and only one in 1346 and 1428.1? At the time of the union of the cell with St. Alban’s the abbot stated its whole revenue at £18 ;** the jury at the inquisition valued the lands at £12.14 No seal of this priory remains, so far as is known. Priors oF BEAULIEU Walter de Standon, elected 1233 ** Roger, elected 1237 *® Roger de Thebrugg, elected 12817” John of Stopsley, elected 1285 *® John of Stagsden, transferred 1296 *® William de Parys, elected 1296 *° Peter of Maydenford, elected 1299 ** 8 Foundation Charters, Lansd. MS. 863, f. 83b. The church of Rinethella here and in Dugdale, Mon. iii. 274 is an evident misreading for Amethella, which is given quite clearly in Arundel MS. 34, f. 32b, an earlier transcript of the first charter. The Lansd. MS. is a transcript of the seventeenth cen- tury. 9 Cur. Reg. R., 58, n. 4. 10 Cott. MS. Claudius, Di. f. 134b. The chapel of St. Machutus is said in Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. to have been the gift of Robert d’Albini. 11 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 12 Feud. Aids (P.R.O.), i. 13, 14, 33, 46. 13 In his supplication to the pope. 4 Cott. MS. Claudius, D i. f. 134b. 16 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Hugh de Wells, 16 Thid. Rolls of Grossetéte. 17 [bid. Rolls of Sutton. 18 Tbid. 19 Tbid. Inst. of Sutton. 20 Tbid. 102. 2t Tbid. 104; Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 601. 352 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Gregory of St. Alban’s, elected 1302 * Richard of Northampton, elected 1305? William of Kirkby, elected 1310,° trans- ferred 1312 Richard of Hertford, elected 13124 Henry of St. Neot’s, elected 13165 HOUSES 2. THE ABBEY OF ELSTOW The Benedictine abbey of Elstow was founded near the end of the eleventh cen- tury by Judith, the widow of Earl Waltheof and niece of the Conqueror :® tradition said that it was her act of reparation for the be- trayal of her husband to death.” She endowed it with the vills of Elstow and Wilshamp- stead and a part of Maulden,® the conventual church being identical with the parish church of Elstow; it was dedicated to the honour of St. Mary and St. Helen.® From the thirteenth century at any rate the house was reckoned as a royal foundation, and the patronage re- mained with the Crown until the dissolution. The confirmation charter of Henry I., granted about 1126,'° names amongst the benefactors Nicholas and Richard Basset, Nigel de Stafford, and Countess Maud, daughter of Judith and wife of Simon de Senliz. The property of the abbey was considerable, and very widely scattered ; the mandates for restitution of the temporalities were addressed to the escheators in twelve counties. 1 Linc, Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, 260d. 2 Ibid. 261d. 3 Ibid. 265d. Prior of Hertford, 1312-6. * Ibid. f. 270. Previously prior of Hertford. 5 Tbid. 274d. ® Dugdale, Mon. ii. 412, from Leland. 7 Airy, Digest of the Domesday of Beds (Introduc- tion), and S. R. Wigram, Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow. From the latter book many of the refer- ences to the external history of the abbey have been taken: but it does not give any account of the episcopal visitations, except Longland’s. 8 Domesday. ® Leland (quoted by Dugdale) says the Holy Trinity, St. Mary and St. Helen. The name of Elstow is said to be a corruption of Helenstowe, which Leland explains as Helene Statio: but there is no doubt that the usual name of the church was ‘the Church of St. Mary Elstow (Elnestowe or Alnestowe),’ though ‘the Church of St. Helen’ is found in Feet of Fines, Bucks, 7 Edw. II. In Domesday, ‘ the nuns of St. Mary’ held ‘ Elnestou ’ of Countess Judith. 10 It was witnessed by Thurstan of York 1119- 46, Roger of Salisbury 1107-42. There was an earlier charter confirmed by the Conqueror, alluded to in Palgrave’s Rot. Cur. Reg. i. 391. I 353 OF BENEDICTINE Adam of Newark, elected 1340,0cc. 1349" John of Caldwell, elected 1351 ?? William of Winslow, elected 1374 John Warham, occurs 1396 and 1401** Richard Smyth of Missenden, occ. c. 1405 15 NUNS The list of abbesses serves to show that the daughters of baronial families were frequently received at Elstow; the later names are those of the neighbouring gentry. The ex- ternal history of the house is chiefly gathered from the numerous lawsuits in which it was involved. In the twelfth century there was a long dispute with the monks of Newhouse, concerning the church of Halton-super-Hum- ber ; the terms of the award, and of the papal mandate which afterwards became necessary, suggest that the nuns had been behaving in a somewhat aggressive manner.!® A papal mandate was also required to settle a dispute between the nuns of Elstow and the canons of Dunstable ;'” it is probable that the same abbess, Cecily, was concerned in both these 11 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh, 321; Cal. of Pap. Letters (P.R.O.), iii. 339. 12 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Gynwell, 388d. 13 Ibid. Inst. Buckingham. 14 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), iii. 425, 480. 15 Cott. MS. Nero, D vii. f. 135b; his father died 1405, leaving legacies to St. Alban’s. There was a titular prior of Beaulieu who sent his proctor to Convocation in 1529 (L. and P. Hen. VIII. [P.R.O.] iv. 6047). Cole (from MS. notes of Browne Willis) gives the name of ‘ Thomas Kingsbury, monk of St. Alban’s, prior of Beaulieu, and archdeacon of St. Alban’s,’ under the date 1531. Add. MS. 5827, f. 174b. 16 The first award (Harl. Ch. 44, i. 3) given by Sylvan, abbot of Rievaulx, and Geoffrey, prior of Bridlington, decided that the church belonged to the monks, and imposed silence on the nuns for ever. The next (Harl. Ch. 43, A 24) was a man- date from Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, rehearsing a papal bull of Alexander III., in which it is said that the nuns shall not presume to vex the monks further on this matter. It is followed (ibid. 43, G 23) by the quitclaim of the nuns. The reasons for placing these charters in this order are given by Wigram, Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow, 45-6. 17 Harl. MS. 1885, f. 23b. Cecily, who appears in this charter and in the next reference, was abbess between 1170 and 1180, being contemporary with Alexander III., Thomas, prior of Dunstable, etc., and therefore most probably at the time when the suit with Newhouse was going forward. 45 A HISTORY OF suits, and she had similar dealings with Newn- ham Priory’—all with reference to the ad- vowsons of churches. At another time there were difficulties with St. Alban’s Abbey.? Matthew Paris® relates the story of the ab- bess of Elstow and the sword : how, at the time of the pulling down of St. Paul’s church by Fawkes de Bréauté, she took the sword out of the hand of the image of St. Paul in her own church, and declared that she would not restore it until he avenged himself upon the common enemy. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, in the year 1306, a rather interesting suit was begun between the abbess at that time, Clemence de Balliol, and the brethren of St. Leonard’s Hospital. The latter had been erecting new buildings on either side of the pathway which led from Elstow to Bedford, and obtained permission in consequence to close it, and make another which should pass round instead of through the hospital. This the abbess objected to, on the ground that the old way was more direct and convenient for her people. The two paths were carefully measured, and it was decided, against the abbess, that the new way was not appreciably longer than the old. But she was still dissatisfied, and the brethren seem to have been hindered from carrying out their plans for another two years, when they obtained letters patent from the king for the closing of the path. In 1337 Elizabeth Morteyn, who was then abbess, claimed the ‘ third penny’ from the town of Bedford, in virtue of an alleged grant from Malcolm (IV.), King of Scotland ; the case was carried before Parliament, and the burgesses were successful in proving that Malcolm never had any lordship in the town.® Six years earlier a previous abbess was sum- moned to show by what title she claimed view of frankpledge and ‘judicialia’ in Elstow, Wilshampstead, Maulden, and Kempston: she was obliged to confess that her administra- tion had been lax, and could only secure her 1 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 70. 2 Harl. Ch. 43, A 44 (1231; a bull of Gre- gory IX.; the dispute was about certain tithes, and the archdeacon of Bucks was ordered to settle it). 3 Matth. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Series), iii. 87. The abbess at this time was most probably Mabel. Fawkes de Bréauté held 8 acres of land of the abbess of Elstow (Close, 8 Henry III.) 4 The whole story is set out by Wigram, Chron- icles of the Abbey of Elstow, 93-8, with an account of the measurements, from Chan. Ing. p.m. 34 Edw. I. 226, the final settlement being found in Pat. 2 Edw. II. p. 2, m. 13. 5 Rolls of Parl. ii. 96. BEDFORDSHIRE rights by the payment of a fine.° It was only a short time after this that the parish church of Elstow, as well as the tithes of both rectories, were finally appropriated by the monastery, under the sanction of Bishop Bek ; and ‘to avoid the inconvenience caused by the chanting of psalms in the nave of the monastery,’ the chapel of St. Helen, which stood in the churchyard, was to serve in future as a parish church.” From this time forward little is known of the external his- tory of the house, except that it was much patronised by seculars, whom the bishops never could succeed in keeping out for any length of time. Not long before the dissolu- tion an attendant of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII., was professed there.® This house was constantly visited by the Bishops of Lincoln ; and the records of their injunctions from time to time show us some- thing of its internal history. The first notice of this kind is in a letter, dated 24 June 1270, from Bishop Gravesend to Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York.® A sister of the latter, Agatha Giffard, was prioress of Elstow at the time, and had been at fault (as had the abbess also) ‘through connivance or remissness’ in some scandal that had lately occurred. What it was the bishop does not say ; only he re- marks ‘ from that house more frequently than from any other false reports of disgraceful acts are brought to us’; and he is evidently ‘putting the case as mildly as he can, so as not to offend the archbishop. In 1300 the nuns of Elstow, as well as many others, were enjoined to observe the statute De Claustura Monialium of Boniface VIII.*° This statute was aimed no doubt at 6 Wigram, Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow, 104 ; from Plac. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.) 7 Cal. of Pap. Letters, iii. 196; and Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Bek. 102 (1345). The chapel had been built by a certain Ivota; and a chantry attached in 1334 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh, 273). 8 Beds N. and Q., i. 197, from Nicholas, Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, ‘ de- livered to Thabbesse of Elnestowe by thands of John Duffyn for the costes and charges of litle Anne Loveday at the making of her nonne there— £6 135. 4d.” (Dated 3 August 1502) ® Wigram, Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow, 74, where the letter is given at length, from Hist. Papers and Letters trom the Northern Registers (Rolls Series). Whatever the scandal was, it cost the prioress no serious loss of credit, for in 1280-1 she was very nearly elected abbess (Wigram, Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow, 79, where the letter of Bishop Oliver Sutton reporting on the election is given in full), to Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 9, 11. 354 i ‘ RELIGIOUS HOUSES a real abuse ; but it imposed upon the nuns a degree of enclosure to which they were not bound by the Benedictine rule, and conse- quently was difficult to enforce. At Elstow it was probably not obeyed at all; for in 1359 Bishop Gynwell’ at his visitation re- ported that there had been ‘too much wan- dering of the nuns out of the monastery.’ He had other complaints to make, which show for the first time what was then and after- wards the great snare into which this house fell. The story of Abbess Mabel and the sword of St. Paul shows a right and whole- some interest in the affairs of the church and the world, such as any good religious might take under the common interpretation of the rule of St. Benedict ; but as time went on this interest became excessive, and was at- tended by an inevitable laxity of discipline. From the time of St. Hugh there had been a school in the monastery for children of both sexes ;? most of the nuns were well born and had friends about the Court who sought var- ious pretexts for visiting and lodging in the monastery. Even if the nuns had wished to prevent these visits, it would not always have been easy ; the Papal Letters of the fourteenth century show that noble ladies, even queens, often asked licences from the pope to spend a few nights in a nunnery. And the de- preciation of the value of property after the great pestilence made the poorer houses some- times thankful to accept boarders, like many French convents at the present day. But at Elstow it is to be feared that the nuns were really at fault in this matter ; that the spiritual life of the convent was marred by worldliness from first to last. Bishop Gynwell enjoined that no secular women, except necessary maidservants, should dwell in the convent without special licence ;? all were to depart within fifteen days on pain of excommunication, because ‘ by the living together of secular women and nuns, the con- templation of religion is withdrawn, and scandal engendered.” Only quite young children were to be allowed to remain ;* and there was to be no more laxity or favour shown in the correction of breaches of rule. 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Gynwell, 139d. 2 Wigram, Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow, 57, ey the Magna Vita 8. Hugonis (Rolls Series), 146. 3 In1350 he had himself granted such a licence to the widow of Sir John Pateshull, to dwell in the monastery with her daughter and maids. One of the brasses still in Elstow church is probably that of a lady who had spent her widowhood as a boarder in the monastery. : 4 Girls under ten and boys under six, Bishop Buckingham issued three different sets of injunctions. In 1379° he wrote to the Abbess Anstis to order the removal of all secular persons, men and women, from the precincts of the monastery, as ‘dangerous to the purity and spiritual devotion of the re- ligious.” In 1387 he held a regular visita- tion, and his injunctions, though they do not point to any serious irregularities, are of an interesting character ; their aim seems rather to set forth to the nuns their duties in general, and to exhort them to greater fervour, than to correct abuses. ‘There are the usual orders about the singing of the divine office, the ad- ministration of the revenues of the convent, the repair of the buildings, the due care of the sick; the nuns are cautioned to avoid scandal by refraining from conversation with all men, both secular and religious, especially the mendicant friars, and their near neigh- bours, the canons of Caldwell ; not to go out without permission, and to return home before sunset ; to be careful that they wear the re- ligious habit of their order and the veil, and not to seek such ornaments as fur, or girdles ornamented with silver; to be humble, obedient, charitable, loving one another in the bond of peace; so that at last ‘adorned with the fruit of good works, their lamps burning in their hands, they may be worthy to enter into the marriage chamber of the Heavenly Bridegroom unto whose service they have dedicated themselves.’® In 13887 the bishop only sent a personal admonition to the abbess to be sure and provide a ‘fit and secure place’ where offenders against the rule might be detained.® Bishop Repingdon visited the monastery at the beginning of the fourteenth century. His injunctions show that no lasting reform had been effected by his predecessors. No secu- 5 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 191d. 6 Ibid. 343. In addition to what is given above, the Bishop ordered that the nuns were to speak French among themselves. They were not to talk to the canons of Caldwell ‘ about the public highways and fields adjoining’ under pain of ex- communication: which shows that they were in no sense enclosed within the monastery. The last words quoted at the end of the injunctions are a reminder to them of the Office for the Profession of a nun with which they would all be familiar, and would constitute a strong appeal for renewed fer- vour. 7 Ibid. 348. 8 The year before he had ordered that the abbess and prioress should use moderation and temper- ance in making corrections: perhaps this was only too well obeyed. The abbess at each of these three dates was Anstis Dene. 355 A HISTORY OF lars male or female above the age of twelve were to be admitted ; the nuns were not to go into Bedford or Elstow; only suitable persons were to be professed. Bishop Grey? admonished the nuns to in- crease their numbers, that the divine office might not be neglected ; but none was to be admitted unless she could read and sing, and then only with the consent of the ‘ greater and wiser’ part of the convent. No seculars except young children were to be allowed in the monastery ; an apostate nun was to be brought back. This was the last visita- tion before the well known injunctions of Bishop Longland in 1530.3 The tone of these makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that the house had become thoroughly secu- larised. The ladies had for the most part given up the most distinctive features of their common life ; they had forsaken the use of the refectory, and lived more like pensioners in a boarding-house, having their little private ‘households,’ where they received and ate with their friends. They were accustomed to wear scarlet stomachers, ‘voyded shoes’ and low-necked dresses like those of secular women, and ‘cornered crests’ instead of veils. The lady abbess when she walked in proces- sion was followed by a train of servants, and leant upon the arm of one of them. The ‘ chapelayne,’ Dame Katherine Wingate, had been wont to absent herself from matins, and to take her meals in the abbess’s buttery with the steward. Nevertheless the bishop evi- dently thought the case was not past remedy, and it is noteworthy that after all nothing worse than secularity is implied in these in- junctions. He reminds them that ‘ the more secret religious persons be kept from the sight and visage of the world and strangers, the more close and entire their mind and devo- tion shall be to God’ ; and so orders a door at least 5 feet high to be erected at the lower end of the choir, so that the nuns might neither see nor be seen by strangers at office time ; and the cloister door between the monastery and the church, as well as the 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Repingdon, 231. Rules of diet were also given at this visitation. No money was to be exacted from those seeking admission to the community. Two older nuns were to be responsible for all the money of the convent; the collector of rents was to give an account upon oath twice a year. A sacristan and a precentor were to be chosen from the nuns of good reputation: none convicted of immorality was to be admitted to any office. The sick nuns in the infirmary were to be duly visited, and the rest to sleep in the dormitory. 2 Ibid. Memo. Grey, 203d. 3 Arch, xlvii. 51-3. BEDFORDSHIRE outer door towards the court, were to- be kept shut as far as possible. There were to be no more ‘households’ kept except the abbess’s, and a ‘misericorde’ where four or five of the sisters with ‘one sad lady of the elder sort,’ nominated by the abbess, might take their meals in turn and meet their friends. The rest were to go to the ‘fratry.’* How far these injunctions produced any effect it is impossible to say. The house was not mentioned by Layton in the letter® in which he records his visit to Bedfordshire. It did not fall under the Act of 1536, and was not surrendered until 26 August 1539.° The deed of surrender is still extant ; it con- tains the ordinary formula, the same as that of Wardon and Chicksand, and has no signa- tures, but only the seal. The pension lists of 1539-40" assign £50 to the abbess, Elizabeth Boyvill, and smaller sums to twenty-three nuns besides. If there were so many at this time, we may conclude that the house held perhaps twice as many in the thirteenth century, but there is no record of the original number. The usual officials are named from time to time: the prioress, the sacristan, afterwards called the ‘chapelayne,’ the chantress. It appears that in the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries there were a few lay brothers attached to the house, but it is not clear what was their exact status.® The original endowment of the abbey in- cluded the vills of Elstow and Wilshampstead with 5 hides and 14 virgates in Maulden, and the church of Hitchin in Hertfordshire.® Small portions of land in Buckinghamshire, Leices- tershire, Gloucestershire and Northampton- 4 It should be noted that there is no suggestion of actual immorality at this time, or at any other, except in Bishop Repingdon’s injunctions (see above). But on the other hand the recurrence of the same corrections makes it clear that the stan- dard of life in the house had never been high since the thirteenth century, and though there were doubtless always some of the ‘ sadder sort,’ as at the end, yet they were in the minority. 5 Wright, Suppression of Monasteries, Letter 42. 6 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), No. 88. 7 L.and P. Hen. VIII. (P.R.O.), xv.1032, No. 80. 8 Pat.6 Edw. I. m. 7d. Commission of oyer and terminer touching the persons who assaulted Brother Henry of Elstow at Elstow. Cal. of Pap. Letters, iii. 276 (1349), Walter Woodward, lay brother of Elstow, having left his order, desires to be reconciled to it. ® Inspeximus, 11 Edward II., of the charter of Henry I., which grants the abbess in her lands sac and soc, toll and team, and infangetheof, and all the customs, services and liberties that the free churches of the king’s demesne have. (Dugdale, Mon. iii. 413) 356 RELIGIOUS HOUSES shire were added by other benefactors as por- tions with the daughters whom they sent to school or into religion The churches of Elstow, Wilshampstead, Maulden, Kempston, Flitton, Westoning, with Hitchin (Herts), Inworth (Essex), Clanfield (Oxon), West- bury (Bucks), Harringworth and Wilbarston (Northants) were in the gift of the abbey from the thirteenth century to the Disso- lution; while Goddington? (Oxon) and Tingrith (Beds*) were claimed by it in the thirteenth century, and Halton-super-Hum- ber * (Lincoln) in the twelfth. Portions of tithes from several other churches were paid to the monastery. In 1291 its income was about £110°; at the Dissolution it was £284 125. 11d. clear. In 1316, 1346 and 1428® the abbess of Elstow held the vills of Elstow, Wilshamp- stead and Maulden in pure alms, and some small fractions of knight’s fees in Flitton and Cotes, with a quarter of a fee in Moulsoe, Bucks.’ In the ministers’ accounts after the Dissolution the property was valued at £234 8s. 7d. after the subtraction of some parcels of lands annexed to the honour of Ampthill; the site of the monastery and its demesne lands being reckoned as £77 175. 1048 ABBESSES OF ELstow Cecily,® occurs c. 1180 Mabel,'® elected 1213 (?), occurs 1218 and 1222 Wymark," died 1241 1 Given in the same charter (see also Dugdale, Mon. v. 190, for a similar gift from Maud de Amundeville). 2 Feet of F. Oxon, 6 Henry III. 3 Cur. Reg. R. 58, 15 John, n. 10 dors. ‘ A pension from this church continued to be paid to the abbess till the dissolution (Harl. Ch. 44, D 35, and Valor Eccl. [Rec. Com], iv. 188). 5 Pope Nich. Tax.(Rec.Com.) The totals from the Taxatio here and elsewhere are only approxi- mate ; it is not always possible to find out exactly how much a monastery really received from an appropriate church. 6 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 188-9. 1 Feudal Aids (P.R.O,), i. 13, 20, 27, 31, 36, 40, 41, 46, 104. 8 Dugdale, Mon. iii. 416. ® Harl. MS. 3656, f. 70; ibid. 1885, £. 23b. Contemporary with Geoffrey Ridel, Bishop of Ely, 1173-89, and Pope Alexander III. 1159-81. 10 An abbess unnamed died 1213 (Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 41. The name Mabel occurs (Cott. MS. Nero, E vi. f. 128), with Almaric de St. Maur, who died 1219 (Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. §5 ; and again Feet of F., Beds, 6 Henry III.) 11 Linc, Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte. 357 Agnes of Westbury,!? elected 1241, re- signed 1249 Aubrée de Fécamp,"* elected 1249 Annora,"* died 1281 Beatrice de Scoteny,'® elected 1281, died 1294 Clemence de Balliol,!® elected 1294, re- signed 1314 Joan de Wauton,’” elected 1315, died 1318 Elizabeth de Beauchamp,'® elected 1318, died 1331 Juliane Basset,'® elected 1331, died 1333 Elizabeth Morteyn,”° elected 1333, occurs 1351 Anstis (Anastasia) Dene,” occurs 1370, re- signed 1392 Margaret Pygot,?? elected 1392, died or resigned 1409 Joan Trailly,”* elected 1409, died 1430 Rose Waldgrave,™ died 1463 Elizabeth Hasylden,” elected 1463, occ. 1473 12 Thid. 13 [bid. 14 Tbid. Memo. Sutton; and Pat. 9 Edw. I. m. 15. 15 Ibid.;a divided election, Agatha Giffard se- curing some votes (see above, p. 354, note 9). 16 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Sutton, 98; Pat. 22 Edw. I. m. to. i Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, f. 273d. Another divided election, some choosing Elizabeth de Beauchamp: on 7 Feb. 1315 (Pat. 8 Edw. II. pt. I, m. 3) theking commissioned the bishop to in- quire which election ought to stand. Clemence de Balliol possibly foresaw the dispute, for just before her resignation in November 1314 she obtained a grant (through Queen Isabel) that the prioress and nuns of her house should have all the issues of the abbey and its temporalities during the next voidance, and be free of the escheator (Pat. 8 Edw. II. pt. 1, m. 27). The election of the prioress Joan de Wauton was confirmed 14 May 1315 by the Archbishop of Canterbury (ibid.) 18 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, 276; ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 379. 19 Ibid. Inst. Burghersh, 304; Pat. 5 Edw. III. pt. ii. m. 19 and 11. 20 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh, 306d; Pat. 7 Edw. III. pt.ii.m.21and19. Occurs Cal. of Pap. Letters, iii. 412 (1351). 21 Campbell MS. x. 9, dated 1370; resigned Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Buckingham, 359. 22 Tbid. 23 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Repingdon, 297; death recorded (not naming successor) J. deAmundesham, Ann. Mon. S. Albani, i. 47. She was probably the daughter of Sir John Trailly, who founded Northill College (Feud. Aids, i. 40). 24 Pat. 2 Edw. IV. m. 25. 26 Ibid. Occurs again ibid. 13 Edw. IV. pt. i. m. 21 (July, 1473). A HISTORY OF Margaret Godfrey,’ elected 1487, died or resigned 1501 Elizabeth Hervey,” elected 1501, died 1524 Agnes Gascoigne,® elected.1524, died 1529 Elizabeth Boyvill,* elected 1529 The seal of the abbey is found attached to the deed of surrender already mentioned. It is dark green, pointed oval, and represents Blessed Mary the Virgin standing with the Holy Child in her arms. St. Helen stands on the right, bearing the cross. An abbess kneels below, with crosier, and a nun on either side. Another seal (imperfect) bearing only the figure of St. Helen with the cross is attached to Harl. Ch. 44, D 35, and Campbell Charter, x. 9 (B.M.) 3. THE PRIORY OF MARKYATE The priory of Markyate was founded in the year 1145, in a wood which was then part of the parish of Caddington, and be- longed to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, London.’ Ralf de Langford, who was dean at the time, granted the site at a rent of 35. annually ; adding to it afterwards another portion at a rent of 6s. As the house was built under the patronage of Geoffrey, six- teenth abbot of St. Alban’s, and endowed by him (though not with the goodwill of his convent) with tithes trom Cashio and Wat- ford,® it has sometimes been called a cell of that abbey; but this is scarcely a correct description of it, as the patronage remained always with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s,’ and the nuns were never exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. There can however be no doubt that in its early days the priory was closely connected with St. Alban’s, though the history of its origin is somewhat involved in legend. It is said that a monk called Roger ® went out from the abbey some time during the reign of Henry I., with the con- sent of his abbot, to seek a place for a hermit- 1 Lansd. MS. 963, f. 27b (Bishop Kennett’s extracts from Rolls de Rest. Temporalium). 2 Ibid. f. 55. 3 L. and P. Hen. VIII. (P.R.O.), iv. 404, 487, from Pat. 16 Hen. VIII. pt.i.and Linc. Epis. Reg., Longland, 241. 4 L. and P. Hen. VIII, (P.R.O.), 6211, from Pat. 21 Henry VIII., and in Pension List after the surrender. 5 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 66, and Dugdale, Mon. iii, 368. The grant was confirmed by Alexander Bishop of Lincoln (Cott. Ch. xi. 8). 6 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 95. 7 Linc. Epis. Reg. (See Institutions of Prioresses). 8 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. BEDFORDSHIRE age; and was guided to choose a spot in the woods near Caddington, not far from Watling Street. There he lived for some time in such solitude as he desired, until a damsel from Huntingdon, Christine by name, came and placed herself under his direction, believing that she had a similar vocation. He enclosed her in a shed close by his own hermitage, and fastened the door with planks in such a way that she could not open it herself, nor could she be seen by any passers-by ; and in this narrow dwelling she remained for four years, enduring with heroic courage heat and cold alike, and only released from her cramped posture once a day at dusk. At the end of this time her patience was rewarded by heavenly visions,® which convinced Roger that it was indeed her destiny to succeed him in his cell) When he died, and was carried to St. Alban’s to be buried ‘in a curved place on the south wall near the choir,’ it was natural enough that the abbot should take Christine under his special protection and patronage. A woman could scarcely live quite alone in a wood away from either town or church, but it was not difficult in the twelfth century to find a few others who were willing to embrace the stricter forms of the religious life; so Christine was soon sur- rounded by disciples. “The formation of the house into a priory under the Benedictine rule was probably due to the influence of St. Alban’s.?° 97-105. These pages do not form part of the original narrative, but are added by Walsingham or the compiler of the Gesta Abbatum. ® One of these, whether historical or not, is at any rate characteristic of the crusading age to which the real Christine belonged. She thought she saw her Lord standing before her and holding a golden cross; He bade her be of good courage, for they who would go to Jerusalem must needs bear the cross thither. 10 Tf the dates in the story of Roger and Chris- tine are at all correctly given, it was some time before this was formally done. It is said that Christine acted as an adviser to Abbot Geoffrey in the beginning of the reign of Stephen; while the charter of foundation is dated 1145. Christine has the distinction of being the only Bedfordshire saint (and after all she was bornin Huntingdon !) There is a fifteenth century English life of her by Ros- carrok (printed from a MS. in Trinity College, Dublin) appended to John of Tynemouth’s Nova Legenda Anglia, ed. C. Horstman. It contains very little of interest, being chiefly an account of her life before she came to Markyate, of which the St. Alban’s chronicler apparently knew nothing : and of her contentions with her parents and would- be husband, after the manner of St. Frideswide and many other virgin saints. 358 Markyate Priory. Exstow ABBEY. Exstow ABBEY. Markyate Priory. Markyate Priory. RELIGIOUS HOUSES The priory was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the name most commonly given to it was ‘ Holy Trinity in the Wood.’ It seems to have been destroyed by fire almost as soon as built; for Matthew Paris asserts that Abbot Geoffrey built the house twice from the foundation." The later story says that Christine had great influence with the abbot, and often gave him good advice ; which may well have been, without the in- tervention of any ghosts.” There is happily no doubt of her real existence, as her name appears on the foundation charter and other documents ;* and an entry on the Pipe Roll of 1156* gives some evidence of the fame to which she attained. During her lifetime the priory acquired some property outside the county ;° there were certainly four churches belonging to it in the thirteenth century, and possibly more. But it was never a wealthy house. In 1259,° when the Friars Preachers came to Dunstable, the prioress of Markyate, Agnes Gobion, sent them a certain number of loaves every day for their dinner—‘out of pure charity,’ says the chronicler, because they were then building their church. But her kindness was ill requited, for when the im- mediate necessity was past, the friars would not allow her to withdraw the dole ; they sent to Rome and had it confirmed to them for ever.” This grant would not probably be in itself a heavy burden to the priory ; but there is no doubt that the nuns had some difficulty in maintaining themselves during the second half of the thirteenth century. Debts began to press heavily ; and in 1290 they sent a petition to Parliament® to say 1 Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 95. This is not part of the later story. 2 Geoffrey’s name appears as a witness on the foundation charter. He had been master of the school at Dunstable before he was abbot (ibid. p. 73), and the neighbourhood of Markyate must have been quite familiar to him before Roger went there. 3 Cott. Ch. xi. 36. * “In blado quod rex dedit dominz Cristine de Bosco t sol.’ Robert, the eighteenth abbot of St. Alban’s, on a visit to Rome, presented to the English pope, Adrian IV., some of the workman- ship of Christine—three mitres and a pair of sandals embroidered by her (Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum [Rolls Series], i. 127). 5 Cott. Ch. xi. 36. Deddington, Oxon. ® Matth. Paris, Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 387. 7 occurs 1428 John Fraunceys,* elected 1447, occurs 1454 Augustine London, *” occurs 1509 and 1529 Henry Emery,” surrendered 1537 The common seal of the abbey is attached to the deed of surrender,?® and represents 16 Add. MS. 24465, f. 27. 17 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 62 (A. abbot of Warden), and Matth. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls Series), iv. 227, 390. 18 nn. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 192 (footnote). 1 Add. MS. 24465, ff. 35b, 62b. 20 Pat. 18 Edw. I. m. 20. 21 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 255. 22 Ibid. 83 23 From the description of the seal once attached to Harl. Ch. 45, A 27, but now lost, it is pro- bable that the abbot alluded to in this charter was Robert of Odell. It is dated ‘the seventeenth year of the king’—probably Edward II. ‘Dom- inus Robertus de Wodhulle’ is named as the pre- decessor of the next abbot in Add. MS. 2446s, f. 30b. 2% Cal. of Pap. Letters, iti. 222 (1346); Add. MS. 24465, f. 30b (William, abbot of ‘ Helmesle,’ abbot of Warden in the ‘twentieth year of King Edward’); and William, abbot of Warden, dated 4 Edw. III. (earlier in the same chartulary). It is most probable that all these are references to the same person. 25 Pat. 6 Henry VI. pt. I, m. 29. 26 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Alnwick, 76; and Reg. Bourchier (from Ely Dioc. Remembrancer, No. 219, p. 179). 27 Add. MS. 5827, f. 174b, gives the dates 1488 and 1509 for Augustine London. The second is from the will of John Fisher, a judge, who was to be buried at Warden ; but the earlier date, which comes from Browne Willis without reference, seems almost impossible, as Augustine was certainly still alivein1537 (L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii [1], 981). 28 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), No. 253. Be- sides the names mentioned above ‘ Helyas ’ occurs without any indication of date in Add. MS. 24465, f. 35; ‘W.abbot of Warden’ in Harl. MS. 3656, f. 62, under 1225; ‘H. abbot of Warden’ in 1272, in Harl. MS. 3656, f. 64; and Laurence in Add. MS. 24465, f. 28b, dated 30 Edw. I. 29 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), 253 ; casts of the same B.M. lviii. 42, and lix.65. The seal of Robert de (Wodhul)le, once attached to Harl. Ch. 45, A re 3° A HISTORY OF our Lady crowned and seated in a canopied niche, with a sceptre in her left hand, and the holy Child standing on her knee. On the left an abbot with crosier, and another figure on the right, under smaller canopies. Legend : S. COMUNE ABBATIS ET COVETUS DE WARDEN. The counter-seal shows a shield bearing a crosier between three Warden pears. Legend : spEs MEA IN DEO EST. 5. THE ABBEY OF WOBURN The Cistercian abbey of Woburn was founded in the year 1145," under the patron- age of Hugh de Bolebec. It was a colony sent from the abbey of Fountains in York- shire, and its first abbot, Alan, was a monk of that house.2 To the manor of Woburn other gifts were soon added: Ralf Pirot of Harlington, William of Flitton, Henry and Stephen of Pulloxhill were amongst the ear- liest benefactors, whose charters were con- firmed by Henry II. before 1162 ;% and Ralf Pirot (who was a considerable feudal tenant of Robert d’Albini) himself became a monk in the abbey before his death.* On the manor of Medmenham in Bucks, granted by the daughter of Hugh de Bolebec, another abbey was built in the reign of King John.® The early history of the abbey is obscure. A few stray facts relating to the twelfth cen- tury and the early part of the thirteenth may be gathered from the annals of Waverley and Dunstable : as, for instance, that a prior of Woburn was made abbot of Combe in 1183°; and that a long suit went on from about the same date until 1225, concerning the advowson of the church of Chesham, be- tween the abbots of Woburn and St. Alban’s, and the prior of Dunstable.” The final agree- ment gave the church to Woburn, the other 27, no longer exists. A small seal of the twelfth century in white wax, representing an abbot with staff and book, encircled by the legend sicittvm' ABBATIS * DE * SARTIS * GARDONI, is mentioned by Gorham, History of St. Neot’s, II. lxxiv. as existing among the evidences at Montague House, Pyx xxv. 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iv. 231. 2 Dugdale, Mon. v. 301. 3 Ibid. p. 478. One of the witnesses to the charter is Thomas the Chancellor, whose name limits the date to this year. 4 From a note kindly furnished by Mr. Round. 5 Rot. Chart. 2 John, m. 17, gives permission to build; Assize Roll, 13 John, 480, r. 4 in dorso, speaks of the abbey of Medmenham as built, and as the gift of Isabel de Bolebec (Countess of Ox- ford). 8 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iv. 243. 7 Ibid. iti. 74, 93, 96; Cott. MS. Julius, D iti. f, 123b. BEDFORDSHIRE houses receiving pensions. The abbots of this period, like all other heads of large and well known religious houses, took a consider- able part in public affairs, and were made ar- biters in local disputes as well as matters of wider interest. In 1202 an abbot of Woburn went to Worcester to inquire into the mir- acles which were alleged to have taken place at the shrine of St. Wulfstan, and in the next year he was made one of the papal commis- sioners for the process of canonisation.2 In 1215 another abbot is mentioned in one of the Letters Patent of King John, as having been an intercessor with him for Simon de Pateshull.® In 1234 the house was reduced to great poverty ; Abbot Richard, who had evidently been a bad manager, was removed, and Roger, a monk from Fountains, took his place, while nearly all the monks and lay brethren were dispersed amongst other houses until their own abbey should be able to support them again.*° The canons of Dunstable did what they could to help their neighbours in distress, and presented them with a mill; they may also have offered a home for the time to some of the monks. But the abbey was not long in recovering its prosperity ; for in 1240 acanon of Dunstable fled there, to escape from taking the oath imposed by Bishop Grossetéte." Fifty years later it was one of the wealthiest houses in the county.’? ‘There is no indica- tion of the number of monks at this time ; but as Warden Abbey, with very nearly the same income, held probably forty or fifty, we may conclude that Woburn had accommoda- tion for about as many. At the time of the dissolution there were it would seem less than twenty. Nothing can be gathered from the Lincoln Registers as to the internal history of the abbey during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as it was exempt, like all Cistercian houses, from visitation. One of the unfor- tunate Templars was placed there in 1311,!° from which we may perhaps infer that the house was in good order at that time ; other- wise its history is almost a blank sheet, ex- cept for a few notices of loans to the king, impropriations of churches, etc., such as are common to all religious houses. But the cir- cumstances which led to the suppression of the house furnish us happily with a very full & Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iv. 391 ; Cal. of Pap. Letters, 1. 13. 9 Litt. Pat. (Rec. Com.), i. 138. 10 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 140. 11 Tbid. 157. 12 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 13 Linc. Epis, Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 194. 366 RELIGIOUS HOUSES and clear account of its last days. From the depositions taken in May 1538+ it may be gathered that there were at least thirteen monks besides the abbot, all of whom were clerks ; there were perhaps others also who were not mentioned by name, and most pro- bably, on the analogy of other houses, a few lay brothers. There seems to have been no prior at the time ; the most prominent person after the abbot was the sub-prior ; a ‘ bowser’ or bursar had succeeded the old cellarer ; among minor officials the sexton and the ‘chaunter’ or precentor are named, and one monk was secretary to the abbot. Three “young gentlemen’ and their schoolmaster had been recently boarders in the house ; and a former abbot of Warden, for reasons un- known, preferred to spend his last days at Woburn. The abbot, Robert Hobbes,” had much friendly intercourse with the gentry of the neighbourhood, and had been the guest of Sir Francis Bryan at Ampthill ; the Bishop of Lincoln was often a near neighbour when he visited his manor at Woburn; so that, in one way and another, the house was well known, and its deficiencies would have been easily observed. But there can be no doubt whatever that it was in excellent order, and the rule well kept. Though the abbot’s views as to the religious controversies of the time were shared by few of his brethren, they nevertheless yielded him due obedience to the last. The bursar and the secretary might marvel that he kept a dangerous and reactionary book in the abbey* ; but the one copied it and the other laid it by, according to their obedience. And on the abbot’s side there was all the consideration on which the rule of St. Benedict lays such stress ; the peni- tential exercises from which he hoped so much were dropped as soon as he saw that they were offered by unwilling hearts and lips, and his rebukes were always mild and fatherly. Cross-examined by the king’s com- missioners, the monks reported the words of their superior, and gave their own opinions ; but only two had really laid information against him, and not even these had any per- 1 LZ. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. pt. i. 981. The following account of the abbey and of the trial is entirely taken from this source, 2 In 1533, with the abbots of Fountains and Pipewell, he had been appointed to visit the monastery of Vaudey, and had some difference of opinion with Cromwell as to the best means of reforming the house (L. and P. Hen. VIII. vi. 778-9). 3 A treatise collated from the fathers, by Sir John Mylward of Toddington, called De Potestate Petri. sonal complaint to make. During the whole trial, indeed, no word of accusation is raised against the personal character of any of the monks; and, so far as we can gather, the divine offices were performed with care and reverence to the last. The house fell for purely political reasons. The full account of its tragic ending is found in the State Papers, and the story has been told more than once.® But there has been a good deal of confusion about the dates of the various stages of proceeding ® ; it seems there- fore best to set down the events quite simply in the order in which they occurred, and to let them speak for themselves. In 1534-5 7 there was a preliminary visi- tation by Dr. Petre, who administered the oath of supremacy to the whole convent, or- dered the delivery of all papal bulls to him- self, and the erasure of the pope’s name from all service books. ‘These orders were carried out; but the abbot, as he afterwards con- fessed, had the bulls copied before he delivered them, and also expressed a wish to some of his monks that the pope’s name might be struck out with a pen and not erased. He did not however press the latter point.® During the three years that followed, the new laws and the great events of the time, political and religious, were much discussed in the monastery, and there was a tendency amongst the monks to fall into two parties. It seems however to have been no more than a tendency ; there were only two® who were 4 One monk, John Grace, said that he had once petitioned the abbot for better bread for the con- vent, and that the answer had been, ‘ If they like not this, let them go farther and fare worse. The world is open now, but I trust that it will not long hold thus.’ They are the only ungentle words alleged of the abbot; perhaps something in the circumstances may have rendered them quite necessary. 5 Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (ed. 1878), i. 431-41; followed by Canon Dixon, History of the English Church; Dom Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monastertes, ii. 191- 202. 6 All these assume that the depositions were taken in 1536, whereas they are dated clearly 11 and 12 May 30 Henry VIII. The chroniclers Speed and Stow both put the abbot’s name in the list of those who were executed after the Pilgrimage of Grace, with which he had no connection what- ever. Burnet improves upon this by saying that he joined the rebels and was taken in arms amongst them. 7 Alluded to in the abbot’s first deposition. 8 From the deposition of Dan Croxton. ® Dan Robert Salford and Dan Croxton; the former had sent up a letter to Cromwell by Sir 367 A HISTORY OF decidedly in favour of the new learning, all for the king and the council, and two or three also* (including the sub-prior) who were with the abbot in holding to the old way. The rest had no strong opinions at all, and the dis- cussions in the shaving house and elsewhere, though free, were apparently not violent. At the death of More and Fisher, and again at the dissolution of the smaller monasteries, the abbot imposed certain penitential exercises? upon the whole convent, which were per- formed, though not with good will; when murmuring arose they ceased. Meanwhile the abbot was growing more and more troubled as he saw the course events were taking ; more and more conscience- stricken at his own cowardice in accepting the oath of supremacy, which better and braver men had refused. He did not hide his troubles from his brethren; but they were for the most part irresponsive to his appeals. He confided to the sub-prior that his conscience grudged him daily for taking the oath ; he said to more than one of his neighbours and friends that he felt it was their own shameful lives that were bringing so many troubles upon the religious.® In Lent he fell ill of the ‘stranguilion,’ and in his extreme bodily pain he said that he wished he had died with More and Fisher and the other good men who would not take the oath. And when his mind wandered a little in his illness the words that came to his lips most naturally were quotations from the fathers which seemed to prove the pope’s supremacy.‘ Yet, charac- William Sherborne, and had advised Croxton to report the words of another monk to the visitors. 1 Dan Laurence Blunham, Dan Richard Hop- worth. 2 They were bidden to say the Psalm Deus vener- unt gentes, with the versicle Exurgat Deus, every Friday after the Litany, prostrate before the altar. Later they were to sing Salvator mundi, salva nos omnes at every mass. 3 There is much in the abbot’s words and actions at this time that recalls the record of the last days of the London Charterhouse; and yet he could scarcely have heard that story in much detail. It is also significant—though indeed it is only what might have been expected—that the best of the religious at that time, those who were most faithful and devoted to their rule, were also the most ready to confess that it was their ‘ shameful lives’ which brought such trouble on the church. 4 Tu quis es? Primatu Abel, gubernatione Noe, auctoritate Moyses, judicatu Samuel, potes- tate Petrus, unctione Christus. Alize ecclesie habent supra se pastores, tu pastor pastorum es.’ From a letter of St. Bernard to Pope Eugenius IIT. The sub-prior said the abbot was ‘somewhat acrazed’ at this time. BEDFORDSHIRE teristically, at Easter he put the sub-prior on his obedience ‘to bid the beads’ before the sermon for the king as supreme head of the Church. The death he desired was indeed nearer than he thought. It was during Lent that one of the assistant priests of Woburn chapel (which served as the parish church) came upon some bulls which had not been delivered up to Dr. Petre, and went straight up to London with them. This man had been engaged by the abbot in the pre- vious summer ® ; he was originally a friar,® who had been dispensed from his obed- ience by the pope, and was now a violent par- tisan of the new learning ; he had already been rebuked by the abbot for his railing against the pope, and against images. With the bulls he took a letter from Dan Robert Salford, one of the monks who shared his views. On his return he told the abbot what his errand had been, and was dismissed in consequence ; but the precaution came too late. Early in May Dr. Legh and John Williams arrived, bringing grave charges against the abbot and convent ; on the 8th the house was surrendered.’ John Williams, who had taken the deed of surrender up to London,® together with a letter from the abbot (in which he and his brethren pro- tested their innocence and cast themselves on the king’s mercy), returned again at once accompanied by Dr. Petre; and on 11 and 12 May depositions were taken, and with articles of accusation appended were sub- mitted to the council.’° Four monks were examined besides the abbot and sub-prior ; also Sir John Mylward, warden of the hospital at Toddington, and 8 From his own deposition. As to the bulls, the abbot said it was merely by an oversight of the bursar that they were not delivered up. This is probably true; as he was willing to confess every- thing else, there seems no reason why he should deny this. 8 From the petition of the sub-prior (L. and P. Hen. VIII. x. 1239 [1536]. 7 Ibid. xiii. pt. 1, 955. 8 Ibid. ® This letter is dated 1536 by Wright, Suppres- ston of Monasteries, p.145, but allusion init to Legh and Williams and the accusations of treason make it clear that its proper place is here, as it is placed in the L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. pt. 1, No. 956. 10 The articles appended to the depositions by the commissioners included the names of Sir Francis Bryan, his ‘ doctor of physicke,’ Mylward of Tod- dington, and two doctors (one of Cambridge), besides the abbot, the bursar, and Dan Hop- worth. A very different selection was finally made. 368 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Sir William Sherborne, chaplain of Woburn, to whom allusion has already been made. The substance of the depositions has been already given ; they recounted the events of the last few years. The abbot practically confessed all that he was accused of ; he had failed to preach the king’s supremacy on divers occasions, and openly expressed his opinions on the subject to a great many people. The sub-prior had also failed to preach the king’s supremacy, and had prayed publicly for the pope when he went up to Oxford to take his degree of B.D. The depositions of Dan Robert Salford, who had sent the letter up to Cromwell, and of Sir William Sherborne, who had carried it, im- plicated others within and outside of the monastery. Salford testified how the abbot had sum- moned them all to chapter and exhorted them not to forsake their house or habit, and had advised him personally, in confession, not to complain to the royal visitors against those of his brethren who had railed on the council and spoken against their oath. He gave it as his own opinion that six of these, besides the sub-prior, were papists. But the name which most frequently occurs in all the depositions is that of Dan Laurence Blunham, the sexton, who had evidently made open boast that he had never taken the oath, and never would. It was natural that when the final selection of names was made he should appear beside the abbot and sub-prior as one of the chief offenders. These three were tried at Bedford at the summer sessions, and condemned to suffer the ordinary penalties of treason. They were probably executed at the end of June’; tradition says that an old oak tree outside the abbey gates served them for a gallows.? The whole course of proceeding, from the accusation to the execution, only occupied two or three months, instead of being spread over two or three years, as has been supposed. It was an ordinary case of verbal treason under the law of 1535, and is 1 Controlment Roll (P.R.O.), 30 Henry VIII. Trinity term, m. 16 dors. contains the record of the attainder of Robert Hobbes, abbot of Woburn; Ralph Barnes alias Woburn, and Laurence Blun- ham alias Peck, monks of the same house. The margin of the roll had Bedford quite clearly beside this entry, so that the trial could not well have been at Lincoln, 2 An estimate of the goods of the ‘ late attainted ’ monastery of Woburn was made on 29 June, de- ducting expenses of maintaining the house till 28 June. 3 Dom Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, p. 202. I 369 parallel to the case of Friar Forrest who was hanged and burned about a month earlier ; but it is an even better illustration of the ex- treme rigour of that law. The Carthusians and Forrest, who finally refused to take the oath, after having it several times tendered to them, might perhaps be looked upon as dangerous men, and enemies to the common- wealth ; but there was little enough to fear from the monks of Woburn. The abbot in his final deposition pleaded that he did all he had done ‘ out of a scrupulous conscience that he then had, considering the long continuance of the Bishop of Rome in that trade being, and the sudden mutation thereof’; he was ready to renounce some of his opinions‘ at once, and begged the king’s mercy, and Cromwell’s intercession.®5 On 27 May® Laurence Blunham sent in a similar plea for mercy, on the ground of his ‘foolish scru- pulous mind’ ; he had indeed escaped taking the oath formally, for he did not kiss the book, being passed over in the crowd ; but now he was put out of all doubt of the truth ‘by the instruction of my Lord Privy Seal.” In June’ the sub-prior sent in his petition for mercy, also announcing himself converted, by the reading of the Obedience of a Christian Man and the Glass of Truth. But verbal treason, once committed, could not be undone. It is a pitiful story from any point of view. Robert Hobbes and his monks were no heroes : they were clear enough in their convictions and could admire the steadfastness of More and Fisher; but when it came to the test they found it easier to admire than to imitate. Yet they were good religious; the character of the abbot in particular is a very attractive one,® and if he had fallen upon happier times 4 e.g. the invalidity of holy orders conferred since the breach with Rome. 5 This final deposition of the abbot is not with the others, but in Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv. f. 89; but it refers in detail to all the points of accusation contained in the other depositions, and is placed at the end of them in the L. and P. Hen. VIII. 8 L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. pt. 1, No. 1086. 7 Ibid. x. 1239. This petition is clearly out of its place in 1536. It is only dated Fune; but it alludes to a conversation with William Sherborne, chaplain of Woburn, who said in May 1538 that he only came to assist at the chapel ‘last mid- summer.’ 8 We may note his constant exhortations of his brethren to unity and charity, those keynotes of the religious life ; his gentleness and reasonableness in dealing with such a man as William Sherborne ( Sir William, I hear that you are a great railer. I pray you teach my cure the Scripture of God, 47 A HISTORY OF it would have secured to him the love of all his brethren and an honourable memory. The abbey was endowed by the founder with the manor of Woburn, and other parcels of land in the neighbourhood were added by various benefactors before 1162.1 The manor of Medmenham (Bucks), for building another abbey, was confirmed to the abbot in 1200-17; and in 1202 Hugh Malet granted the manors of Swanbourne and Mursley (Bucks) in pure and perpetual alms, with the church of Swan- bourn, to be held of him and his heirs for ever. The church of Chesham was in the gift of the abbey in the twelfth century,* and the churches of Birchmore, Whitchurch and Soulbury at a later date. In 1291° the tem- poralities of Woburn amounted to £121 105. 8id., and the spiritualities may have added another £50. A taxation of the property of the abbey taken in 1338 valued it at £132 19s. g¢a.° The abbots held in 13027 one knight’s fee in Eversholt, and smaller fractions in Potsgrave, Hare, Holcutt and Harlington ; in Buckinghamshire® one fee in Swanbourne and another in Stewkley, and a part of Dray- ton. In 1316° they held half of each of the three vills of Milton Bryan, Eversholt and Birchmore, with Woburn; in 1346 they held half a fee in Woburn, Milton Bryan and Pulloxhill’® ; in 1428 one fee in Eversholt and another in Holcutt, with one half in Milton Bryant, Hare and Pulloxhill**; the Buckinghamshire fees remaining much the same, except the one in Stewkley which had passed to the abbess of Fontevraud. ‘The valuation in 1535 of the whole property of the abbey was £391 18s. 2d. clear.'* The mov- able goods of the monastery, including plate, money, jewels, church ornaments, household and that may be to their edification. The Pope is either a good man or an ill; to the Lord he standeth or falleth. The office of a bishop is honourable. What edifying is this to rail? Let him alone.’); his care to avoid implicating his friend, Sir Francis Bryan ; his thought for his own nearest relations when he saw that he was in danger of death. 1 Foundation Charter, Dugdale, Mon. v. 478. 2 Rot. Chart. (Rec. Com.), i. pt. 1, 83; Rot. de Oblatis et Finibus (Rec. Com.), 90. Woburn paid 40 marks, as well as 10 marks for two palfreys as the price of this confirmation. 3 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 198. 4 Cott. MS. Julius, D iii. f. 123b and elsewhere. 5 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 6 Pat. 11 Edw. III. pt. 2, m. 8. 7 Feud. Aids, i. 8. 8 Tbid. 82. ® Tbid.21. 19 Ibid. 25, 33. 11 Thid. 43, 46, 126, 127, 128, 129. 12 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.) BEDFORDSHIRE stuff, corn, cattle, and debts owing to the house were valued in June 1538 at £509 175. 4d.; and at the survey of the lands taken at the same time a total of £450 145. 34d. in tem- poralities and £78 145s. od. in spiritualities was obtained.4® The report of the Crown bailiff four years later gave a total of £427 8s. 3d., including the rectories of Birchmore with Woburn chapel, Soulbury, Chesham and Whitchurch in Buckinghamshire, and lands in Beds, Bucks, Oxon, Herts, Northants and London, and the manors of Eversholt, Pullox- hill, Grenfield, Westoning, Potsgrave and Swanbourne.4 ABBOTS OF WoBURN Alan," first abbot, 1145 William,'® occurs circa 1180 Peter’” » 1202, died 1204 Nicholas*® ,, 1208 Richard'® ,, 1217, 1228, deposed 1234 Roger” of Fountains, elected 1234 Adam of Luton,” died 1247 Nicholas,” elected 1247 Roger,?? died 1281 Hugh of Soulbury,”* elected 1281 William,* occurs 1286 Robert de Stokes,?® elected 1297 Henry,” elected 1312 Thomas de Thornton,” elected 1336 William Manepeny,” » 1396 William Hawburth,?? » 1436 John of Ashby,®° » 1458 Robert Charlet,*! » 1463 Robert Hall,” » 1483 Thomas Hogeson,** occurs 1499 Robert Hobbes** » 1529 No seal of this abbey remains so far as is known. 13 L. and P. Hen. VIII. xiii. (1), 1280. Dated 29 June, 30 Henry VIII. 14 Dugdale, Mon. v. 481; and MS. summary of Ministers’ Accounts, P.R.O. 16 Dugdale, Mon. v. 301. 1s Add. MS. 5827, 176b (Cole’s transcript of MS. notes of Browne Willis). 11 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 198 ; Add. MS. 5827, 176b (ref. to Gale, i. 182). 18 Add. MS. 5827, 176b. 19 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii, 108. 20 Tbid. 140. a Tbid. 174. 22 Tbid. 23 Thid. p. 287. 24 Pat. 14 Edw. I. m. 8. 26 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 182. 28 Tbid. Memo. Dalderby, 241. 27 Tbid. Memo. Burghersh, 344. 28 bid. Memo. Buckingham, 436. © Tbid. Memo. Alnwick, 31. 20 Ibid. Inst. Chedworth, 46d. st Thid. 32 Tbid. Inst. Russell. 33 Tbid. Inst. Smith. 34 L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 6047. 370 RELIGIOUS HOUSES HOUSES 6. THE PRIORY OF DUNSTABLE The Augustinian priory of Dunstable was founded by King Henry I. about the year 1132, and endowed by him at the same time with the lordship of the manor and town in which it stood! Tradition says that the same king was also founder of the town, and had caused the forest to be cleared away from the point where Watling and Icknield Streets crossed each other, on account of the robbers who infested the highway.? However this may be, he certainly granted to the priory all such liberties and rights in the town of Dunstable as he held in his own demesne lands. His charter was confirmed by Henry II.,° who also granted to the prior and convent the lordship of Houghton Regis; and before the reign of Richard I. a great many of the churches of the neighbourhood had been granted to the priory by different benefactors,* as many as thirteen, besides the chapel of 1 Foundation Charter, contained in the In- speximus of Richard II. (Harl. MS. 1885, f. 102). The date is fixed between 1131 and 1135 by the name of Robert, Bishop of Hereford, among the witnesses: he succeeded 1131 (Flor. of Wore. [Engl. Hist. Soc.], ii. 92). 2 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 238. 3 Harl. MS. 1885, f. 102. The churches given below are all contained in this charter : those of SS. Peter, Mary and Cuthbert, Bedford, are there stated to be the gift of HenryI.; St. Cuthbert’s in another place (ibid. f. 73b) is stated to be the gift of Abel, son of Roland. The confirmations of nearly all these churches by different twelfth- century bishops and archdeacons are contained in ff. 20-4 of the same chartulary. 4 The churches of St. Peter (Dunstable), St. Mary and St. Cuthbert in Bedford, in the time of Henry I. ; the church of Cublington, Bucks, of the gift of Hugh, son of Jocelyn; Segenhoe and Totternhoe, with Higham Ferrers and half the church of Pattishall, Northants, by Simon de Wahull and his son Walter ; North Marston, Bucks, of the gift of Thurstan of Hunderigg; Flitwick, Husborne Crawley, and the chapel of Ruxox, of the gift of Philip de Saunvill; Chalgrave, of the gift of Roger Loring, with the consent of Simon de Beauchamp; Aspley Guise (finally assigned to Newnham Priory), of the gift of Roger de Salford; Pulloxhill and Harlington, of the gift of John and William Pirot ; Steppingley, of the gift of Richard of Steppingley; Studham, of the gift of Alex- ander of Studham; and half the church of Ches- ham, Bucks, of the gift of the abbot of Woburn. Henry II.’s own gift of the lordship of Houghton Regis is alluded to in Rot. Chart, (Rec. Com.), 5 John, m. 24. OF AUSTIN CANONS Ruxox, in the county of Bedford, with Cub- lington, North Marston and half Chesham, Bucks, and Higham Ferrers with half Pattis- hall, Northants. Several of these gifts were disputed before the century was out,° but most of them were retained by the priory through- out its existence. Bernard, the first prior of the house, was closely associated with the introduction of Austin Canons into England, for he had accompanied his brother Norman (afterwards prior of St. Botolph’s, Colchester, and then of Holy Trinity, London) to Chartres and Beau- vais, in Anselm’s time, to learn the rule of St. Augustine, with a view to introduce it into England.® At the beginning of the thirteenth cen- tury, in the year 1202, Richard de Morins, a canon of Merton,’ became prior of Dun- stable, and with his election the priory entered upon the most interesting period of its history. It was probably he who began the annals of the house, and perhaps wrote part of them with his own hand® ; he was evidently a man of very varied interests, and considerable capacity for affairs. Before he had been prior a year he was dispatched on the king’s busi- ness to Rome® ; and it was probably owing to his influence that the lordship of Houghton Regis, with other gifts, were confirmed to the priory in 1203.'° So far as we know, he only went abroad once again, when he attended the Lateran council of 1215, and remained afterwards in Paris for a year to study at the University ;'* but the annals show that he maintained all through his life a keen interest in the affairs of Europe and the East. In1206'? he was made a visitor for all the religious 5 Harl. MS. 1885, ff. 20-4. Hunter, Feet of F. 5> 47- 8 See ‘The Origin of St. Botolph’s Priory, Colchester,’ by J. H. Round (from whom this reference was obtained), in Essex Arch. Trans. (new ser.), iii. 270. 7 He was not made a priest until the Embertide following his election, and said his first mass on St. Michael’s Day (dun. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 28). Luard, Introduction to Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. There are a good many references to events at Merton Priory, e.g. Ann. Mon. iii. 44, 128 (notices of priors of Merton entering stricter orders), etc. 9 Ibid. 28. 10 Ibid. ; Rot. Chart. (Rec. Com.), i. pt. 1, 107. 11 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), ili. 46. 12 Thid. 29. 371 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE houses of the diocese of Lincoln (except those of the exempt orders), by the authority of the papal legate ; in 1212 he was appointed by the pope to preach the cross* in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire, and in the same year was commissioned to make an estimate of the losses suffered by the clergy and the religious in the diocese through the exactions of John.? In 1223° and 1228* he was made visitor to his own order, first in the province of York, and afterwards in the dioceses of Lincoln and Coventry ; and last of all, in 1239,° when he must have been quite an old man, he helped todraw up and submit to the pope an account of the difficulties between the Archbishop of Canterbury and his suffra- gans on the subject of visitation. During his term of office, in the year 1219,° he secured the right of holding a court at Dun- stable for all pleas of the Crown, and of sitting beside the justices itinerant at their visits to the town: a privilege which brought him into less happy relations with the townsmen, and may have helped to hasten their revolt against his authority in 1228.7 He also successfully established the right of his house to Harlington church in 1223.8 The priory was twice visited by King Henry III. during the time of Richard de Morins: once after the siege of Bedford Castle,® and again in the midst of the troubles connected with the burgesses, whom he attempted to pacify, at the prior’s earnest request.'° 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 4o. They placed collecting boxes in all the churches. 2 Ibid. 38. 3 Ibid. 80; the abbot of Darley being his coadjutor. 4 Ibid. 112; with the prior of Newnham. 8 Tbid. 149. 6 Ibid. 54. 7 Ibid. 105-22. The details of the quarrel belong to the general ecclesiastical and political histories of the county. 8 T[bid. 80, 85. Richard Pirot, a feudal tenant of the Albinis of Cainhoe, claimed it against him on an assize of darrein presentment. It was common ground to both parties that Richard’s grandfather, Ralf Pirot, had given the church to Dunstable Priory temp. Henry II., but Richard claimed that this had been done after Ralf had divested himself of his lands and become a monk at Woburn, which the prior denied (Bracton’s Note Book, iii. 454). The prior was successful (ibid. 80). His claim to Aspley Guise is dealt with under Newnham Priory: the details of both suits were kindly supplied by Mr. Round. ® Henry III. was at Dunstable on 20 August 1224 (Pat. 8 Hen. III. m. 4). 10 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 119. It is prob- able that Stephen visited the priory near the end In spite of the losses under King John and the difficulties with the burgesses, the priory seems to have enjoyed greater prosperity at this time than at any later period of which we have a clear account. In 1213 the con- ventual church was dedicated by Bishop Hugh de Wells, a great concourse of earls and barons, abbots and priors, assisting at the ceremony.' The lordship of Houghton Regis, though lost for a while in 1212, was recovered in 122617; and the gift of the church of Bradbourne in the Peak,!? with its chapels and lands,!* provided a maintenance for three canons,!® and formed a kind of cell to the priory, besides increasing its income. The death of Richard de Morins in 1242'® was followed immediately by heavy losses. In 1243, 800 of the sheep belonging to the priory in the Peak district died,*” and a suc- cession of bad seasons led to great scarcity ; Henry de Bilenda, the cellarer, upon whom so much depended, was incapable or untrust- worthy, and in 1249 fled to the Cistercians at Merivale, rather than render an account of his stewardship."® By 1255 the canons not only had no corn to sell, but not enough for themselves ;*® they had to buy all their food at great expense, for two years after this ; 2° so that the Friars Preachers, when they arrived in 1259," were even less welcome than they would have been at any ordinary time. When Simon of Eaton became prior in 1262, he found the house 400 marks in debt, and all the wool of the year already sold.” But in spite of the pressure of debt and poverty, which was not diminished during his term of office, the prior was as much inter- ested as his predecessors had been in the course of public events. Like most of the clergy and religious of the period, he was in sym- pathy with Simon de Montfort, whom he looked upon as the champion of the Church ; of his reign, signing there the confirmation of Luton church to St. Albans (Cott. MS. Otho, D iii. f. 118b). 11 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 42. 12 Thid. 29, 100. 13 By Geoffrey de Cauceys (ibid. 29). 14 Half the manor of Bradbourne with the chapels of Ballidon and Tissington- went with the church (Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.], 255). 16 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), ili. 149. 16 Tbid. 158. 17 Tbid. 163. 18 Tbid. 178. 19 Tbid. 199. 30 Thid. 205-10, a Tbid. 213. 23 Tbid. 221. 372 RELIGIOUS HOUSES and in 1263, when the earl visited Dun- stable, the prior went out to meet him, and admitted him to the fraternity of the house.’ In 1265 a council was held at Dunstable to consider the possibility of peace with the de- feated barons, and the king and queen visited the house in the course of the year?; but though Simon de Montfort had been there quite recently, and the sympathy of the prior with his cause could not have been al- together a secret one, no fine was imposed upon the priory on that account. In 1274 a long and expensive suit was begun between the prior and convent of Dunstable and Eudo la Zouche,? who had become lord of Houghton and Eaton Bray by his marriage with Millicent de Cantelow. Eudo refused to recognise the rights of the prior (established not only by charter, but by long custom) to a gallows and prison in Houghton ; he released one of his men from the prison and overthrew the gallows. Under the next prior, William le Breton, the gal- lows was restored ; but Eudo still refused to recognise the prison as the prior’s right, and presently erected a gallows of his own. The dispute went on for some years, and, after the death of Eudo, was continued by his wife Millicent until the year 1289, when it was finally decided in favour of the prior. The poverty and difficulties of the house went on increasing, although great efforts were made, after the deposition of William le Breton and other officers of the monastery in 1279,° to curtail expenses and get in ready money for the payment of debts. Corrodies and chantries were granted to several persons, manors and churches were let out to farm, and in the year 1294 the usual allowance for one canon was made to serve for two.° 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 226. Richard de Morins had been an admirer of the elder Simon de Montfort, whom he calls ‘ genere nobilis sed fidei fervore nobilior; in armorum exercitio nobi- lissimus,’ and adds that the son was ‘ debilior patre’ (ibid. §2). 2 Ibid. 240. 3 [bid. 261-3. 4 Ibid. 343-53. This later dispute turned on the rights of the common of Houghton, and Milli- cent appealed to Domesday, saying her ancestors held the land of the king by barony. (It is assumed that this Millicent is the same as the wife of Eudo la Zouche.) 5 Ibid. 283. 8 Ibid. 387. The amount of white bread used in the house, and the expenses of the almonry and guesthouse were all lessened at the same time. Shortly before this, in the year 1290, the chronicler records how the body of Queen Eleanor passed It was just at this time that the king was asking for subsidies for his Welsh war. By an accumulation of misfortune, in the same winter the outer walls of the priory had collapsed in the wet weather, and their hayricks had been destroyed by fire ;” and the tithes due to the Hospitallers from North Marston church were in such long arrears that a new arrangement had to be made to pay them off.® In 1295 the house at Bradbourne was so poor that all the wool produced there had to be granted to the sup- port of the three brethren who served the church and chapels.? The later pages of the annals are a long story of poverty and struggle to get clear of debt; and the continuous narra- tive ends dismally enough with the account of the expenses of the installation of John of Cheddington, which amounted (with the addition of the debts of the previous prior) to £242 8s. 441° Of the fourteenth century there are only a few scanty notices, the only events told at any length being those con- nected with the peasants’ revolt in 1381, when the prior, Thomas Marshall, appears by his courage and moderation to have saved his own house from serious loss, and his burghers from punishment."* In 1349 an attempt was made by Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and marshal of the king- dom, to prove that the prior held his lands by barony ; but the jury which was sum- moned at that time declared upon oath that the lands had always been held in pure and perpetual alms.’? King Henry VI. visited Dunstable in 1459,'* but there is no record of his relations with the priory ; its history during the fifteenth century is not recorded in any way. But in the sixteenth century it was again connected with an important historical event, when on 23 May 1533, in the Lady Chapel of the conventual church at Dunstable, Archbishop Cranmer pronounced through Dunstable on the way to London, and rested a night in the church: at the erection of the memorial cross the prior assisted, asperging with holy water (ibid. 362). 7 Ibid. 388. 8 Ibid. 394. The arrears amounted to 210 marks. By the Concordia made at Westminster 4 marks a year were to be paid in future and all arrears forgiven except 12 marks. The arrange- ment with the Hospitallers for this church dated from 1185 (Harl. 1885, f. 24; Nero, E vi. f. 236). ® Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), 401. 10 Tbid. 409. 11 [bid. 418. 12 [bid. 412. 13 Thid. 420, 373 A HISTORY OF the marriage between Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon to be null and void." In 1535 the prior, Gervase Markham, with twelve canons, signed the acknowledgment of the Royal Supremacy,’ and on 20 January 1540-1, he surrendered his house to the king and received a pension of £60.° There were only thirteen at this time be- sides the prior; eleven canons and two lay brothers; in the early days there were pro- bably more, though never a very large num- ber. Between the years 1223 and 1275 only twenty-five admissions to the novitiate are recorded,‘ and thirteen deaths; but the entries were perhaps not always made with equal care, and the entrance of lay brothers was not noticed at all. Besides the religi- ous there were a number of other inmates of the priory ; a ‘new house for the carpenters and wheelwrights within the court’ was built in 1250°; there was accommodation also for the chaplains of the monastery, and for boarders who had bought corrodies, as well as pensioners in the almonry. The porter of the great gate was sometimes a secular,’ un- like the custom of Benedictine houses.® 1 Rymer, Federa, vi. (2), 182-3. 2 Ibid. 202. 3 L. and P. Hen. VIII. xv. 1032 (333, 350b). 4 In Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), 11. s They are mentioned however often in the annals: one was killed in defence of the rights of his brethren by the men of the prior of La Grave (ibid. 213), and one of them, ‘ Brother John the Carpenter,’ once invented a new mill, ‘nov struc- ture et exterius inaudite,’ which was to be drawn by only one horse ; but when they began to use it, four strong horses could scarce move it! (ibid. 402). 6 Ibid. 183. Several other handicrafts were practised by the canons and their dependants. In 1255 a canon made three windows for Step- pingley church (ibid. 197), and in 1283 it is stated “we made a clock over the pulpit’ (ibid. 296). 7 The porter in 1287 must have been a secular, as he was asked by the canons to buy a house and prevent the Dominicans extending their boun- daries (ibid. 338), and had an anniversary granted him after his death in 1291 (ibid. 371). ~ The account of a disturbance caused by the quartering of some of the king’s falconers on the priory in 1276 gives a curious picture of the house in the thirteenth century. The king was staying in the neighbourhood, and his men were quartered partly on the townsmen of Dunstable and partly on the priory. In the evening the party from the priory went out after supper and joined their fellows in the town, and after wandering about in a riotous fashion, they returned to the priory. The monks, who had all retired for the night, were awakened suddenly in the dormitory by a clamour in the court. The falconers had just burst in (probably half intoxicated) after beating Z BEDFORDSHIRE There can be no doubt of the good order of the house during the time of Richard de Morins ; he would scarcely have been chosen twice to visit other houses unless he had ruled his own with care and diligence. During his forty years of office canons of Dunstable were at least five times elected priors to other monas- teries of the order—at Caldwell, St. Frides- wide’s, Ashby and Coldnorton.® Bishop Grossetéte visited the house once in 1236, not so much to inquire into the daily life of the priory as to investigate its title to several appropriate churches ; but he exacted an oath on this occasion from all the canons individually, and one of them fled to Wo- burn rather than submit to it® The bishop came again in 1248, while Geof- frey of Barton was prior ; when the cellarer, accused by many, fled before his coming to Merivale*!; but he does not seem to have found fault with the convent in general, and his next visit in 1250 was for purposes of his own.'?_ Archbishop Boniface came in 1253, but made no complaint.* In 1274 Bishop Gravesend sent a canon of Lincoln to visit Dunstable, who left his corrections in writing"; and in Advent of the same year he made a personal visitation.*® In November of 1279 Bishop Sutton came and discharged his office ‘strictly and without respect of persons.’ The sub-prior and certain others were re- moved from their charge, and forbidden to hold office in future, and certain ‘ less useful members’ of the household expelled; in May of the following year he deposed the prior, William le Breton, from all pastoral care.’ It seems most likely that these depositions were on account of mismanagement rather than for any personal failings; the great necessity and heavy debts of the house called for stringent measures, and William le Breton had shown himself (like Abbot Richard ot the porter and knocking down every one who re- sisted them : they even went so far as to kill one of the chaplains of the monastery, and handled some of the brethren so roughly that the prior had the great bell rung and summoned the townspeople to the rescue. They came very readily, having their own grudge against the falconers, and the prior had at last to defend his enemies against his friends, for fear of incurring the king’s displeasure (ibid. 273). 9 See account of Caldwell Priory, and dna. Mon. (Rolls Series), ili. 144. to Tbid. 152. Ibid. 178. Ibid. 182. Ibid. 190. 14 Thid. 264. 18 Ibid. 267. 16 [bid, 283. eee oO bt om 374 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Woburn in a similar case) unable to meet the difficulty. There is no sign of any other grave faults having been committed, nor of anything like luxurious living! The new prior, according to the bishop’s advice, set himself to limit the expenses of the whole house and assigned a fixed income to the kitchen for the future? ; the deposed prior had a proper maintenance assigned to him at Ruxox.? The canons seem to have borne no illwill to Bishop Sutton for his corrections, and were ready on his next visit to their church (which was made not officially but only in passing) to praise him for his excellent sermon.* Other visitations of his are men- tioned in 1284,° 1287,° 1288,” and 1293 °; the last was only to confer orders. Arch- bishop Peckham came in 1284, but found all well® (fas the bishop had been there quite lately,’ the chronicler nafvely remarks) ; and Archbishop Winchelsea in 1293.1° The only serious charge that could be laid to the door of the canons all through the thirteenth cen- tury was their inability to keep clear of debt; and the record shows that this was often quite as much their misfortune as their fault. There are many incidental remarks of the chroniclers which serve to show that the tone of the house was thoroughly religious, and that the canons were faithful in keeping their rule.1* It will suffice to instance, early in the 1 Bread and beer are constantly spoken of as the ordinary fare of the canons and their boarders also ; and when the beer failed in 1274 the chronicler notes as an exceptional event the purchase of five casks of wine, adding ‘ multum profuit nobis,’ as if it were a novelty, or perhaps implying that they had been living lately on poorer food than usual, on account of poverty. The chronicle is full of these little life-like touches, which increase both its interest and its trustworthiness. 2 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 287. 3 The prior was allowed fourteen white loaves and fourteen gallons of better beer, with 8d. for ‘ companagium ’ every week, and an allowance of 20s. a year, with corrodies and pay for a servant and astable boy. This is a very scanty allowance com- pared with that granted to a retiring prior in 1328 at Hexham, of the same order (Annals of Hexham [Surtees Society], I. appendix Lxxiii). The house at Ruxox was used as a residence for priors who had resigned as early as 1202 (4m, Mon. [Rolls Series], ili. 29). 4 Ibid. 294. 5 Ibid. 313. 6 Tbid. 340. 7 Thid. 342. 8 Ibid. 391. 9 Ibid. 315. 10 Thid. 391. 11 In 1288 a novice was not allowed to make his profession, as being too illiterate, frivolous in be- century, the generous treatment of the two young canons (one only a_ novice), who escaped by night through a window and went to join the Friars Minor at Oxford. ‘They were indeed solemnly excommunicated and compelled to return ; but after they had done their penance in the chapter house and had been absolved, they were allowed a year to consider the matter, and if after that time they preferred the stricter order, they were granted permission to depart; if not, they might remain at Dunstable.’* A good deal later than this, in 1283, the apologetic way in which the chronicler relates how the prior went out to dinner with John Durant }° is sufficient to show that the ordinary rules and customs of the order were not commonly broken. During the fourteenth century there were several visitations. ‘There is no notice of any by Bishop Dalderby ; but he commissioned the prior of Dunstable in 1315 to visit the nuns of St. Giles-in-the-Wood in his name.*4 Bishop Burghersh in 1322 wrote to order the prior and convent to take back a brother who had been ona pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and asserted that he did so with the permission of his superior ; anda little later the prior was cited for refusing to obey this injunction.’® In 1359'* Bishop Gynwell, passing by the priory, noticed ‘ certain insolences and unlaw- ful wanderings’ of the canons, and wrote to reinforce the rule that none should go beyond the precincts of the monastery without reason- able cause, nor without the permission of the prior ; and ordered further that such per- mission should not be too frequently given. He also reminded them of the rule that none should eat or drink outside the monastery, or talk with seculars without permission. In 1379 Bishop Buckingham confirmed an important ordinance of Thomas Marshall,?? haviour, and of a restless disposition (ibid. 342). There are frequent references to the divine office. At the same time the chronicle is full of human nature. 12 Thid. 133. 13 [bid. 302. ‘’This was quite against the custom observed in our monastery,’ says the chronicler, ‘but it may be excused, because he owed John so much money, and dared not offend him.’ 14 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 317d. 16 Ibid. Memo. Burghersh, 75d, 76d. 18 Tbid. Memo. Gynwell, 340. The prior of Dunstable was elected definitor in this year at the general chapter of the order, as well as in 1340. In 1350 a prior of Dunstable was president, being one of the very few who were able that year to assemble (Cott. MS. Vesp. D i. ff. 47, 50, §4). it Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, f. 82d. The prior alludes in this ordinance to the ‘ consti- 375 A HISTORY OF setting apart certain funds for the education of one of the canons at Oxford. The prior alludes to the poverty of his house, which was so great that were it not for the help of friends they would not be able to live decently and honestly, and religion would be diminished. Hitherto there had not been enough canons nor enough money to set apart one for special study ; but the prior now wished to do so (partly out of the profits of a chantry estab- lished by his own family), ‘ seeing the advan- tage of learning and the necessity of preach- ing, the priory being a populous place where a great number of people come together.’ All this certainly points to a satisfactory state of the priory under Thomas Marshall, and accords well with what we know of his character from other sources. Bishop Grey’s* injunctions are the only notice that we have of the internal history of the priory during the fifteenth century ; they do not indicate any special laxity, and only repeat the usual orders as to silence, singing of the divine office, the unlawfulness of eating and drinking after compline, going to Dun- stable or having visitors without permission. And so again at the very end, just before the dissolution, the silence of Bishop Longland,? and the king’s choice of the priory for the solemn announcement of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, constitute an indirect evidence in favour of the house. On the whole the priory of Dunstable shows a very good record in the matter of discipline and order, with only a few lapses. The original endowment of the priory was, as already stated, the lordship of the tutions of Saint Benedict and the holy fathers,’ ordering one canon to besent tostudy. There is nothing of the sort in the rule of St. Benedict ; but the reference is interesting, as showing how well aware he was of the similarity of his own rule to that of the Benedictines. The Augustinian was commonly supposed to bea lighter rule; but in all the essential features of the common life it was the same. 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Grey, 197d. 2 The bishop’s silence in this case is really signi- ficant, as he had received information from the ‘honest people of Dunstable’ about the misdeeds of the Dominican prior of Langley Regis in 1528, and must surely have heard at the same time of the misdeeds of the canons, if they had been conspicu- ous. His statement about the house at Langley, that it was ‘in utter decay and but little religion kept,’ has indeed been thought to refer to Dun- stable Priory (S.P.C.K. Diocesan History of Lincoln, 217); but the reference in the original letter is beyond all doubt (L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 4315). Henry VIII. visited Dunstable in 1525 (ibid. iv. 2558). BEDFORDSHIRE manor and town of Dunstable? ; to which was added under Henry II. the lordship of Houghton Regis,‘ and under John, the king’s house and gardens at Dunstable.’ ‘The manors of Stoke and Catesby, and of Ballidon in the Peak,® are mentioned in the annals as the property of the priory during the thirteenth century. In 12917 the tithes of St. Peter and St. Cuthbert, Bedford, Dunstable, Stud- ham, Totternhoe, Chalgrave, Husborne Craw- ley, Segenhoe, Flitwick, Pulloxhill, Steppingley, Harlington, Higham Ferrers, Newbottle, Cub- lington, a moiety of Great Brickhill, Pattishall and Bradbourne belonged to Dunstable Priory,® with pensionsin other churches. ‘The tempor- alities at this time were only valued at a little more than £50 ; the annals of the house state the total income in 1273 as £107.° The knight’s fees attributed to Dunstable in 13167° were half a fee in Husborne Crawley and Flitwick, and another half in Pulloxhill, with some small fractions besides ; they are practi- cally the same in 1346 ** and 1428."? The valuation of the whole property of the priory in 1535 1° amounted to £344 135. 44, the first report of the Crown bailiff to £266 175. 63d., including the manors of Studham, Wadlow, Stokehammond, Gledley, Grimscote, Catesby and Shortgrave, and the rectories of Studham, Totternhoe, Pulloxhill, 3 Harl. MS. 1885, f. 102. 4 Rot. Chart. (Rec. Com.), i. 107. 5 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 28. 6 Tbid. 277, 278, 337. 7 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 8 The priory presented clerks to Rushden several times during the thirteenth century, and to North Marston, Bucks, until 1450, when this church was exchanged with Wedonbeck, which had previously belonged to the canons of Windsor (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Rotherham, 1-7). St. Mary’s, Bedford, had been certainly confirmed to Dun- stable by Henry II. ‘ of the gift of Henry I.,’ but it had also at an earlier date been granted by William the Conqueror to Lincoln Cathedral. There were several suits between the prior and the dean and chapter on the subject, e.g. Cur. Reg. R. 24, 2 John, n. II in dorso: the presentation being finally yielded to the latter, and the former retaining only a pension of 20s. Even this pension was granted in 1334-5 to the dean and chapter (Inq. ad q. d. 8 Edw. III. n. 9). The church of St. Peter referred to here was the one called St. Peter Dunstable, which was pulled down in the sixteenth century ; the priory received a pension from the rector until 1336, when it was granted to the dean and chapter of Lincoln (Pat. 9 Edw. III. pt. i. m. 28). ® Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 259. 10 Feud. Aids, i. 21. 11 Tbid. 24, 33. 12 Thid. 36, 43, 46. 18 Valor Eccl. (Rec, Com.), 206 et seq. 376 Warven ABBEY CounTERSEAL. Warven ABBEY. DunsrasLe Priory. DunsTaBLeE Priory. DunstaBte Priory CounTERSEAL. ow 3 eceeivesrr Newnuam Priory. Newnuam Priory CounTersEat. t Mr. Worthington G. Smith kindly called attention to this seal, the matrix of which, now in the possession of Sir John Evans, he found. The subject is supposed to be the martyrdom of St. Katherine. The legend is ‘scripTa LEGE TEGE PN[EUM]a TEGE.’ RELIGIOUS Harlington, Husborne Crawley, Flitwick, Segenhoe, Bradbourne, Newbottle, Pattishall and Weedon.! Priors oF DUNSTABLE Bernard.” Cuthbert.? Thomas,’ occurs 1185, resigned 1202 Richard de Morins,® elected 1202, died 1242 Geoffrey of Barton,® elected 1242, re- signed 1262 Simon of Eaton,’ elected 1262, died 1274 William le Breton,® elected 1274, deposed 1280 William de Wederhore,® elected 1280, re- signed 1302 John of Cheddington,’° elected 1302, died 1341 John of London," elected 1341, resigned 1348 Roger of Gravenhurst,!? elected 1348, died 1351 Thomas Marshall,? elected 1351, died 1413 John Roxton,'* elected 1413, resigned 1473 Thomas Gylys,’® elected 1473, resigned 1482 Richard Charnock,'® elected signed 1500 1482, re- 1 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 242. 2 Introd. to Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. Dr. Luard says that the predecessors of Richard de Morins were Bernard and two persons named Thomas. A charter made in the time of Arch- bishop Theobald refers to a grant ‘ tempore B. prioris’ (Harl. MS. 1885, f. 25b. See also above, P- 371): 3 Harl. MS. 1885, ff. 73b, 24, 26b. Mentioned as contemporary with Robert, Bishop of Lincoln (1148-66), and Cecily, mother of Robert d’Albini, who founded Beaulieu Priory. It is however necessary to add that the reading of the name as ‘Cub.’ and ‘Cutbto’ in the two latter references is a little uncertain. On f. 73b it is ‘Cutb’tus’ beyond doubt. 4 Ibid. f. 24 ; Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 29. 5 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 28. 6 Ibid. 158, 219. 7 Ibid. 220, 263. 8 Ibid. 264, 284. 9 Thid. 284. ae 409, and Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, 259d. 11 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh. 12 Ibid. Inst. Gynwell, 374. 13 [bid. 389. 14 Ibid. Inst. Repingdon, 305d. 16 Pat. 12 Edw. IV. pt. 1, m. 20. 16 Pat. 22 Edw. IV. pt. 2, m. 30 and m. Io. HOUSES John Wastell,’” elected 1500, died 1525 Gervase Markham, elected 1525, surr. 1540 The seal of the priory’® used in the fifteenth century (round and large) represents St. Peter seated, holding the keys in the left hand, and the right raised in benediction. Legend : SIGILLUM ECCLIE SC . . PET . . LE. The seal of Prior William *® de Wederhore (affixed to a document dated 1286) is the same as above; the counter-seal has a king and a saint (very indistinct), each standing under a crocketted canopy, the prior kneeling in prayer below. Legend: .... ILLUM WILLELMI PRIORIS DE . . . 7. THE PRIORY OF NEWNHAM The Augustinian priory of Newnham was not actually built until some time after the accession of Henry II., but it may fairly claim to be the most ancient religious foundation in Bedfordshire, in so far as it still held the church of St. Paul’s and succeeded to the endow- ments of the secular canons there. It is implied in the Domesday Survey that these latter were in Bedford before the Conquest ; and Leland records the tradition that they lived in houses ‘ round about the Church.’”° How long they had been there, and whether they were in any way descended from the original monastery of Bedford, named in 971 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it is difficult now to discover: all we know is that they were living at the Conquest as secular canons, and had property at Biddenham and Bedford.™ Their patron at this time must have been Hugh de Beauchamp, who first held the barony of Bedford ; a little later Payn de Beauchamp, son of Hugh,” and his sister Ellen are both named as benefactors."* But the foundation of the priory of Newnham was the work of Simon de Beauchamp, son of Payn, about 1166. ‘Tradition ascribes the change to the scandal caused by the affair of 17 Lansd. MS. 963; L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 2046. He lived till 1561 (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 238), and was buried in the priory church (Beds N. and Q. i. 74). 18 Harl. Ch. iii. C 27. 19 Wol. Ch. x. 33. 20 Quoted Dugdale, Mon. vi. 373. 31 See ante Domesday Translation. 22 Add. MS. 24465 (Chartul. of Wardon), f.39 says the Hugh of Domesday was father of Payn who succeeded to the barony of Bedford, and also of Simon, who married the heiress of Eaton, and was ancestor of the other line of Beauchamps. 23 Harl MS. 3656, £. 14b. 1 377 | 48 A HISTORY OF Philip de Broi,! one of the canons, whose name has become famous in connection with the quarrel between Becket and the king. This man was accused of homicide, and cleared himself by oath ; but the evidence was so much against him that Simon Fitz Peter, the king’s justiciar, summoned him to a new trial, On receiving the summons, Philip broke out into such angry words and insults against the justiciar that the king considered his own authority slighted in the person of his delegate ; and the archbishop, fearing that a very severe punishment would follow, inter- posed and passed sentence upon the offender in his own court. This sentence—the loss of his prebend, and further some penance for two years only—was considered by the king as a glaring instance of the failure of the ecclesiastical courts in dealing with serious crimes ; it contributed something towards the estrangement between him and the arch- bishop,” and also made it advisable for the canons to change their-place of residence. This story has quite good authority, but it has probably no casual connection with the foundation of Newnham Priory. The change from secular to regular canons was going on in many religious houses at this time ; the scandal of Philip de Broi can only at the most have hastened an event already inevit- able. All that Simon de Beauchamp says? is that prudent and religious men had often counselled him to turn the gifts and endow- ments of his ancestors to a use more productive of reverence to God and honour to true religion, and that he was at last convinced of the wisdom of their advice. He names the king, Henry II., Pope Alexander III., Blessed Thomas the Martyr and Bishop Robert of Lincoln as having given their consent.* The transference of all the endowments of the secular canons to William, first prior of Newnham, was solemnly made in the church 1 Mr. Round is of opinion that he was related to Robert de Broy, a feudal tenant of Simon de Beauchamp in 1166. He is called ‘ nobilis genere’ by William of Canterbury in Materials for the Life of St. Thomas (Rolls Series), i. 12. 2 The story is told with some variations in Materials for Life of St. Thomas (Rolls Series), i. 12, 13, iii. 45; and Ralph de Diceto, Ymag. Hist. (ibid.), i. 213, under the date 1164. 3 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 14b. « The death of Robert de Chesney in 1166 fixes the decision of Simon to that year at the latest : nor could it have been very much earlier, partly because of the consent of Archbishop Thomas, and partly because of the age of Simon, who could not have been born earlier than 1146. His mother’s first husband, Geoffrey de Mandeville, died 1144. BEDFORDSHIRE of St. Paul in the presence of many witnesses2 The old canons were six in number : Nicholas archdeacon of Bedford, was one of them.® They probably kept some portion of their prebends for the term of their lives ; perhaps being presented to or left in possession of churches in the gift of the house. The priory was specially rich in churches: four- teen are named in the first charter of Simon de Beauchamp, and eleven of these were still the property of the house in 1535. Simon’s endowment was a generous one ; his mother and other benefactors added to it,” but his own title to the name of founder is unquestionable. During the first century of their existence the canons of Newnham had a good deal to endure. They had first to suffer from the violence of Fawkes de Bréauté, who with the consent and approval of King John actually pulled down the greater part of the church of St. Paul to strengthen the fortifications of Bedford Castle ; he was probably an oppres- sive neighbour all the time he lived there, until the capture of the castle in 1223 by Henry III. The losses of the canons were partly made good to them by the gift of the church of Tinden, and by a present of stones from the dismantled castle.® It was in the same year (Easter term 1223) that the priory was involved in a very in- teresting suit for the church of Aspley Guise. There were three claimants in the field, namely Fawkes de Bréauté and the priors of Dunstable and of Newnham. The last parson, Nicholas, has been presented by Roger de Salford, who held a knight’s fee of Simon de Beauchamp in 1166. ‘This Roger had then given the advowson to the church of Dun- stable, his charter being confirmed by Simon de Beauchamp and by Robert Bishop of Lincoln (1147-66). The prior of Newnham 6 Simon’s third charter (Harl. MS. 3656, f. 16). The same parties are named as consenting; and one of the witnesses is ‘Count Alberic, my uncle’ —Aubrey de Vere, his mother’s brother. 8 The others were named William, Philip, Gilbert, Richard and Ralf. The foundation charter of Chicksand promises the church of Haynes “after the death of Philip de Broi’ ; the churches of Southill, Salford and Aspley certainly belonged to the old canons (Harl. MS. 3656, ff. 18, 49b; ibid. 1885, f. 24). 7 Leland represents Countess Roais as the prime mover, and her son only confirming the act of his mother : but the charters give exactly the opposite impression. 8 Pat. 1 Henry III. m. 13; Matth. Paris, Chron. Majora, iii. 87. Close 8 Henry III. makes the stones of the castle a recompense for furnishing mangonels, etc., for the siege. 378 RELIGIOUS HOUSES pleaded that Guy de St. Walery and Aubreye his wife had given the church to St. Paul’s, Bedford, their gift being confirmed by Simon de Beauchamp and Bishop Hugh (1186- 1200). It was proved that Roger had only held Aspley as baillee until he was assigned land to the value of £10 elsewhere (which he afterwards received in Stotfold), and that Guy de St. Walery had recovered Aspley against him by fine. Therefore his gift was invalid, and Newnham was assigned the church under St. Walery’s gift." But new troubles soon arose through the tyrannical behaviour of William de Beau- champ, son of the founder; who, en- couraged by his wife Ida, proved himself quite as much an enemy to the religious of the neighbourhood as Fawkes de Bréauté had been. The first difficulty was connected with the church of Wootton, and other property of the priory ;? but it was at the election of a prior that William’s conduct at last brought him under episcopal censure. The charter of Simon had provided that the convent should have the right of free election, only asking his consent as patron: William wished to do the part of both bishop and patron. There was some unpleasantness over an election in 1247 ;° but in 1254 William came in person to the priory with his wife, and compelled the new prior, Stephen, to come outside the gate to him to receive the temporalities ; then, taking him by the hand, he led him into the church, and installed him in his place in choir. This, however, was too much for the bishop: he at once visited the priory and made William apologise for his invasion of the liberties of the church.® It is possible that the great charter of Newnham, in which William confirmed all the gifts of his father and others, including the licence for t Bracton’s Note Book, iii. 474-6. There had been several disputes about the church before this. Nicholas the archdeacon (1145-81) con- firmed the gift of it by Roger de Salford to Dunstable, and explained that it had once formed a part of his prebend, but now he resigned all his rights in it to the priory (Harl. MS. 188s, f. 24); while on the other hand Simon de Beauchamp wrote to the Bishop of Norwich to say that if the prior of Dunstable or any one else should bring forward a charter to prove his right to the church, it would not be with his warrant: and that the charter of Roger de Salford, who, as his tenant, had no power to give the church to any one with- out his consent, was invalid (Harl. MS. 3656, f. 20). 2 Harl, MS. 3656, ff. 19, 21b, 22. 3 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 172. 4 Ibid. rgr. 5 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 54. free election, belongs to this time.6 The next of the Beauchamps, another William, made some reparation for the misdeeds of his father.” When the barony of Bedford passed to the Mowbrays the advowson of the priory went with it. An attempt was made in 1347,° at the death of John of Astwick, to prove that it was held of the king in capite; but the jury then called proved conclusively that it was held always of the barony of Bedford, and that Sir John Mowbray was at that time the patron. In 1352 Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal, confirmed the charter of William de Beauchamp.® The foundation charter, charter of transference to Newnham and others were confirmed by Henry IL, Edward J., Edward II., Edward III. and Richard II. ; the last royal charter was that of Henry IV. dated 15 February 1408-9.1° Of the internal history of the priory we know very little. It seems to have had a good reputation at all times. Hervey, the prior in 1228 (previously prior of Osney),. was commissioned in that year, with Richard de Morins of Dunstable, to visit all the houses of their order throughout the dioceses of Lincoln and Coventry ; two priors resigned in consequence. In Grossetéte’s unsparing visitations of 1235 and 1249 no charge was laid against this house ;*? and no other visita- tion is recorded until that of Bishop Burghersh some time before 1322. The prior at that time, John of Astwick, was very unpopular, and anxious in consequence to resign; but the bishop thought it sufficient to urge the brethren to be more exact in their obedience.'® Bishop Buckingham sent an order in 1387 that ‘peace should be established between the priories of Newnham and Caldwell; ’*4 8 Ibid. ff. 8-12. 7 Harl. MS. 3656, ff 2tb, 22. The elder William died in 1260, the younger in 1262 (Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 215, 219). 8 The question of the advowson had been before the bishop in 1314 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 280d). The king’s escheator, Roger PEstrange, held it in 1271 and 1272 (ibid. Rolls of Gravesend) in the interval between John de Beau- champ and Sir John Mowbray, and this naturally led to the assumption that it was held of the king. 9 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 32. 10 [bid. ff. 25-36. 11 Ann, Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 112. 12 Tbid. 146, 179. It seems, however, that Grossetéte purposed a special visitation to Newn- ham, and was not satisfied with its condition, though the Dunstable chronicler does not allude to this (Introd. to Letters of Grossetéte [Rolls Series}). 13 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Burghersh, 38. 14 Ibid. Memo. Buckingham, 342d. 379 A HISTORY OF it would be interesting to know what was the matter in dispute, as there was usually so much goodwill between the various houses of Austin canons in this county. A year later? a brother was received back, who had become an apostate through discontent and was now repentant. At the visitation of Bishop Grey ? (1431-6) the discipline of the house was still good ; all that the bishop enjoined was that the sub-prior should do the work of the prior, now grown old and feeble.? Later, when Cardinal Wolsey undertook to reform the whole Augustinian order, it seems that Newnham was still amongst the more satis- factory houses. At the great general chapter summoned at Reading in June 1518 (the first after the lapse of more than a century) the prior of Newnham was chosen as one of the definitors, and made visitor for two coun- ties.? The prior, John Ashwell, with fourteen canons and two lay brothers, signed an acknowledgment of the royal supremacy in 1535.’ It is probable that these seventeen were but a small proportion of the original number.® Nothing is known of the circum- stances of the surrender of the house, except that it was made bya prior who had not been long in office,® and took place on 2 January 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 348. 2 Ibid. Memo. Grey, 199. At this visitation it was enjoined that on every Saturday the warden of the church of St. Paul’s, Bedford, should give all the fruits of the church to the bursar of the monastery, to be used for the clothing of the canons and other necessities. 3 Cott. MS. Vesp. D i. ff. 64, 70. General chapters were held at Newnham in 1292 (dan. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 390) and in 1340; priors of Newnham were definitors in 1340 and 1365 (Cott. MS. Vesp. D i. ff. 46b, 56). 4 Rymer, Federa, vi. (2),200, and 7th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Records. 5 There is nothing in the documents relating to the priory to show the number of canons at any time before the end; but the income in the thirteenth century, on the analogy of other houses, would have supported thirty or forty. 6 John Burne signed the surrender. In 1524 the prior of Newnham was ordered to take the fealty of Agnes Gascoigne, the newly-elected abbess of Elstow (L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 487). In 1536 the prior of Newnham (unnamed) was accused of having fraudulently denied all know- ledge of a box of money deposited with him by the chancellor of Lincoln some time before. A certain priest and servants of the chancellor (who had just died) declared that they consigned the money to the prior, and gave the contents of the box in detail (ibid. xi. 1407). The results of the inquiry are not stated. BEDFORDSHIRE 1540-1.” A pension of £60 was granted to the prior, John Burne, and pensions of other sums to fifteen canons besides. The original endowment of the priory by Simon de Beauchamp comprised the tithes of fourteen churches—St. Paul’s Bedford, Ren- hold, Ravensden, Great Barford, Willington, Cardington, Southill,® Hatley, Wootton, Stags- den, Lower Gravenhurst, Aspley, Salford, Goldington ; portions of land in many places which had belonged to the old canons; the tithes of all his markets, assarts and woods ; the castle mill and another with some lands and water attached ; the free use of all waters belonging to the castle, as far as Fenlake, for fishing, navigation and breeding swans; and the right to pasture a certain number of cattle with his own free of cost. These gifts are rehearsed with much detail and some additions in the Great Charter of William de Beau- champ. At the time of the Taxatio the in- come of the priory appears as £164 10s. 8d.,° of which £92 6s. 8d. is made up of spiritu- alities. The largest items amongst the tem- poralities are lands, etc., at Goldington, Salpho, Stotfold and Sharnbrook ;1° and these are found in the Feudal Aids as portions of knights’ fees. In 1302 the prior of Newnham held half a knight’s fee in Sharnbrook, several fractions in Goldington, and half a knight’s fee in Salpho.t In 1316 half a fee in Goldington, a quarter in Salpho, one seventh in Bidden- ham, one quarter in Southill.t? In 1346 half a fee in Cotes and half a fee in Sharnbrook.'* In 1428 the same as in 1346 with the addi- tion of half a knight’s fee in Salpho, and a quarter in Blunham and Moggerhanger.'* A comparison of the Valor and the Taxatio shows however that the property of the priory was almost the same in extent at both dates, varying very little in the course of history. It was all within the county of Bedford. Not one of the churches of the original endow- 7 Ibid. xv. 11. 8 Of Southill only two-thirds; the remaining third was not granted till 1255 (Cal. of Pap. Letters,i. 314). Turvey appears in the charters of Simon and Wil- liam de Beauchamp (Harl. MS. 3656, ff. 8, 14b), but it never could have belonged to Newnham. ® The church of Gravenhurst is not included, as it does not appear in the Taxatio ; possibly other items are missing. 10 These places are all named in the foundation charters, but the largest item there is three hides in Cardington. 11 Feud, Aids, i, 11, 15, 16. 12 Tbid. 17, 18, 19. 13 Thid. 28, 29. 14 Tbid. 39, 42, 45. 380 RELIGIOUS HOUSES ment was quite lost, though three were only paying small pensions in 1535. Besides divers parcels of land the prior held the manors of Stotfold and Cardington.* The total valua- tion in 1535 was £284 12s. 112d.; in 1541 the ministers’ accounts give only a total of £200 175. 83d? Priors oF NEWNHAM William,’ first prior, appointed 1166 Ralph,* occurs 1198 and 1205 Eustace,® occurs 1214, died 1225 Harvey,® elected 1225, died or resigned 1238 Walter,” elected 1238, died 1247 Walter of Chawston,® elected 1247 Stephen,” elected 1254, died 1264 William le Fraunceys,'° elected 1264, died 1271 William le Ros," elected 1271, died 1272 Michael of Goldington,’? elected 1272, died 1283 John of Bedford," elected 1283, resigned 1300 Adam of Sherborne,"* elected 1300, re- signed 1300 William of Biddenham,*® elected 1300, died 1307 William of Thorp,'® elected 1307, re- signed 1315 John of Astwick,'” elected 1315, resigned 134 John of Amersham,'® resigned 1348 elected 1347) 1 There are two royal charters (Harl. MS. 3656, f. 27) confirming to Newnham the manor of Stan- bridge, to be held of Hugh de Beauchamp ; this appears in the last valuation as ‘ Rents in Stanbridge manor—{4.’ 2 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 377. 3 Harl. MS. 3656, ff. 16, 70. 4 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 18, 73. 5 Ibid. 86. Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 93 has ‘E. prior of Newnham died; Herveius prior of Oseney elected.’ 6 Ibid. 93, 191. 7 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte. 8 Ibid. ; Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 172. 9 Tbid. 191. to Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Gravesend. This is the last time that one of the Beauchamps appears as patron. 11 Tbid. 12 Tbid. 13 Tbid. Rolls of Sutton; Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 297. 14 Linc, Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, 258. 16 Ibid. 16 Tbid. 263. 17 Ibid. 273d. 18 Tbid. Inst. Bek, 105; Harl. MS. 3656, f. 28b Henry of Woodford,'® elected 1348, died 1349 William of Woodford,”° elected 1349 Nicholas Baldock,”' elected 1362, died 1369 John of Biddenham,” elected 1369, died 1395 William of Woughton,” elected 1395 John Bromham,™ occurs 1437 and 1441 John,”* occurs 1477 and 1490 Henry of Newnham,” occurs 1493 John Ashwell,” occurs 1535 John Burne,”® occurs 1540 The conventual seal was large and elabo- rate. It represents St. Paul seated on a throne, under a trefoiled canopy, with sword in his right hand; an angel above on either side, and groups of votaries under arches to the right and left, with the moon above one group and the sun above the other. Legend: SIGILL’ PRIORIS ET CONVENTUS SCI PAULI DE NEWEHAM. | Counter-seal : three niches. In the middle St. Paul kneeling with an executioner behind him ; above his head pautv and possibly a hand of blessing. St. Luke and St. Titus on the left and right, with their names above them. Legend : MUCRO * FUROR * SAULI ° FUIT * ENS[IS * PAS|SIO * PAULT.”? There is a seal of William of Woughton, prior 1395, pointed oval, representing St. Paul seated in a canopied niche, pinnacled and crocketted, holding a sword in the right hand and a book in the left, between two shields, one with a lion and the other a cross paty ; and a prior below, half length, with hands folded in prayer. Legend: 8. FRATRIS WILLI DE WOKETONE PRIORIS DE NEWEHM.”” The seal of Henry de Newnham (1493) is the same. Legend: s. F’RIS HENRIC’ NEWNAM PRIORIS DE NEWEHAM.™ 19 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Gynwell, 379. 20 Tbid. 21 Ibid. ; Harl. 3656, f. 30b. 22 Linc, Epis. Reg., Inst. Buckingham, 384. 23 Tbid. 366. : 24 Charter in the possession of F. A. Page-Turner, Esq., and Cat. of Anct. Deeds (P.R.O.), A 2315, 2871. Ibid. A. 552 ; Dugdale, Mon. vi. 373. 28 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 3733 Add. MS. 5827, f.175b, from Reg. Acad. Cant. a” Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 187; Rymer, Federa, vi. (2), 200. 20 L. and P. Hen. VIII. xv. 1. 2 B. M. seals, lix. 63, 64. 30 [bid. lviii. 40. at [bid, lvili. 41. 381 A HISTORY OF 8. THE PRIORY OF CALDWELL The origin of the priory of Caldwell is somewhat obscure. Its earliest charters of endowment are of the reign of Henry II., but undated ;* but asa prior of Caldwell witnessed a charter granted by Robert Bruce to Harrold? during the lifetime of Malcolm IV. of Scot- land (1153-65), we may conclude that this house, like so many others in Bedfordshire, was founded early in the reign of Henry II. or perhaps in that of Stephen. The founder’s name is unknown. ‘The Close Roll of 13 Edward III.® speaks only of ‘ the ancestors of Simon Barescote of Bedford’; Leland, by naming Simon Barescote in one place, and in another assigning the foundation to the Beau- champs or the Beaumonts, shows that there were several contradictory traditions in exis- tence in his time. The priory belonged at first to the order of the Holy Sepulchre,® and was dedicated to St. John Baptist ; ° but after the thirteenth century it probably ceased to be in any way distinguished from the other Augustinian houses. The canons of the Holy Sepulchre were only separated from other Augustinians by their name, and the scarlet badge on their cloaks’; in all pro- bability they kept exactly the same rule, as on two occasions canons of Dunstable were invited to be priors of Caldwell, while it was still called by the name of the Holy Cross. Four churches in this county—Bromham, Roxton, Sandy and Oakley with the chapel of Clapham—belonged to Caldwell at the beginning of the thirteenth century ; Mars- worth and Broughton in Buckinghamshire, and Arnesby in Leicestershire before 1291 3° 1 One is contained in an Inspeximus of Richard II. Pat. 13 Rich. II. pt. 1, m. 21, and witnessed by Hugh de Beauchamp: the other in Pat. 2 Henry VI. pt. 3, m. 23, and witnessed by Richard Bishop of Winchester. 2 Lansd. MS. 591, f. 4b. 3 Close, 13 Edw. IIT. pt. i. m. 38. 4 Quoted Dugdale, Mon. vi. 391. 5 So called in the charter of 57 Henry III. (Dugd. Mon. vi. 393). 6 The grant under the charter just mentioned is to God, to Blessed Mary and the brothers of the Holy Cross; but this does not necessarily imply that the house was dedicated to St. Mary. The charters of Henry II. are granted to ‘ his canons regular of St. John Baptist, Bedford,’ or ‘ his poor canons of St. John Baptist’: and in the Acknow- ledgment of the Royal Supremacy they are the canons of St. John Baptist and St. John Evangel- ist (Rymer, Federa, vi. [2], 198). 7 Helyot and Bullot, Hist. des Ordres Mon. ii. 116. 8 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 63. BEDFORDSHIRE Tolleshunt Major in Essex at a later date.® Its temporal possessions lay for the most part within the county of Bedford, and were never very extensive; in 1291 they were worth less than £50. At the siege of Bedford Castle in 1224, the canons assisted the king by providing him with materials for mangonels, and received in return a share of the stones from the dis- mantled walls.1° At this time, as well as later, they seem to have been on friendly terms with the canons of Dunstable. It was by the advice of the prior of Dunstable, amongst others, that Prior Eudo of Caldwell resigned and fled to the Cistercians of Meri- vale, before the visitation of Bishop Grosse- téte ; and the sub-prior of Dunstable took his place.'* The reason why he was afraid of the visi- tation is not stated, only that he was ‘accused by many’; he had only been prior five years, and during his term of office had been sent by the pope to settle a dispute as far away as Yorkshire’? In 1287 there seems to have been some uncertainty about the advowson of the priory, and the election of John of Yprés was hurried so as to prevent any claim being made,'* In the year 1339, at the death of Prior Roger of Wellington (or Wymington) the king’s escheator seized the lands of the priory ; partly on the ground of a rumour that in the time of Henry III. the advowson had been taken into the king’s hand, and partly be- cause the prior held two carucates of land and a rent of 100s. within Bedford town, and held in fee farm of the king. The canons however appealed to the king himself, who thereupon wrote to the escheator to molest them no further, saying that he had heard from the present prior that Simon de Barescote, whose ancestors founded the priory, gave the advowson to Roger the Marshal, and he to William le Latimer; and that thus it had descended to Robert de Ufford and his wife who then held it.’ The churches belonging to the priory 9 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 189. 10 Close, 8 Henry III. ; Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 88. 11 Tbid. 179. 12 Cal. of Pap. Letters, i. 230. 13 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), ii. 340. 14 Close, 12 Edw. I. pt. 1, m.18; 13 Edw. III. pt.1,m.38. This reference to the recent death of Roger of Wellington makes it difficult to account for Robert de Lufwyk, whois said to have resigned at the election of William of Souldrop in 1338 (Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Burghersh, 319). 382 Newnuam Priory. Newnuam Priory. CaLpWeELL Priory. Busumeap Priory. BusumMgaD Priory CouNTERSEAL. RELIGIOUS HOUSES were not very wealthy, and sometimes they proved a source of expense rather than of revenue. The chapel of Clapham in their own county, and the church of Marsworth in Buckinghamshire must have cost the canons a good deal of money. A part of the tithes from both of these had been granted to Osney Abbey at its foundation,’ amounting to a pension of 12 marks ; and from the first the canons of Caldwell seem to have made efforts to escape this payment. In 1279? they had to be ordered to pay it ‘on pain of excommunication’ ; but in the beginning of the fourteenth century Hugh de Beauchamp, who was prior at the time, began a long series of suits with Osney on the same subject.° He was seemingly unsuccessful, for this pen- sion was still reckoned among the liabilities of the priory in 1535.4 It was probably the pressure of poverty at this particular time that stirred the prior to make these efforts; he was then rebuilding the con- ventual church, and only a few years be- fore Bishop Dalderby had granted a licence to the canons to beg alms for this purpose, as they were so poor. Several chantries were granted at about the same time.® The priory did not grow any richer as time went on. In 1318 the canons parted with the advowson of Broughton church to the dean and chapter of Lincoln’; and in 1525 with that of Sandy to Bishop Longland and his brother. The bishop wrote of it in the 1 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 249. 2 Bodl. Lib. Oxon. Chart. Osney Abbey, No. 22. This charter is described in the calendar as referring to Canwell Priory ; but the name in the charter is * Caldewelle,’ and the mention in it of the tithes of Marsworth and Clopham makes the reference quite clear. It is addressed by the prior and sub-prior of St. Oswald’s, Gloucester, to the dean of Bedford. In 1253 the chronicler of Dunstable notices that the canons secured the presentation to Marsworth, but gained nothing from the church (Anan. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 189). 3 Ibid. Beds Chart. 2-19; Beds R.i. The latter is dated 1322; and the name of Hugh de Beauchamp occurs frequently in the charters. The pension is called the ‘ ancient and accustomed pension,’ and valued at 12 marks. 4 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 190. 12 marks, 5 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 176d. Licence to prior and convent of Caldwell to beg alms for the repair and rebuilding of their church on account of poverty. Ibid. Memo. Burghersh, f. 39d. Indulgence for the fabric of the convent- ual church, 1321. 6 Tbid.; Inst. Dalderby, 302; Inst. Burghersh, 292, 294, 294d. 7 Pat. 11 Edw. II. pt. 1, m. 8. 8 Harl. Ch. 83, A 29. It was still same year as ‘a very poor place,’ and said that instead of the £100 which the king had asked for in his letter, he had only instructed the prior to contribute £20 towards the loan which was being collected from all the religi- ous houses.® The prior, Thomas Dey, with six canons and two lay brothers, subscribed to the Royal Supremacy in 15357°; and as the house had an income of only £109 8s. 5d." clear, it was surrendered under the act of 1536.” The visitation of Bishop Grossetéte in 1249, when Prior Eudo fled to the Cister- cians, has been already alluded to. Bishop Buckingham visited the house in 1387** and reminded the canons, according to the custom of a visitation, of the duties of obedience, silence, assistance in choir, and proper ad- ministration of the goods of the monastery. He laid special stress on the necessity of in- structing the younger canons in song and in grammar, that they might be fit to perform the divine office. They were forbidden under pain of imprisonment and excom- munication to enter taverns in Bedford, or to visit the monastery of Elstow. Bishop Repingdon ** repeated these injunc- tions not to go to Bedford, or to the abbey of Elstow on any pretext whatever ; and one of the canons was forbidden to go outside the cloister at all. ‘The canons generally were not to drink anywhere but in the prior’s presence, which seems to imply some laxity in this respect. When Bishop Grey *° visited the priory he found John Wymington, the brother whom Bishop Repingdon had ordered to keep within the cloister, holding the office of sub-prior ; he had now to be deposed. There is nothing special in the injunctions of this time which 9 L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 1330. 10 Rymer, Federa, vi. (2), 198. 11 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 190, 192. 12 DL, and P. Hen. VIII. x. 1238. (List of those houses under {200 revenue.) ‘The actual date of the surrender is not given, nor the pensions. 13 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, f. 342. With regard to Elstow, it should be remembered that the two houses were near together; and also that in 1318, when Hugh de Beauchamp became prior of Caldwell, Elizabeth de Beauchamp became abbess of Elstow. If these two were nearly related, it may have led toa certain amount of intercourse between the two houses, which would be natural enough, and yet call for some care and watchful- ness on the part of superiors. 14 Ibid. Memo. Repingdon, 232 (undated). 15 Ibid. Memo. Grey, 200d. Just before this the bishop had ordered the prior and convent to receive back an apostate canon who had repented. 383 A HISTORY OF might point to laxity ; the bishop only said that the canons were not to go to Bedford, that hunting dogs were not to be kept in the monas- tery, and that the common seal was to be kept under lock and key. And it seems that Bishop Longland accused the house of no worse fault than poverty. The original endowment of the priory can- not be exactly stated, as the foundation charter is not in existence. Robert of Houghton granted to the canons the site of the priory in 12721; and in 1336 they held lands and tenements in Bedford, Bromham, Milton, Colesden, Roxton, Chalverston, Sandy, Sutton, Potton, Thurleigh, Holwell, Felmersham and Shelton.? The churches held by the priory in 1291% were Oakley with Clapham, Roxton, Bromham, Sandy ; with Marsworth and Broughton in Bucking- hamshire and Arnesby in Leicestershire. In 1535 they still remained in its gift, except Broughton and Sandy ; Tolleshunt Major in Essex being added.* In 1302 ° the prior of Caldwell held half a knight’s fee in Chaw- ston and small portions in Milton Ernest and Eaton; in 1346°% the same half-fee ; and until 1346 he held also one quarter of a knight’s fee in Edlesborough in Bucking- hamshire.” The first report of the Crown bailiff gives a total of £134 15s. 84d., in- cluding the demesne lands of the priory, the manor of Shelton and divers parcels of land in the counties of Bedford, Warwick, Northampton, Leicester, and the rectories of Clapham, Oakley, Roxton-cum-Colesden, Bromham, Marsworth, Arnesby and ‘Tolles- hunt Major.® Priors oF CALDWELL Osbert,® occurs 1178 and 1186 1 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 391. Dated 7 July, 57 Henry III. 2 Close, 13 Edw. III. pt. 1, m. 38. 3 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), and the Linc. Epis. Reg. Arnesby had been held since the reign of Henry II. Pat. 13 Richard II. pt. 1, m. 21. 4 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 189. 6 Feud. Aids, i. 9. 6 Ibid. i. 34. 7 Ibid. i. 74. 8 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 391. ® Harl. MS. 3656, £. 65, and Gorham, History of St. Neot’s, II. lxxiv. (O. prior of Caldwell). Pro- bably not the first prior. A charter of Robert Bruce to Harrold (1153-65) is witnessed (Lansd. MS. 391, £. 4b) by ‘ Nicholas Archer, prior of Caldwell, Gosbert, dean of Lincoln, etc.’; but the name sounds unlikely at such an early date ; and the chartulary in which it occurs is a trans- cript of the fifteenth century, and contains mis- takes in copying. It is suggested that ‘ Nicholas BEDFORDSHIRE Hugh,*® occurs 1200-1 Alexander," elected 1212, died 1229 William,’ elected 1229, died 1244 Eudo,'* elected 1244, resigned 1249 Walter of Caddington,'* elected 1249, resigned 1272 Matthew of Bedford,'® resigned 1287 John of Yprés,’® elected 1287, resigned 1313 John de Lacu,!” elected 1303, died 1318 Hugh de Beauchamp,'® elected 1318, resigned 1326 elected 1272, Roger of Wymington,’® elected 1326, occurs 1332 Robert of Lufwyk,”° resigned 1338 William of Souldrop,” elected 1338, resigned 1348 Richard of Hardwick,” elected 1348, died 1349 Ralph of Derby,” elected 1349, died 1375 Thomas of Stratford, elected 1375, died 1396 Ralph Portreeve,”® elected 1396, resigned I Thomas Pollard,?® elected 1397, died or resigned 1420 Thomas Bole,?’ elected 1420, occurs 1425 John Ampthill,?* occurs 1437 John Bedford,”® resigned 1479 Richard Derby, elected 1479 Thomas Cople,*! elected 1492, resigned 1509 Archer ’ ought to be ‘ Nicholas Archid ’ (the arch- deacon of Bedford from 1145-81). 10 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 27. 11, Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 39 (sub-prior of Dunstable). 12 Tbid. 116. 13 Tbid. 166. 14 Tbid. 179. 16 Tbid. 255. 46 Thid. 340. 17 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, 260d. 1e Ibid. f. 276. 19 Ibid. Inst. Burghersh, 298d; Close, 6 Edw. ITT. m. 18d. 20 Tbid. 319. a bid. 22 Ibid. Inst. Gynwell, f. 376. 23 Tbid. 382. 24 Ibid. Inst. Buckingham, 392. 25 Thid. 369. 26 Tbid. 27 Tbid, Inst. Fleming, 121; Pat. 3 Henry VI. pt. I,m. 21. 28 In an old charter in the possession of F. A. Page-Turner, Esq. 2 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Rotherham, 132. 30 Thid. 31 Ibid. Inst. Smith, 457. 384 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Robert Hanslape,' elected 1509, resigned 1525 John Biggleswade,? elected 1525, died 1531 Thomas Dey,* elected 1531 The common seal of the priory repre- sented our Lady crowned, and standing with the holy Child in her arms; on the right St. John the Baptist, on the left St. John the Evangelist ; the prior kneeling below. Legend : sIGILLUM COMMU . . . ORATUS DE CALDEWELLE.* g. THE PRIORY OF BUSHMEAD The Augustinian priory of Bushmead ° was founded some time during the reign of Henry II. by Hugh de Beauchamp, great- grandson of the Hugh of Domesday. The exact date is difficult to determine, but it must have been before 1187, as in that year the founder was slain at the Crusades.’ Leland® says that the canons of Bushmead venerated a certain hermit as the founder of their house, and perhaps, like Beaulieu, it was built on the site of an old hermit- ‘age; but the first prior was a chaplain of Colmworth named William.? The Beau- 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Smith; Harl. Ch. 83, A 29 (June, 1525). 2 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Longland; List of priors who attended convocation, L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 6047. 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Longland, 39d; Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 192. Acknowledgment of Supremacy, Rymer, Federa, vi. (2), 198. + B. M. seals, lviii. 30. The same seal is attached to Harl. Ch. 83, A 29. A-small seal in white wax of the twelfth century, representing a hand embrac- ing a crutch, with the legend siciLu’ Prioris DE CALDEWELLE, is mentioned by Gorham, History of St. Neo#’s, II. lxxiv. 5 Besides the charters in Dugdale, Mon. vi. 280, there is a chartulary of the priory in the possession of W. Hugh Wade-Gery, Esq., of Bushmead, of which an abstract was printed in Beds N. and Q. iii, 130-45. All references to the chartulary given below are taken from this account. ® The genealogy followed here is taken from the chartulary of Warden (Add. MS. 24466, ff. 31b, 39), which states that Hugh of Domesday had two sons : Payn, baron of Bedford, and Simon, whose son Hugh married the heiress of Eaton, and founded the other line of Beauchamps; Hugh’s son was Oliver, who had a son Hugh, founder of Bushmead Priory. The Bushmead foundation charters are granted by ‘ Hugh son of Oliver.’ This genealogy is not the same as that in Dugdale’s Baronage, 224-5. 7 Ibid. 225, from Roger of Hoveden. 8 Leland, Coll. i. 68. ® Named in the foundation charter (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 280). z 385 champs of Eaton Socon retained the patron- age of the house until the middle of the fourteenth century, when it passed to Sir John Engayne,’° and later to the Braybrooks.! Sir Gerard Braybrook, who died in 1427, and was buried in Colmworth church, left directions in his will for the prior of Bush- mead to sing his requiem.!? Other benefactors were Simon de Pateshull and several members of the family of Wildeboef of Eaton.? The earliest papal bull securing special privileges to the house was that of Innocent III. in 1198.'* ‘The canons were probably few in number even in the thirteenth century, as their total income in 1291'® was only about £25 ; a prior and three canons are mentioned in 1283,'* and the same number appears in a charter of 1523,'7 and in the acknowledg- ment of the Royal Supremacy a little later.’® The house has no history to speak of ; it is only once mentioned in the Annals of Duns- table, under the year 1249,'° when the prior was present, with the heads of the other Augustinian houses of the county, at the visitation held by Bishop Grossetéte at Cald- well, and joined them in counselling Prior Eudo to resign. In 1283 the prior, Richard Foliott, and three of his canons, with four other persons, were accused by Agnes de Legh 10 Bushmead Chartul., No. 30 (dated 1346). Confirmation of Sir John Engayne (Add. MS. 24465, f. 31b). 11 Henry Braybrook was among the earlier bene- factors (Bushmead Chartul., Eaton Charters, Nos. 32, 69 [mentioned with Prior Joseph] ). 12 His will (in the Lamb. Lib.) is printed in Beds N. and Q. ii. 222. It has some interesting directions. On the day after his death was to be said a mass of our Lady and a requiem by note, with two wax tapers each of twelve pounds weight standing the one at his head and the other at his feet all through the service, and twelve poor men clothed in russet frieze, each of them holding a torch throughout the service. Every poor person at the funeral was to have 4d., and the prior of Bushmead to do the service and have for his travail 6s. 8d., and every canon of his house that was present 35. 4d., and all other priests 12d. 13 Bushmead Chartul., Eaton Charters, Nos. 34, 35, 56-61; Foundation Charter, Dugdale, Mon. vi. 280. 14 Bushmead Chartul. No. 1. Other bulls were granted by Honorius III., Gregory VII. and IX., and Innocent IV. 18 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 16 Pat. 11 Edw. I. m.13d. An appeal made against Richard Prior, and ‘ three canons of the house,’ which does not necessarily imply that there were no more at that time. 17 Harl. Ch. 83, A 28. 18 Rymer, Federa, vi. (2), 199. 19 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 178. 49 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE of having been the cause of her son’s death! ; and in 1342 Prior Robert of Lubenham was involved in a suit with the abbot of St. Alban’s about the manor of Caldecote in Herts, which he claimed against a tenant of the abbot’s, but finally quitclaimed before the day appointed for the hearing of the case.? The episcopal registers contain very few references to Bushmead, and not a single visitation is recorded. It may be gathered from this source that the conventual church was rebuilt, like so many others, early in the fourteenth century, but the canons were too poor to complete it without a licence to beg alms?; and that about the same time a canon who had left the monastery ‘ through levity of. mind,’ and wandered about in secular habit, returned penitent, but found his prior unwilling to receive him back.* About the same time another of the canons, Richard of Stoughton (who was afterwards prior and probably died of the pestilence), obtained a licence from the bishop to keep a school of sixty boys, and teach them ‘the science of grammar’*®; but it is not known how long this good work was continued. As the in- come of the house was less than £100, it was surrendered under the act of 1536 (probably on 8 February), and the prior received a pension of £8.° The priory was dedicated to St. Mary, and its first endowment by Hugh de Beauchamp and his brother Roger included very little more than the site, with certain rights of way, wood, water and pasture, and the tithes of Eaton Park ;7 but by 12364 number of small rents and parcels of land had been added, not only in the county of Bedford, but also in Huntingdon, Cambridge, Northampton, and 1 Pat. 11 Edw. I. m. 13d. Nothing further is known of the circumstances, but it may have been a similar affair to that of Christine Mustard, who accused the prior and some canons of Dunstable of causing the death of her husband (Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 298, 306). He was really killed at a wrestling match before the hospital of Hockliffe, at which the canons of Dunstable were present. 2 Gesta Abbatum Mon. S. Albani (Rolls Series), ii. 330. ting Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 163d (1310); ibid. Memo. Burghersh, 21, 35d (1321). (Indulgences for the fabric, and a licence to beg alms.) 4 Ibid. Memo. Burghersh, 75d, 77d. & Ibid. 246d (1332). 8 L. and P. Hen. VIII. x. 1238 ; xiii. (1), 1520. The latter, which is a list of pensions paid 28 Henry VIII., has the date 8 Feb. after the name of the prior of Bushmead. 7 Dugdale, Mon, vi. 281-2. Hertford ;8 with the manor of Blisworth, Northants.®° The total income of the priory in 1291 was however only £25 135. 7d. ;*° a taxation recorded in its chartulary gives a total of £35 19s. 4d. The advowson church of Caldecote, Herts, was granted to the prior and convent in 1283,'? but they do not seem to have retained it long. In 1302 the prior held only one-fortieth of a knight’s fee of the barony of Eaton.* The valuation of 1535 amounted to £71 135. gd. ;!* and that which was made immediately after the dis- solution to £83 195. 83d."° (all in small sums except the demesne lands, which were worth £20 15. 4d.) Priors oF BusHMEAD William, first prior *® Joseph of Copmanford,'’ occurs 1231 John de Wildeboef,*® elected 1233,died 1251 Simon of Colesden,'® occurs 1260 Richard Foliott,?® occurs 1283, resigned 1298 Simon of Redburn,” elected 1298, re- signed 1321 Robert of Lubenham,” elected 1321, resigned 1348 8 Bull of Gregory IX. dated 1236 (Cott. MS. Aug. il. 117). 9 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 282, charter of Isabel Pauncefote, and of her daughters, confirming the same. Neither is dated, but the name of Blisworth is on Pope Gregory’s bull and in Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) among the temporalities of the priory. 10 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 11 Bushmead Chartul. (undated). 12 Pat, 11 Edw. I. m. 13. Licence for alienation in mortmain by William de Hurst of the advowson of the church of Caldecote, and a carucate of land. 13 Feud. Aids,i.1§. 14 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.) 18 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 283. 16 Foundation Charter, Dugdale, Mon. vi. 280. The following list of names is taken as it stands from the Bushmead Chartulary, where however no dates are given, only the time that each prior was in office. Fortunately the dates can be supplied for nearly all from other sources. 17 Bushmead Chartul. under Barford Charters, reference to Joseph, 1231. 1s Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Hugh de Wells (on the resignation of Joseph). The Bushmead Chartul. adds: ‘ qui obiit monachus Wardon, 1251.’ 19 Bushmead Chartul. Stilton Charters, 20 Pat. 11 Edw. I. m. 13d. 21 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Sutton, 104; Jocelyn of Stoughton, the cellarer, was elected, but Simon accepted by the bishop. The chartulary gives him fifty years of office, which the registers do not corroborate. 22 Ibid. Inst. Burghersh, 291. ‘This prior has thirty-four years assigned him, which is again in excess of the interval between the institutions, 386 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Richard of Stoughton,' elected 1348, died 1349 Simon of Grantesden,? elected 1349, resigned 1350 Adam of Leverington, elected 1350, resigned 1355 John of Risley,? elected 1355, resigned 1385 William of Lidlington,* elected 1385 William Chanewe,® elected 1444, re- signed 1465 William Stoughton, elected 1465, died 14 Thomas Stoughton, elected signed 1481 Robert of Potton, elected 1481, resigned 1482 John of Bosworth, elected 1482, died 1493 1473, te- Gregory Norwich, elected 1493, resigned 1510 Nicholas Smith, elected 1510,1° resigned 1531 Richard Rogers,!* 1531 Robert Burre,'® elected 1531 elected died 1531, The seal of the priory, affixed to Harl. Ch. 83, A 28, is in excellent preservation, representing our Lady seated with the holy Child on her knee, a bishop with crosier on either side, and the prior crouching below. Legend: PRESULIS IN PRATO‘* FAMULOR DE VIRGINE NATO. Reverse: the Assumption, our Lady encircled by angels, a crown sus- pended above her head. Legend: s. ECCLIE ET CONVENTUS SCE MARIE DE BISSEMEDE. HOUSE OF AUSTIN NUNS 10. THE PRIORY OF HARROLD The priory of Harrold was probably founded between 1140 and 1150,° on land which was then a part of the honour of Huntingdon, and held by Sampson le Fort’ of the Scottish kings. The site of the priory with the churches of St, Peter, Harrold, and Brayfield (Northants) was originally granted to Gervase, abbot of St. Nicholas of Arrouaise, that he might send there some nuns of his order® : they were at first governed by a prior, with a few canons,° to protect or guide the 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Gynwell, 375. 2 Ibid. 362d. He is said in the chartulary to have resigned after a year and a day, and his successor in 29 Edward III., which corresponds with the next institution. 3 Ibid. 393. He is said to have been prior twenty-eight years. 4 Ibid. Inst. Buckingham, 344. 5 Ibid. Inst. Alnwick, 184d. 6 One confirmation charter of Malcolm IV. (1153-65) speaks of all the lands which they held in the time of his father and grandfather ; and the first charter of Sampson le Fort speaks of the assent and consent of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1148 (Lansd. MS. 391, ff. 4, 6). 7 ‘Sampson Fortis ’ is the name on the charters ; but Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), ii. 329 speaks of ‘ Samp- son le Fort ’ as donor of the church of Harewold. 8 The charters of Sampson le Fort and of Simon, Ear! of Northampton, were made direct to Gervase, ‘ad sustentationem sororum suarum sanctimoni- alium super ecclesiam de Harewolde’ (Lansd. MS. 391, #. 4, 5). ® The prior and canons are mentioned in one charter of Malcolm IV. (Lansd, MS. 391, f. 6); sisters ‘according to the institutions of St. another has ‘sororibus et fratribus eas tuentibus secundum institutiones ecclesiz Sancti Nicholai de Arrowasia ’ (ibid. f. 5), and that of Simon, Earl of Northampton, has ‘sororum sanctimonialium et cum eis Deo servientium’; one of Sampson le Fort has only the sisters (ibid. f. 4), and another the ‘brothers and sisters’ (Dugdale, Mon. vi.). It seems fairly clear that the sisters were the first consideration, and that the brothers were only there for the sake of the sisters (as originally in the Gilbertine rule). It would be easier to speak with confidence if there were any other house of Arrou- asian nuns besides this with which to compare it; but though there were plenty of houses of Arrou- asian canons (Nutley, Bourne, St. Peter’s Dorchester, etc.), this appears to be the only house of nuns of this order in England. 10 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Smith, f. 458. For- merly prior of Huntingdon (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 280). L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 6047 (Convocation of 1529). The five intervening names are given from the chartulary, reckoning the years backwards from Nicholas Smith, in the hope that the later entries are more correct; which at last leaves only twenty years for William Chanewe instead of twenty-five. In the original they stand thus: William Chanewe (or Chanu), twenty-five years ; William Stoughton, eight years; Thomas Stoughton, eight years ; Robert Potton, one year; John of Bosworth, eleven and a half years ; Gregory Norwich, seven- teen years. 11 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Longland, 249 (Char- tulary : ‘quondam prior de Broke et prior istius ecclesie qui obiit post secundam mensam prelationis suz A°D. 1531”). 12 Thid. 246d. 13 An allusion to the name Bissemede (Bishop’s mead), 387 A HISTORY OF Nicholas of Arrouaise.’* The priory has some distinguished names amongst its earlier bene- factors. Sampson le Fort’s charter was probably confirmed first by David I. of Scot- land and his son Henry, Earl of Huntingdon,? and certainly afterwards by Malcolm IV.,? William the Lion,* Simon, Earl of Northamp- ton,® and Robert Bruce®; while Baldwin des Ardres, Count of Guisnes, granted to the nuns the church of Stevington before 1153,” and the name of Roger de Quincy,® constable of Scotland, appears later. Before the year 1181 however the prior and canons had ceased to exist, and the nuns were making efforts to free themselves from immediate subjection to the abbot of Arrouaise ; and after appeals from both parties to Pope Alexander III. the matter was finally referred to the arbitration of St. Hugh of Lincoln. Robert of Bedford, the precentor of the cathedral, was sent to treat with the abbot of Missenden, who was acting as proctor to the abbot of Arrouaise; and the result of his negotiations was that Gervase set the nuns free for ever from subjection to the parent abbey, and yielded to them the two churches of Harrold and Brayfield, with all the other gifts of Sampson le Fort, on con- dition that they paid half a mark yearly to the abbot of Missenden.® Thenceforward until the dissolution the convent was ruled by a prioress,‘° having sometimes a warden or master,!! like other small houses of nuns, and at one time a few lay brothers.’? Of the 1 The charter of Malcolm IV. (Lansd. MS. 391, f. 6) speaks of lands held in the time of his father and grandfather. 2 Tbid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. f. 5. 5 Ibid. 5b. 6 Ibid. f. 4. This was Robert de Bruce, son of Payn de Bruce, who held lands in Bedfordshire in 1131 (Pipe R. [Rec. Com.], 103). 7 Lansd. MS. 391, f. 11b; it was confirmed by ‘Eustace the king’s son,’ which must be before 1153. 8 Tbid. £. 13. ® The whole of this transaction is found in Lansd. MS. 391, ff. 18b, 19; but it is dated quite clearly 1288: which is manifestly impossible. It may perhaps be a mistake for 1188, which would do quite well for St. Hugh and Robert of Bedford. At the same time it seems extraordinary that Gervase, who was made abbot of Arrouaise in 1124 (Helyot and Bullot, Hist. de Ordres Mon. ii. 107), should still be abbot in 1188. Gervase’s name also appears on the foundation charter of Bourne, 1138. 10. A prioress is first mentioned in connection with Harrold early in the thirteenth century (see list of prioresses). 11 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 14. 12 Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 31, ‘To the prioress and convent of Harewold, to receive back a brother who being professed returned to secular life.’ BEDFORDSHIRE number of the nuns there is no indication until the very end, when there were only six at the outside. Nor is it easy to discover whether in giving up their direct connection with the abbey of Arrouaise, they ceased at once to observe the Arrouasian rule and to wear the habit of that order ; or whether, as seems more likely, the change was later.’* At the dissolution they were reckoned as ordinary Austin canonesses.‘* The house has very little history of any kind. ‘The chartulary in the British Museum,"® which contains an abstract of the charters in the possession of the priory in the reign of Henry V., shows various small grants of lands and tenements in Bed- fordshire,and a few suits concerning churches.'® The latest item of importance is an account of the impropriation of the church of Shaker- stone in 1416.'7 Early in the thirteenth cen- tury the advowson of the priory was probably held by Ralf Morin of Harrold and his son John,'® and in 1279 certainly by Sir John de 13 Most of the other Arrouasian houses lost their distinctive features and became Augustinian be- fore the dissolution, except Nutley and St. Peter’s, Dorchester. There was probably never much distinction. The order of St. Nicholas of Arrouaise in Artois was founded by Heldemar of Tournay and his hermit companions in 10go (Helyot and Bullot, Hist. des Ordres Mon. ii. 107), about the same time that the Augustinian order was being reformed or re-organised on the basis of the rule taken from St. Augustine’s letter to certain reli- gious women (No. 211, ed. Migne), and quite independently ; but afterwards it was looked upon as merely a branch of the Augustinian order, so much so that the abbot of St. Peter’s, Dorchester, was fined for not appearing at the last great chapter of the order, though he pleaded that his house was Arrouasian, and that he was not therefore bound to come (Cott. MS. Vesp. D i. f. 64). The Arrou- asian canons originally wore a white habit and no linen ; they ate no meat, and kept a strict rule of silence (Hist. des Ordres Mon. ii. 107). 14 Leland—quoted Dugdale, Mon. vi. 330. 16 Lansd. MS. 391. 16 Stevington was claimed by the son of Baldwin des Ardres, but finally quitclaimed (ibid. f. 12b), and confirmed by John to the nuns of Harrold (Chart. R. 7 John, m. 1). The same church was again claimed in 1405 by Philip de Cornewayle, lord of Stevington, by right of his wife Constance, Countess of Huntingdon; but awarded to the prtioress by Bishop Repingdon (Lansd. MS. 391, f. 13b). The church of Brayfield was also disputed at one time (ibid. f. 15b). 17 Tbid. £. 18 (dated 1416) and 58b; also Pat. 7 Henry V. pt. 2, m. 39; and Linc. Epis. Reg. Mem. Repingdon, 128d, 129. 1s There are several charters between Ralf and John Morin and the prioress (Lansd. MS. 391, ff. 7b, 8); and Ralf Morin in 1203 accused the 388 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Grey. The name of Sir Gerard Bray- brook? occurs frequently in some later charters. The last patron of all was Lord Mordaunt of Turvey, one of whose ancestors had witnessed a foundation charter of the priory. ‘The house was probably never very rich, though no exact statement of its in- come can be made earlier than the dissolu- tion. During the time of Bishop Sutton, in 1298, a nun of Harrold was found guilty of a breach of her vow of chastity ;? and in 1311 Bishop Dalderby issued a commission for the visitation and correction of this house amongst others. No account of this visita- tion is preserved, nor are any others recorded ; only in 1369° Bishop Gynwell appointed Dame Katherine of Tutbury (afterwards prioress) to administer the revenues of the priory during vacancy, and to reform ex- cesses. It may be that during her term of office the house was well governed, and had a better reputation ; but this is of course mere conjecture. The name of this prioress and her successor, Emma Drakelowe, are found in many of the charters relating to tenements and leases in the chartulary. Nothing further is known of the state of the priory, internal or external, until it was visited by Dr. Layton in 1§35,° with other houses in Bedfordshire. If the accusations contained in his letter to Cromwell were true, the priory had certainly ceased to be in any real sense a religious house. He declared that he found there a prioress and four or five nuns, of whom one had ‘two fair children’ and another ‘one child and no more’; and also describes how Lord Mordaunt had induced the prioress and her ‘foolish young flock’ to break open the coffer containing the charters of the priory, nuns of trespassing on his lands, assarting his woods, etc., while he was disseised of them for the king’s service (Cur. Reg. R. 27, 4 John, n. 2). In 1226 Ralf Morin claimed the church of Eythorne, Kent, against the Archbishop of Can- terbury, who vouched to warrant the prioress of Harrold, who claimed that she and her nuns held the church by gift of Ralf’s father Ralf. Ralf re- plied that they were only entitled to a pension of 2 a year from the church under a charter of the archbishop (Bracton’s Note Book, iii. 543). 1 Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), ii. 329. 2 Lansd. MS. 391, f. 44. 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 192d. The partner of her guilt was condemned to be beaten through the market-place of Harrold; and when he refused to submit, excommunicated. 4 Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 202d. 5 Ibid. Memo. Gynwell, 83. 8 Wright, Suppression of Monasteries, 91 (Letter xlii.) and to seal a writing in Latin of which they did not understand a word, but were told it was merely the lease of an impropriate bene- fice. ‘All say they durst not say him nay,’ he adds ; ‘and the prioress saith plainly that she would never consent thereto.’ In the case of Chicksand, which is charged with similar misdoings in the same letter, the very form and content of the accusation challenge criticism at once. But if the charges laid against Harrold are denied, it can only be on the simple ground that Layton is a dis- credited witness, There is no actual evidence for or against his statements. But unhappily there is nothing at all improbable in the story of Lord Mordaunt and the charters. The patron of a house so small and so poor would be in a position to take avery high hand with the little convent, especially as one or two of the nuns would very likely be members of his own family. However this may be, the house was certainly dissolved under the Act of 1536, and a pension of £7 assigned to the prioress, Elinor Warren.” The priory was endowed by Sampson le Fort with the churches of St. Peter, Harrold, and Brayfield, Northants, with their appur- tenances, and a few acres of land besides.® The church of Stevington ® was added soon after, and that of Shakerstone (Leicester) in the fifteenth century.’° Nostatement can be made as to the value of its lands in the thir- teenth century, as it is not mentioned at all in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, nor in the Feudal Aids. The total income of the priory in 1535 was £40 18s. 2d. ;*4 the first valua- tion after the dissolution, in 1536, amounted to £57 10s., including the four rectories mentioned above, with small parcel of land, rents and tenements in the counties of Bed- ford, Huntingdon and Buckingham.” PrioressEs OF HARROLD Agnes’? died 1245 Basile‘* de la Legh, elected 1245, occurs 1252 7 L. and P. Hen. VILLI. xiii. (1), 1520. 8 Lansd. MS. 391, ff. 4-6. 9 Ibid. f. 12. 10 Tbid. f. 18b. 11 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 204. 12 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 331. 13 Occurs Lansd. MS. 391, f. 37; and Epis. Linc. Reg. Rolls of Grossetéte (at the election of the next prioress), 1245. 14 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte ; her name occurs under the date 11 November 1245 in Lansd. MS. 391, f. 373 and in Willis’s Hist. of Bucks, p. 159 (1252). 389 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Juliane* Amice,? occurs 1264 and 1268 Margery of Hereford,® resigned 1304 Cecily de Cantia,* elected 1304 Petronilla of Radwell, elected 1335, re- signed 1354 Christine Murdak,® elected 1354, resigned 1357 Maud de Tichemersh,’ elected 1357, oc- curs 1364 Katherine of Tutbury,® elected 1369, oc- curs 1384 Emma Drakelowe,® occurs 1405 and 1413 Elizabeth Chiltern,’* resigned 1470 Margaret Pycard,™ elected 1470 Helen Crabbe,’® died 1501 Eleanor Pygot,’® elected 1501, died 1509 Agnes Gascoigne,’” elected 1509 Elinor Warren,?® surrendered 1536 _ The seal of the priory represented St. Peter, standing, in mitre and chasuble, two keys in the right hand and a crosier in the left. The legend is very indistinct, only the last two words being legible... PETRI CATENAS.!? HOUSE OF THE GILBERTINE ORDER 11. THE PRIORY OF CHICKSAND The Gilbertine priory of Chicksand was founded about the year 1150 by Roais?° and her husband Payn de Beauchamp, baron of Bedford. ‘The foundress had been previously the wife of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who died in 1144, and was buried in the abbey of Walden, which he had founded some years before.* After the death of her second husband, the Countess Roais was frequently at Chicksand, and when her eldest son,!? Geoffrey de Mandeville, died in 1 Occurs Lansd. MS. 391, f. 8, in an agreement with Ralf Morin, witnessed by W. de Beauchamp (i.e. before 1260, if this, as seems probable, was the elder William, whose charter to Chicksand Ralf Morin witnessed (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950). 2 Tbid. ff. 8, 13. 8 Occurs ibid. f. 9b with Sir John de Grey ; and Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Dalderby, 261. 4 Ibid. 261 (John de Grey, patron). 6 Ibid. Inst. Burghersh, 320d. 8 Ibid. Inst. Gynwell. 7 Ibid. 397; Lansd. MS. 391, 44. 8 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Gynwell, 83; Lansd. MS. 391, 35, etc. ® Lansd. MS. 391, ff. 13b, 34b, etc. 10 It seems proper to put Countess Roais first, because the priory was always called her foundation, though it was endowed with lands of the Beau- champs. ‘The witnesses to the foundation charter are Henry Murdak, Archbishop of York 1146-53, and Nicholas, archdeacon 1145-81 (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950). Also in it Payn de Beauchamp and his wife ask the prayers of the nuns for their son Simon; but Geoffrey de Mandeville did not die till 1144, and therefore Simon could not have been born much before 1146. 11 Dugdale, Mfon. iv. 142-3 (Chronicle of Walden Abbey). 12 The chronicler of Walden Abbey says that she 1166, she endeavoured to secure his burial there ; but being defeated in this purpose by the monks of Walden Abbey (who naturally desired that the son of their founder should be buried in their church) she retaliated by carry- ing off the whole furniture and hangings of his private chapel for the adornment of her own priory.?° did her best to draw away the hearts of her sons from their own abbey to the priory of Chicksand, which she was then building (ibid.) 13 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Chedworth, 178. 14 Tbid. 16 Ibid. Inst. Smith, 443d. 16 [bid. 17 Thid. 457d. 18 L, and P. Hen. VIII, xiii. (1), 1520. On the fly-leaf of Lansd. MS. 391 is written: ‘ Prioresses occurring in this book: Juliana abt. 1251, Agnes 1257, Amicia 1260 and 1265, Matildis about 1280, Cecilia 1312, Margeria de Hereford 1340, Katherine Tutbury and Emma Drakelowe.’? The same list is given in Tanner, Not. Mon. ‘ from a MS. in the possession of Walter Clavel’ (probably the Lans- downe MS.), and in Dugdale, Mon. vi. 330. It has not been followed here, because it is very diffi- cult to make the dates on the fly-leaf correspond with those in the chartulary. ‘The only Agnes who occurs is certainly earlier than Basile; and the latter name, which is quite distinct in the chartu- lary, with the date 30 Henry III., is not found on the fly-leaf at all; and Margery of Hereford is plainly misdated 1340. 19 The same seal, much defaced, is attached to Add. Ch. 15726. 20 Dugdale, Mon. iv. 142-3. The story is rather an amusing one. As soon as Geoffrey died, his followers proceeded at once with his body to Saffron Walden, without sending any message to Countess Roais, whose masterful disposition they evidently knew well: but a certain clerk escaped from their company and carried the message to her at Chick- 390 RELIGIOUS HOUSES The countess was herself buried at Chick- sand; and the wife of Geoffrey Fitz Piers, the heiress of the Mandevilles, was at first laid in the same church, though she was afterwards carried to Shouldham Priory.’ Simon de Beauchamp and his son William confirmed the gifts of Payn and Roais.? The priory was well endowed, and able at first to support a large number of canons, nuns and lay brothers—perhaps as many as a hundred; but after a succession of bad seasons (which were felt with almost equal severity at Dunstable and other religious houses of the neighbourhood) its resources were so much diminished that in 1257 fifty of the nuns and ten lay brothers had to be dispersed among other houses of the order.* The priory of Chicksand did not recover its prosperity for a very long time. In 1307 * the nuns received a grant of forty acres of land in the neighbourhood, and the whole manor of Chicksand was confirmed to them ten years later ;° but they were neverthe- less in very heavy debt at the time and con- tinued to be so for a good while after. In 1309 ° the prior of Chicksand, William de Hugate, borrowed 100 marks from the prior of Newnham, but this was only a small item. Another prior, John, in 1324" acknowledged a debt of 400 marks to a merchant of Florence ; and not long after he owned himself to be under a bond for 3,300 gold florins, for which he was obliged to demise to his creditor for life the manor in Meppershall called ‘the chapel of St. Thomas,’ with the grange of Haynes, for £200 a year ; besides selling two sand, Whereupon she gathered a band of armed retainers in great haste and came up with the train, and ordered it to proceed at once to Chicksand. But early the next morning the servants of the earl turned the bier the other way, and drove it triumphantly to Walden before she could prevent it. As soon as the body was safely laid before the altar in his church, the abbot sent word to Roais, and kindly invited her to the funeral! This is on the authority of the Walden Chronicle, but the dates of the death of the two Geoffreys are taken from Round—Geofrey de Mandeville. The energetic character and strong personality of this lady may account for the tra- dition which made her foundress also of Newnham Priory, especially as the real founder, her son Simon, was very young at the time when he trans- lated there the canons of St. Paul’s. 1 Leland, Itin, i. 116, and Dugdale, Mon. vi. 975. 2 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950. 3 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 205. ‘ Ing. ad q. d. 1 Edw. II. n. 95. 5 Pat. 10 Edw. II. pt. ii. m. 29. 6 Harl. 3656, £. 77. 7 Close, 17 Edw. II. m. 22d. woods, and granting the fruits of the church of Haynes for seven years. Simon his pre- decessor had demised to the same creditor, a merchant of Genoa, the manor of Wolver- ton, Bucks. An agreement was made by which the alienation of the property in Haynes and Meppershall was to be averted by the payment of £1,200%° in instalments ; and it seems that this sum was finally paid," for the grange of Haynes and manor of Meppershall were still a part of the property of the priory at the dissolution. But the whole convent was in sore straits for many years. Four times*® between 1340 and 1347 the prior was obliged to sue for a remission of the tenths due to the king ; on the first of these occasions he pleaded that all his lands, manors and churches were in the hands of creditors, and that his brethren and sisters knew not how to live, although many of them had been sent away already to other houses of the order; and the second pardon was granted on the ground that the religious were so poor that they were unable to give alms or carry on any of their ordinary works of charity. In the midst of this distress came the great pestilence ; its effects on this par- ticular priory are not known, but it must in one way or other have made matters worse, and it is probable that the number of canons and nuns at Chicksand was never again so large as in the early part of the thirteenth century. During the last hundred years of the priory’s existence its material prosperity seems to have been restored in some measure ; but the deed of surrender gives the names of only eight canons and eighteen nuns.'? Of the internal history of the convent from 1150 to 1535 scarcely a trace remains. In 1324, the time of their great poverty, the king placed one of his wards under the charge of the nuns of Chicksand ;** from which we may gather that they, like other religious of less strict enclosure, took boarders from time to time for the support of the house. At the 8 Jbid. 18 Edw. IT. m. 4. ® Ibid. 10 Tbid. 11 An instalment of £300 was paid at the time of the agreement. 12 Close, 4 Edw. III. m. 24; ibid. 5 Edw. III. pt. 1,m.1; Pat. 9 Edw. III. pt. 1, m. 14; Pat. 11 Edw. III. pt. 3, m. 28. 13 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), No. 56. 4 Close, 17 Edw. II. m. 15. Three daughters of the Mortimer family were placed in three different Gilbertine monasteries, with an allowance accord- ing to their ages. For the youngest, Isabel, the prior of Chicksand was to receive 12d. weekly, and a mark yearly at Michaelmas. 391 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE time of the dissolution it seems that there were only two prioresses' instead of the three prescribed by the rule; but there is no means of finding out whether this was only an accident or whether it was a change of custom. The Gilbertines were exempt from episcopal visitation ; and beyond a few grants of indulgences for their chapels and altars, no mention is made of Chicksand in the Lincoln registers.? The argument from silence is not a very valuable one; but in the case of such an order as this, it is certainly the evi- dence which the nuns themselves would have preferred, if they were faithful to the spirit of their rule. In passing from the rule of St. Benedict to that of Sempringham, we enter a wholly different atmosphere, and have to do with quite another ideal in the religious life. The rule of St. Benedict owes its great and lasting influence mainly to the fact that its author sought to define and organise the normal religious life, to establish a ‘ school of the service of the Lord’ in which large numbers of very varying disposition and attainment might live together in unity. In consequence of this aim his rule is as broad as it is high, and has as much power to tran- quillise as to inspire. But the ideal of the Gilbertines was strictly an ascetic one, for the few and not for the many ; and their rule is full of petty regulations and restric- tions which would be intolerable to all but those who sought after a ‘strange and separate perfection’; who desired not merely to be free from the ‘evil that is in the world,’ but to shut the world out utterly and for ever. No doubt after a time their asceticism, like that of the Cistercians to whom they were so closely allied, became much modified ; but so long as therule in its main outlines remained the same, nuns of such strict enclosure, separated alike from their brethren in the order and the world outside, bound even to recite their office in so low a tone that it could scarcely be heard beyond the party wall of their choir,? could wish no higher praise than that of being quite unknown. The evil report which Lay- 1 Wright, Letter xlii. 2 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 49d; for the altar of the B.V.M. in the conventual church; ibid. Memo. Burghersh, 28d; the same for the altar of St. Katherine ; ibid. Memo. Repingdon, 37, the same for the chapel of the B.V.M. in the priory of Chicksand. 3 The rule of St. Gilbert is given at length in Dugdale, Mon. vi. x.-xcix.; and summarised in Miss R. Graham’s St. Gilbert of Sempringham and his order ; which contains also some of the above references to the Patent and Close Rolls. Suppression of Monasteries, 91, ton gave them at the last is worth very little consideration. He clearly testified that he found them strictly enclosed ; and also that the charges which he laid against two of the nuns on the evidence of ‘an old beldame’ were absolutely denied by the accused, by their two prioresses, and by all their sisters.* If the character of the ladies of the convent (we might add also, the ladies of the Hall) were to stand or fall by the testimony of the village gossips and their own dismissed ser- vants, it would have a poor chance at any period of history. In spite of Layton’s charges, the priory of Chicksand was not surrendered till 22 October 1538,° and pensions were then assigned to all the canons and probably all the nuns also ; the prioresses received £3 6s. 8d. each.® Payn and Roais de Beauchamp endowed the priory at its foundation with the church of Chicksand and lands attached ; the grange of Haynes with 400 acres, and the church there with its appurtenances ; a mill and half a virgate with a house in Willington ; 20 acres in Cople and 3 virgates in Campton, besides half the demesne of another benefactress, Adeliza, wife of Walter de Mareis, consisting of wood, plain, meadow and pastures.” To this Simon de Beauchamp added the churches of Cople and Keysoe, Stotfold with the chapel of Astwick, and Linslade, Bucks ; confirming a number of small gifts besides.° ‘The income of the priory in 1291 was £124 15s. 52d.,° besides the churches in Bedfordshire; but this of course takes no account of its debts. By this time some lands had been acquired in the counties of Northampton, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Norfolk and Suffolk, and por- tions of tithes in the three London churches of St. Mary’s Colechurch, St. Mildred’s Wall- brook, and St. Stephen’s Jewry*®; and shortly afterwards the manor of Tadlow, Cambridge- 4 Wright, Suppression of Monasteries, Letter xiii. He accused two of the nuns of having broken their vow of chastity; and involves in the same con- demnation the sub-prior and a serving man. 6 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), 56. 6 Willis, History of Abbeys, etc. ii. 2, says that in 1553 pensions were still paid to seven canons and eight nuns. 7 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950. 8 Ibid. The priory of Chicksand had very few suits about its churches : only the chapel of Astwick seems to have been disputed in 1198-9 (Feet of F. [Rec. Com.], 21), and in 1242 (Cur. Reg. R. 125, n. 22) Simon de Beauchamp supported the prior’s claim on the first occasion, and William de Beau- champ opposed it on the second. 8 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 10 Tbid. 392 Cuicxsanp Priory. CuicksanD Priory. CuicksanD Priory. CHICKsAND Priory. JoHN THE HospiraL oF St. Harrotp Priory. Beprorp. Baptist, RELIGIOUS shire,t and the manor of Chicksand.? The priors of Chicksand held in 1284 two knight’s fees of the barony of Beauchamp, and a frac- tion of a fee in Warden * ; in 1302 a fraction of a fee in Tadlow (which was still held in 1428 and had increased to a quarter of a fee *); in 1316 half a fee in Campton and a quarter in Southill and in Sandy, with a small frac- tion in Stanford ® ; in 1346 one fee in Camp- ton and half a fee in Chicksand, with one- tenth in Houghton ®; in 1428 half a fee in both Campton and Chicksand, and a fraction in Stanford.” In 1535 the income of the priory was stated at £212 35. 5d.°; and just after the dissolution at £259 6s. 2d., including the manors of Meppershall, Stotfold, Chippen- ham (Suffolk), Wolverton (Bucks) and Har- grave (Northants), and the rectories of Keysoe, Cople, Stotfold, Haynes and Linslade.® Priors oF CHICKSAND Walter,!° occurs 1204-5 and 1209-10 Simon," occurs 1224 Thomas *? occurs 1240 Hugh," occurs 12 William de Hugate," occurs 1309 Simon?® John de L’isle,t® occurs 1316, 1324, 1325 John Bruton,!’ occurs 1388 Ralf,*® occurs 1409 1 Feud. Aids, i. 150, 190, 189; L.T.R. Memo, R. 12 Edw. IV. 2 Pat. 10 Edw. II. pt. 2, m. 29. 3 Feud. Aids, i. §. 4 Ibid. 150, 170, 189. 6 Ibid. 19, 20. 6 Ibid. 31, 32. 7 Ibid. 42. 8 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 195. ® Dugdale, Mon. vi. 975. 10 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), § John, 55; ibid. 10 John, 82. G. prior of Chicksand occurs 1186 (Gorham, History of St. Neots, II. lxxiv.). 11 Pat. 8 Henry III. m. 3. 12 Add. MS. 24465, f. 54b. 13 Tbid, 5827, f£.175b (Cole, from MS. notes of Browne Willis). 14 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 77. 16 Alluded to in Close, 17 Edw. IT. m. 4, as having recently demised a manor to the same merchant with whom his successor was negotiating. 16 Feud, Aids, i. 19; Close, 17 Edw. II. and 18 Edw. IT. (These latter only mention the name of John, and perhaps do not refer to the same prior.) 17 Cal. of Pap. Letters, iv. 273; made a papal chaplain. 18 Linc. Epis. Reg. on the institution of a priest to the church of Chicksand. I 393 HOUSES Stephen,’ occurs 1473 John Atoun,”° occurs 1481 and 1493 John Spencer,” occurs 1529 and 1535 John Plomer,” occurs 1538 PriorgEssEs OF CHICKSAND Emma,” occurs 1482 Margaret Burton and Margaret Graynger were the two prioresses in 1538 Four different seals of this priory are ex- tant. ‘The one appended to the deed of sur- render is bright red, and represents the An- nunciation ; the angel kneeling and holding across, and our Lady standing, each under a canopy, a figure kneeling below. Legend: $. CONVE . . . CHIKESAND AD CAYSAS.”° Another seal also represents the Annuncia- tion, and is similar to the above, but both figures are standing.** Legend: s’ CONVENTVS SCE MARIE DE CHIKESAND AD CAYSAS, A small round seal has our Lady with the holy Child, and another figure on the right.2” Legend destroyed all but the letter E. The fourth has our Lady crowned, holding the Child on her left arm; to the righta monk kneeling, and possibly St. Catherine on the left, holding up her hands in prayer.”* 19 L.T.R. Memo. R. 12 Edw. IV. 20 Instituted to Linslade 1481 (Lipscombe, Buckinghamshire, iii. 467) and to Woughton in the same county 1493 (Add. MS. 5827, f. 175b). 21 Fobn, in the Convocation Lists, L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 6047; and... Spencer in the Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.) These may not be the same. 22 Fobn appears in the Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), 56; but it is said that John Plomer sub- scribed to the Royal Supremacy (Add. MS. 5827, f. 175b). 23 Mentioned with John, prior, in Harl. Ch. 44, C 27, dated 7 Nov. 22 Edw. IV. 24 Margaret Burton signed the Deed of Sur- render as prioress; and her name is followed by that of Margaret Graynger, who still had a higher pension than the other nuns in 1553 (Willis, History of Abbeys, ii. 2). ‘The lists of priors and prioresses of Chicksand are most unsatisfactory and frag- mentary, because no institutions are recorded at Lincoln, nor are to be obtained from any of the ordinary sources. 25 Deed of Surrender (P.R.O.), 56. A cast of the same seal (B.M. lviii. 31). 26 B, M. Seals, lviii. 32. a7 Harl. Ch. 44, C 26. 38 Ibid. 44, C 27. 50 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE HOUSE OF KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS 12. THE PRECEPTORY OF MELCHBOURNE The preceptory of Melchbourne was founded in the reign of Henry II. by Alice de Claremont’; other benefactors, including Roger de Clare, Earl of Hert- ford, Hugh de Beauchamp of Eaton, and William, Archbishop of York, added gifts of land and churches? Richard de Clare, the son of Roger, confirmed the gifts of his father andof Alice de Claremont ;* and after the suppression of the Templars some of their property in Bedfordshire was transferred to Melchbourne.* A general chapter was held at this preceptory in 1242, under the presidency of Brother Terricus de Nussa, prior of the hospital in England® ; but beyond this very little is known of the history of the house. On two occasions the Hospitallers of Bed- fordshire came into collision with the canons of Dunstable, on account of one of the cus- toms of their order. They were allowed by a special privilege of the pope to grant Chris- tian burial to all those who had given alms to their fraternity, whatever the manner of their death. So in 1274,”7 when the canons of Dunstable refused to bury a suicide, the Hospitallers impleaded them, and they had to pay afine for the sake of peace. Again in 1282,° when one of the servants of John Duraunt, a merchant of Dunstable, commit- ted suicide by jumping into a well, and his body in consequence was flung into a ditch 1 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 803, 834. 2 Tbid. 834 and Chart. R. 1 John (Rec. Com.) The church of Melchbourne was also granted by Roger de Clare to the priory of St. Neot’s. In 1176 a suit between the Hospitallers and St. Neot’s ended in the church being resigned to the former (Gorham, History of St. Neot’s, I}. cxiii.) It was finally appropriated in 1378 (Pat. 2 Rich. II. m.g and Cott. MS. Nero E. vi. f. 12). The church of Souldrop was also disputed in 1198 (Hunter, Feet of F. 9 Rich. I. 17). 3 Ibid. 806. “e.g. the church of Langford, granted to the Templars by Simon de Wahull and Sibyl his wife in the reign of Stephen, was the property of the Hospital in 1329 (Nero, E vi. f. 137), and their lands in Sharnbrook confirmed to them by John (Chart. R. [Rec. Com.], 16) belonged to Melch- bourne at the dissolution. The church of Little Stoughton was in the gift of the Hospitallers in 1413, and had previously belonged to the Temp- lars (Linc. Epis. Reg.). 5 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 803. 6 Pat. 4 Edw. I. m. 32d. 7 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 260. 8 Ibid. 298. outside the town, the Hospitallers found him and buried him in their cemetery. The Hospitallers, like other religious, re- ceived boarders into their houses from time to time. In 1527 a certain William Browne received a grant of board and lodging in the preceptory of Melchbourne, from the prior of the hospital. References to this house are very few and far between: except in a few notices of leases, it is not mentioned in the large chartularies of the order. The date of the dissolution of the pre- ceptory is not known.® It was refounded for a very short time in 1557 by Queen Mary, and again made a part of the endowment of the order.'® The preceptory received at its foundation the manor and church of Melchbourne, and the churches of Dean, Riseley, Souldrop, Eaton Socon, with Hargrave (Northants), and Eakring, Ossington and Winkbourn (Notts), as well as parcels of land and wood in Riseley, Souldrop, Blakesley (Northants), Ossington and Winkbourn (Notts).'* The prior of the hospital held in Bedfordshire in 1302‘? one knight’s fee and a half in Clifton, and 1 hide in Pulloxhill; in 1316** the vill of Melch- bourne, half a fee in Podington, one fee in Clifton, and small portions in Souldrop, Sharn- brook and Sandy ; in 1346** Melchbourne, half a fee in Ickwell, Clifton and Harrold, and one quarter in Souldrop, Steppingley and Sharnbrook, with a smaller portion in Stan- ford; in 14287*° the vill of Melchbourne, half a fee in Sharnbrook, Harrold, Ickwell and Clifton, and a quarter in Souldrop. At the dissolution the property of the preceptory was worth £241 gs. 10$d.,!° including the manors of Melchbourne, Ickwell, Eaton, Langford and Blakesley, and rectories of Melchbourne, Eaton, Riseley, Langford, Blakesley, and lands called the Temple in Sharnbrook.1” ® The first report of the Crown Bailiff is dated 32 Henry VIII., the year of the dissolution of the order generally. 10 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 803. 11 Ibid. 834. This property in Notts seems to have been afterwards transferred to a commandery at Ossington (Cott. MS. Claudius E. vi. f. 24b). 1a Feud. Aids, i. 12, 13. 13 Tbid. 17, 18, 20. 14 Ibid. 26, 28, 29, 30, Bo. 15 Ibid. 38, 39, 40, 42, 46. These knight’s fees are only said to be held by the prior of the hos- pital; and it is possible that they may not all have belonged to the preceptory of Melchbourne. 16 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 803. 17 List of Min. Accts. after M the suppression of the monasteries at P.R.O. 394 RELIGIOUS HOUSES FRIARIES 13. THE HOUSE OF FRANCISCAN FRIARS, BEDFORD The house of the Grey Friars at Bedford was said by Leland to have been founded by Lady Mabel de Pattishall*; the Valor Ec- clesiasticus however gives the name of John St. John as the first founder.? It is uncertain at what date the Grey Friars came to Bedford, but their church was completed and dedicated on 3 November 1295, when indulgences were granted by Bishop Sutton to those who should visit it. In 1300‘ some of the friars of Bed- ford received licences from Bishop Dalderby for hearing confessions. Like their Domini- can brethren, they seem to have met with more kindness from the nuns than from the monks of the older orders: for in 1310 the prioress and convent of Harrold ® joined with some of the citizens of Bedford in making them a grant of divers small plots of land within the town for the enlargement of their area. The friars of Bedford® signed the ac- knowledgment of the royal supremacy on 14 May 1534, John Vyall, S.T.P.,’ being at that time warden of the house; his name appears again in the Valor LEcclesiasticus of 1535. The warden of the Friars Observants of Greenwich was sent to this house in 1531, when the brethren of his own order were dispersed, and was kept there under some kind of restraint.2 The deed of surrender,® which is dated 3 October 1538, gives the names of a warden, vice-warden, and ten other friars?°; it is in the form which seems 1 Quoted Dugdale, Mon. vi. 1509. 2 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 190. 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 127. 4 Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 11d. 5 Pat. 4 Edw. II. m. 18. 6 L. and P. Hen. VIII. vii. 665. 7 This can scarcely be the same as the warden who signed the deed of surrender; though the Christian name of the latter is John, his surname certainly begins with ‘M’ and ends with ‘er.’ » There is a letter printed in Beds N. and Q. i. I91 from the vicar of the Observants to Sir John Dyve, a knight dwelling in Bedfordshire, asking him to find out how the warden is being treated, whether his friends may resort to him or write. The writer wishes the king knew his virtue and religious conversation and loyalty ; and pro- mises to find money, if Sir John will see that he has all he needs. ® Deeds of Surrender (P.R.O.), No. 19. 10 ‘The confiscation of the conventual seal was one of the means employed to obtain the surren- to have been offered to the friars only, be- ginning ‘Forasmuch as we the warden and friars of the house of Saint Francis in Bed- ford . . . do profoundly consider that the perfection of Christian living doth not con- sist in dumb ceremonies, wearing of grey coat, . . . ducking and becking and girding ourselves with a girdle full of knots, and other like pharisaical ceremonies’; and has no seal." The value of the house in 1535 was £3 135. 2d.'? 14 THE HOUSE OF DOMINICAN FRIARS, DUNSTABLE The Black Friars arrived in Dunstable in 1259 °° at the invitation of the king and queen and the magnates of the neighbourhood, and began at once with the help of alms to build their church. They were very unwelcome to the canons of that place, and not without reason ; for the novelty of the friars’ coming, and of their manner of life, drew many people away from their parish church, and diminished the customary offerings there at a time when they were sorely needed.’* But the prioress of Markyate, though her own house was not a wealthy one, was more generous, and helped the friars with a dole of loaves until their church should be finished ; a kindness ill- repaid, for they insisted on the continuance of the gift after the immediate necessity was passed, and when the nuns were almost as poor as themselves.’® The jealousy between the canons and the friars lasted for some time, but there seems never to have been any open quarrel; on the contrary, one of the friars was admitted to ders of the friars (Canon Dixon, History of the English Church, ii. 38). It would be interesting to know why the friars surrendered in English and the monks in Latin; and also why the special humiliation of signing such a document as this was reserved for friars. 11 The friars, as well as the nuns of Elstow and Chicksand, seem to have been usually known by their family names; the majority of the Cister- cians and the Austin canons are called by place- names. 12 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 190. 13 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 213 ; Dugdale, Mon. vi. 1485. 14 See Dunstable Priory. 15 See Markyate Priory. Adam of Biscot, the second vicar of Luton, became a Dominican friar (probably in this house) about this time (Rev. H. Cobbe, Luton Church, 122). 395 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the priory in 1265 for nine years, returning to his own house in 1274*3; and in 1278 the prior of Dunstable, William le Breton, visited and ate with the Dominicans.? In 1282,? at the funeral of a female parishioner of Dunstable, who had desired to be buried in the church of the friars, the offerings were shared quite amicably by the two churches ; but in 1287‘ the porter of Dunstable was made to buy a house near the area of the Friars Preachers, so that they might not be able to enlarge their boundaries without the per- mission of the canons. Again in 1298 ® the bishop sent a mandate to the official of the archdeacon of Bedford to enjoin the canons of Dunstable to desist from forbidding and impeding the Friars Preachers from hearing the confessions of the people of that place ; but in 1311 ® it was the bishop who found that friars who presented themselves to be licensed as confessors were becoming too numerous. ‘Ten were offered to him on this occasion from Dunstable; this number is scarcely likely to include all the friars in the house, as some had probably received licences before. John Coton, the prior of the Friars Preachers at Dunstable, subscribed the ac- knowledgment of the royal supremacy on 14 May 1534.1° Nothing is known of the order of the house at this time, but it is somewhat discredited by some scandal that had taken place there in connection with the provincial of the order, who was also prior of (King’s) Langley; but Bishop Longland’s letter, in which the affair is mentioned, is so allusive and obscure that it is difficult to understand what the scandal was, or whether any others than the provincial were involved in it.™ The house was surrendered some time be- fore 8 May 1539, when it was granted to one of the yeomen of the guard’? ; but as the deed of surrender has been lost, the exact date is unknown. The income of the house in 1535 was £4 18s. 8d.'® HOSPITALS 15. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN, BEDFORD The date of the foundation of the hospital of St. John Baptist at Bedford is somewhat uncertain. It is dated 980 in the transcript of the foundation charter which was entered in 1399 in the episcopal registers at Lincoln,’ and 1280 in the Chantry Certificates of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. ;® the first date seems too early, and the second is certainly too late. Perhaps the correct date is 1180, for the first mention of the hospital is found in 1216,° 1 Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 261. 2 [bid. 278. 3 Ibid. 289. The body was first carried to Dunstable church, where the canons sang the requiem mass, and had the oblations, including eight candles, four of which they kept and gave the other four to the Dominicans, The chronicler of Dunstable explains here that two candles were given to the brothers, and two to the sisters ; this looks as if there were Dominican nuns there at the time, but no other trace of their existence has been found. 4 Ibid. 338. 5 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 217d. ® Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 19d. 7 Ibid. Memo. Beaufort, 22d. The first figure in the date is cancelled and 980 written afterwards (Beds N. and Q. i. 193). 8 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 1, 4. ® Pat. 1 Hen. III. m. 3d. and not long after this Bishop Hugh de Wells ordained a vicarage for the church of St. John, which belonged then to the brothers of the hospital.'* The founder’s name was Robert de Parys; other benefactors being John and Henry St. John.® The original endowment was in- tended to support two or three religious brethren, of whom one should be master ; it was to be a house of charity, where all needy persons free born of the town of Bedford (but from no other place) who had become poor by misfortune rather than by fault might seek admittance and be maintained ; though none should be presented by the mayor and bur- gesses unless with the consent of the founder and his successors. ‘The brethren were to 10 DL. and P. Hen. VIII. vii. 665. 11 Bishop Longland’s letter says that he encloses * the detections of the most honest people of Dun- stable’ regarding the prior of Langley, who was also provincial of the order. It is therefore natural to conclude that the house of the Friars Preachers at Dunstable had been the scene of some particular scandal during some visit of the provincial, though it was not Dunstable but Langley that was ‘in utter decay? (L. and P. Hen. VIII. iv. 4315 [dated I June 1528]). 12 Tbid. xv. 1032. 13 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 210. 14 A. Gibbons, Liber Antiquus, 20-5. 18 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Beaufort, 22d. 396 RELIGIOUS HOUSES live as religious, having a common refectory and dormitory ; they were to have the tonsure of a priest and to wear clothing of any sober colour, covered by a dark mantle. They were to remain in the hospital for life, and, when admitted, to take an oath of obedience to the statutes and to the master ; they were every day to sing the canonical hours and celebrate the divine office for the living and the dead, praying especially for the soul of the founder and other benefactors. ‘The master was to correct the brethren ordinarily, but he might appeal to the bishop in case of necessity.’ In 1306 Bishop Dalderby wrote a fuller rule for the brethren, which was practically an adaptation of the rule of St. Augustine to their particular circumstances.? It is clear that though they were so few in number they were expected to live quite as strictly as the religious of large communities. The church was rebuilt early in the four- teenth century, and the brethren then had a licence to beg alms for this purpose on account of their poverty.? The master of the hospital, Robert Rous, was appointed in 1333 to hear the confessions of all the subjects of the arch- deacons of Bedford and Huntingdon.‘ He died in 1349,° probably of the pestilence. In 1399° the hospital was reconstituted on the old foundation by Bishop Beaufort, with the same number of brethren and the same rule as before. When inquiry was being made at the end of the reign of Henry VIII. into the condition of chantries and hospitals, it was said that no poor person was kept there, nor had been for many years.” It appears 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Beaufort, 22d. 2 Beds N. and Q. i. 3213; transcribed from Camb. Univ. Library MS. Dd x. 28. It is dated 2 Aug. 1306. It is an amplification of the shorter rule in the episcopal register, with more than one reference to ‘ the rule of blessed Augus- tine’; alludes to the three vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, ‘but above all things charity’; and prescribes penances for the transgression of the rule. The only regulation that seems a little unusual is the permission to speak briefly in low tones in the refectory; though the usual strict silence is enforced in the church, cloister and dor- mitory. The colour and shape of their habit was not exactly prescribed; the bishop only orders that they wear a ‘uniform and humble habit, marked with a cross.’ 3 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Burghersh, 38, 106d (1321 and 1323). « Ibid, 268. 5 Ibid. Inst. Gynwell, 378. ® Ibid. Memo. Beaufort, 22d. 7 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 1. also that there were no longer any brethren, but only a master, who was also rector of the church.® The hospital was not taken into the king’s hand at that time, but in 1591 an attempt was made to prove that it had reverted to the Crown by the death of the master and religious brethren. Oliver St. John and others were commissioned to inquire into the foundation and to find out who were the heirs of Robert de Parys.? It was finally proved that it had been united with the parish church and was the property of the mayor and corporation, who in 1628 petitioned that there should be no further proceedings against them in respect of it, except only by course of law.’?° At the end of the eighteenth century the rector of the church was still called master of the hospital, and ten beadsmen received ninepence weekly from the funds of the old foundation." Neither the church nor the hospital of St. John is mentioned in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, but in 1216 the brothers owned a mill in Bedford.1? In 1302 the master held one-twentieth of a knight’s fee in Clophill.’? In 1535 the revenue of the hospital, consist- ing mainly of small rents, amounted to £21 os. 8d. ;* at the end of the reign of Henry VIII. to £20.'* Masters oF St. JoHn’s Hosprrat, BEDFORD Baldwin,'® appointed 1286 William of Buckingham,’ died 1316 Richard of Buckingham," appointed 1316 Robert Rous,’® appointed 1333, died 1349 William Rous,” appointed 1349, died 1374 John Appelond,”* appointed 1374 Walter of Swineshead,” occurs 1384 and 1410 8 The Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 191, gives only the name of a rector, who was also warden. ® §. P, Dom. Eliz. ccxl. 142. 10 Ibid. Chas. I. cxxiv. 84. 11 Add. MS. 5832 (Cole MSS.), f. 86. 12 Pat. 1 Hen. III. m. 3d. Other small pro- perties are mentioned Pat. 29 Edw. I. and Inq. ad q. d. 40 Edw. III. n. 7. 13 Feud, Aids, i. 14. 14 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 191 18 Chant. Cert. (Beds), I. 1s Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton. 17 Ibid. Inst. Dalderby, 274. 18 [bid. 19 Add. MS. 5832, f. 89. The masters from Richard of Buckingham are nearly all given here by Cole, as he copied them from a parish register of St. John’s Church. 20 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Gynwell, 378. 2 [bid. Inst. Buckingham, 389. 22 Add. MS. 5832, f. 89. 397 A HISTORY OF Thomas Hore,' died 1444 John Thorpe,’ appointed 1444 John Brinklo ® Richard Hylston,* resigned 14.48 William Athall, appointed 1448,° signed 1456 John Goldsmith,® appointed 1456, resigned 1456 Thomas Kynges,’ appointed 1456, re- signed 1457 John Dovey,® appointed 1461, resigned 1462 Thomas Horne,® appointed 1462 Richard Hyndeman,”° appointed 1462, re- signed 1470 Henry Rudyng,” appointed 1470, died re- 1497 William Morgan,’* appointed 1497, died 1509 Humphrey Gascoigne,'* appointed 1509 William Wroxill,"* resigned 1520 William Franklin,'® appointed 1520 John Stringer,*® appointed 1530 A seal of this hospital represents St. John Baptist standing, holding a long scroll inscribed SIGILLUM HOSPITALIS SANCTI JOHANNIS BAP- TISTH DE BEDFORD. ‘The same legend is around the margin of the seal, which is oval and very clear and distinct. 16. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. LEONARD, BEDFORD The date of the foundation of the hospital of St. Leonard is even more uncertain than that of St. John. The first mention of it is found in a charter of King John, dated 1207,!7 in which he granted letters of safe conduct to the brethren and their preachers wherever they might go in England to preach and seek alms on behalf of their sick people. Eight years later another charter announced that the lepers of the hospital of St. Leonard were 1 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Alnwick, 184. 2 Ibid. 3 Add. MS. 5832, 89. 4 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Alnwick, 187, 189. The name is given in one place as Hylston and the other as Ilvestone. 5 Ibid. 8 Ibid. Inst. Chedworth, 165. 7 Ibid. 165d. 8 Ibid. 168d. ® Ibid. 172. 10 bid. 172d. #t._ Ibid. 178. 12 Tbid. Inst. Smith, 438. 13 Ibid. 457d. 14 Tbid. Inst. Longland, 240. 15 [bid. 1s Add. MS. 5832, f. 89; and Chant. Cert. (Beds), 4. 17 Pat. 8 John, m. 1. BEDFORDSHIRE taken under the king’s protection.® It is probable that one of the Bassets was founder of the house, for in a dispute which was brought before the bishop in 1294 with regard to the patronage it was decided that one Robert Dendon was patron in right of his wife, Agnes Basset, daughter of Simon Basset ; ‘though the burgesses of Bedford also had a share in it.*® There were at first six brethren in the house, of whom one was master ; all were at least in minor orders, wore the habit of religion,”° and probably kept a rule somewhat similar to that of the brethren of St. John’s hospital. In 1294 Bishop Sutton sent an in- junction to three of them by name to be obedient to their master until he should visit them. In 1302 they sent a petition to Parliament for permission to purchase land to the value of £10, and a rent in Bedford.” This was probably for the enlargement of their area and the re-building of their house, for in 1306 they gave great offence to the abbess of Elstow by closing the pathway which led through their buildings to Bedford, and opening another instead which made a circuit round the hospital. There was a suit in Chancery in consequence, and the final grant for closing the pathway was not issued till 1308.78 Bishop Dalderby excommunicated one of the brethren for apostacy in 1306,” and visited the house in 1313 to inquire into the alleged impotence of the master and to appoint one of the others as coadjutor.?*> About this time the house was evidently becoming impover- ished, for in 1331 an indulgence was granted for the repair of the chapel of the Blessed Mary,” and in 1353 the brethren obtained a licence to beg alms.*” From this time for- 18 Ibid. 16 John, m. 4. The first charter has ‘Fratres hospitalis infirmorum,’ and the second “leprosos hospitalis Sci. Leonardi.’ It was pro- bably for both, like the hospital at Dunstable. 19 Linc. Epis. Reg., Inst. Sutton, 99. It seems just possible that this Simon Basset may be really Simon Bascot (or Barescote), whose ancestors founded Caldwell Priory, and who was himself an alderman of Bedford. 20 Rolls of Parl. (Rec. Com.), i. 154. The king’s grace for a poor house of St. Leonard’s, Bedford, where there are ‘six brethren, perpetual chap- lains, wearing the habit of religion.’ 21 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton, 106d. 22 Rolls of Parl. (Rec. Com.), i. 154. 2 Ing. ad q.d. 34 Edw. I. No. 226; Pat. 2 Edw. II. pt. 2, m. 15 (see Elstow Abbey). 24 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Dalderby, 98. 25 [bid. 247d, 28 Ibid. Memo. Burghersh, 241. 27 Ibid. Memo. Gynwell, 52. 398 RELIGIOUS ward, though there was a regular succession of masters, nothing further is known of the history of the house.! The brethren probably died off gradually and their places were not filled up; and the later masters held the hospital in plurality with other benefices after it had become a sinecure. Its name does not appear in the Chantry Certificates, but at Cardinal Pole’s visitation in 1556 it was alleged that it had been ‘violated and occu- pied by laymen a great while in the time of the schism.’ ? In the petition to Parliament of 1302 it was stated that the hospital owned only 67 acres of land and a rent of 26s., all in lay fees, and held in capite of the king, and no spiritualities.? In 1535 the value in rents, etc.. was £16 6s. 8d. clear,* and the same amount is mentioned in 1556.° Masters oF St. LEonarp’s HosPIrAt, BEDFORD William,® resigned 1288 Walter of Torksey,” appointed 1288, re- signed 1294 : Robert Cuppe,® appointed 1294, died 1310 Gerard of Eaton,® appointed 1310, died 1314 John of Woodweston,’° appointed 1313 William of Woodweston," appointed 1349, resigned 1356 William of Bedford,'* appointed 1356 William of Willington,"* died 1392 ‘Thomas Fisher, appointed 1392,"* resigned 1398 Thomas Ulf,* appointed 1398, resigned 1436 John Leget,’® appointed 1436, resigned 1441 William Barford,’ appointed 1441 William Edwards,’* resigned 14.70 1 See list of masters. 2 Strype, Eccl. Mem. iii. 485, 3 Rolls. of Parl. (Rec. Com.), i. 154. To this they were to add land of £10 value. 4 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 190. 5 Strype, Eccl. Mem. iii. 485. 8 Linc. Epis. Reg., Memo. Sutton. 8 Ibid. Inst. Sutton, 99. ® Tbid. Inst. Dalderby, 265. 10 [bid. 272d. John de Woodweston’s insti- tution is dated before the death of Gerard; he must have been the coadjutor appointed in the impotence of the latter. 11 Ibid. Inst. Gynwell, 382. 13 Tbid, Inst. Buckingham, 358d. 16 Tbid. 372d. 16 Ibid. Inst. Grey, 72. 17 Ibid. Inst. Alnwick, 182. 18 Ibid. Inst. Chedworth, 178. 7 Ibid. 12 Thid. 396. 14 Thid. HOUSES Richard Hyndeman,!® appointed 1470 Edward Exmowe,”° died 1480 Thomas Shenkwyn,” appointed 1480, re- signed 1493 Richard FitzJames,® appointed 1493, re- signed 1497 Bernard Andrew,” appointed 1497, re- signed 1499 Hugh Oldham,” appointed 1499, resigned 1505 Richard Elwyn,” appointed 1505, resigned 1513 Reginald Bray,” appointed 1513, resigned 1517 John Pitts,?” appointed 1517, occurs 1535 17. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, LUTON This hospital is said to have been founded by Saint Thomas of Canterbury, on the authority of a charter issued by the brethren and sisters in October 1465.72 Another charter dated 1377 ”° refers to the same house ; there is no other mention of it earlier or later. It was evidently a hospital for the sick, served, like many other such foundations, by brethren and sisters who followed some form of the rule of St. Augustine. The charter of 1465 is a quaint and most pretentious document,*° offering indulgences on quite a 19 Ibid. He had just been master of St. John’s, 20 Ibid. Inst. Russell, 150d. 2 Tbid. 22 Tbid. 154d. Bishop of Rochester 1497. 23 Ibid. Inst. Smith, 438. 2 Ibid. 441. Rector of Shillington and Bishop of Exeter 1505. 25 Tbid. 450. 28 Ibid. 459d. 27 Ibid. Inst. Wolsey and Atwater, 52d, and Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 190. 29 Add. Ch, 28882. 28 Ibid. 28786. These references are given in Rev. H. Cobbe, Luton Church, 74. 30 The object of the charter was to appoint a new proctor to collect alms, and to revoke all previous appointments. The indulgence granted by the popes was for eight years and forty days, and covered such offences as forgotten compacts, broken vows (on condition that they were re- sumed), injuries to father or mother (offensus patra et matri), forgotten penances, etc. ; forty days from the Archbishops of Canterbury, be- ginning with St. Thomas the founder, with a share in all present and future privileges of the church of Canterbury; and forty or thirty days from all the other bishops. Besides this, benefactors of the hospital were to share in the benefit of as many as 32,000 masses and 47,000 psalters granted by the order of Sempringham ; 20,000 masses by the Cistercians and Premonstra- 399 A HISTORY OF magnificent scale to all who should contri- bute to the support of the hospital ; on the authority of five popes, eight Archbishops of Canterbury, and some also of York and many successive Bishops of London, Chester, Chichester, Valence, Hereford, Worcester, Ely, Norwich and Lincoln. It is witnessed by Lord Wenlock, Sir Thomas Hoo and the vicar of Luton. The hospital does not appear in the Valor Ecclesiasticus; it was probably richer in spiritual privileges than in temporal possessions. 18. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST, LUTON This hospital, which was for the accom- modation of lepers, is only known through a single mention of it in the Patent Rolls. In 1285 Nicholas le Heyward was put in exigent for burning the house of Richard atte Wynche ; and for binding the lepers of the hospital of St. John Baptist, Luton.’ 19. THE HOSPITAL OF FARLEY NEAR LUTON The hospital at Farley near Luton was founded early in the reign of Henry II. on lands granted by him in 1156 to the brethren of ‘Santingfeld’ near Wissant? ; a master is first mentioned in 1198-9.2 The endow- ment consisted of lands in Ludgershall* near Brill, Bucks, and in Farley near Luton, worth respectively £3 and £2 a year. It was a hos- pital for the poor, and appears to have been dedicated to St. John Baptist like those at Bedford, Hockliffe, Toddington, etc. Its masters are several times mentioned in legal documents, but nothing is known of the history of the house and its inmates generally. tensians, with other prayers of number unknown, and Paters and Aves also—‘ no one knows how many but God.’ In the list of Bishops of Lincoln Grossetéte appears as ‘ Saint Robert.’ 1 Pat. 15 Edw. I. m. 2d. 2 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 639. Thomas Cancellarius is one of the witnesses to the foundation charter. The Pipe Rolls of 1156 and 1158 mention ‘ terris datis fratribus hospitalis de Witsand’ in Bedford- shire. The Rev. H. Cobbe, Luton Church, 498, suggests that Henry IT. had been received at the hospital at Wissant after crossing the Channel in 1156, and gave the lands on that occasion. 3 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 10 Rich. I. 30. 4 The three ‘hides’ there given by Henry II. are thus entered in the Testa de Neville, p. 245: ‘Fratres de Huntingfeud (sic) tenent de feodo de Bruhull’ in Lutegareshall’ iij hydas in puram ele- mosinam. BEDFORDSHIRE It is possible that the story of the theft of some relics of St. Luke from the ‘hermitage of Farley’ in 1431, and how the three thieves were pursued by the men of Dun- stable as far as Barnet and the relics recovered, may refer to the chapel of the hospital,® though there may have been an actual her- mitage in the neighbourhood. As this hospital was a cell of the hospital at ‘Santingfeld,’ it was reckoned in the fifteenth century amongst the alien priories, and granted in February 1448 to King’s College, Cambridge.® In 1291 the master of Farley had a mill, woods and rents valued at £5 12s. alto- gether.” A monument in Luton church which was long thought to be that of Lord Wenlock is now proved to be the tomb of William de Wenlock, master of Farley 1377 to 1392.° Masters oF FARLEY ® Mauger,'® occurs 1198 William," ,, 1239 John de la Rokele,’? occurs 1296 John of Felmersham, ,, 1347 William Lachebury,"* ,, 1347 William of Wenlock,'® occurs 1377, died 1392 20. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, DUNSTABLE This hospital was founded, like so many others, near the end of the twelfth century, receiving in 1209 from King John a letter of safe conduct for those who were collecting alms on behalf of the house.*® It was pro- bably founded under the patronage of the prior and canons of Dunstable, for the bene- fit of their town, and was intended for lepers 5 John of Amundesham, Ann. Mon. S. Albani, i. $9. ‘arn 26 Hen. VI. pt. 1, m. 7. 7 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 47, 49. 8 Cobbe, Luton Church, 283. ® This list is found in Luton Church, from which nearly all the references for this hospital have been obtained. 10 Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 10 Rich. I. 30 ; Cobbe, Luton Church, 500. 11 Tbid. Sor. 12 Pat. 22 Edw. I. m. 7. 18 Pat. 21 Edw. III. pt. 3, m. 13. William of Lachebury was restored in this year, having been master before John of Felmersham. 14 Thid. 16 Pat. 1 Rich. IT. pt. 5, m. 39. His will was proved in 1391 (Cobbe, Luton Church, 283). 16 Pat, 10 John, m. 1 (28 March 1209). 400 RELIGIOUS HOUSES as well as other sick people. The masters of the hospital were appointed by the prior, but the name of only one is known early in the thirteenth century ; he was called Roger, and was a chaplain of the priory." In 1293 the lepers of Dunstable erected a new bell, larger than they had ever had before, and hung it on a crossbar between two poles in front of their house ; but the prior seems for some reason to have suspected their motives in doing this, for he sent and had it taken down, restoring it afterwards on the condition that it should never be used for his parishioners nor for call- ing people together.? The hospital was still in existence in 1338, for the master and brethren received at that time another letter of protection from the king, and permission to collect alms ;* but it is not heard of at any later date. 21. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST, HOCKLIFFE The hospital of St. John Baptist at Hockliff is first mentioned in the Lincoln Episcopal Registers in 1248,* but it had then evidently been in existence some years. ‘The patron at that time was John Malherbe,® a member of whose family was probably the founder. Its purpose is not stated, nor the number of the brethren mentioned ; but it seems most likely that it was a hospital for the destitute poor. The master and brethren presented rectors to the parish church from 1248 to 1401,” if not longer, and their exercise of their patronage brought them once under the displeasure of Bishop Grossetéte ;* for they presented a young man of their founder’s family,® who was refused by the bishop for defect of orders and insufficiency of learning. In 1286 the master was deposed by Bishop Sutton, and another substituted ; the cause is not given.’° ‘The brethren were allowed in 1 Harl. MS. 1885, f. 36b. Grant by Richard de Morins, prior of Dunstable, ‘of the care and custody of our hospital’ of St. Mary Magdalene, for lepers and other sick people, to Roger, chaplain (undated). 2 Ann, Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 381. 8 Pat. 11 Edw. III. pt. 2, m. 24. * Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte. 5 Ibid. 6 The purpose of the hospitals for the sick and for lepers is usually explicitly stated. 7 Linc. Epis. Reg. 8 Ibid. Rolls of Grossetéte, 1265. ® William Malherbe. 10 The hospital in this year was ‘ vacant by the amoval of Alan de Freston, last master.’ I Aol 1301 to collect alms for the rebuilding of their hospital, and an indulgence was granted by the bishop to their benefactors." In 1310 Bishop Dalderby received a serious complaint from Luke of Nutley, who was then master ; he said that during his term of office (only a few months) the brethren had been unwilling to obey him, and were filled with a spirit of rebellion ; and that a certain lay brother had laid violent handsupon him and used contume- lious words, refusing to recognise his author- ity? The difficulty appears to have been settled by the resignation of Luke in favour of a former master,'* who was perhaps more acceptable to the brethren. The hospital was visited by Bishop Bek in 1342,'4 but the results are not recorded. Reference is made to the master and brethren at the institution of John Culryk to the parish church in 1401 ;*© and masters con- tinued to be appointed till 1422. It was probably soon after this that the hospital was taken over by the prior and canons of Dun- stable, perhaps because its income had become insufficient to maintain it any longer as an independent house. Its revenue at the dis~ solution was only £4 155. 4d., and it finally ceased to exist at the same time as the priory of Dunstable.’® Masters oF HocKLiFFE A(dam),!’ occurs 1248 Walter, resigned 1264 William de Lethom,’® appointed 1264 Thomas” resigned 1286 Alan de Freston,™ appointed 1286, deposed 1288 Thomas of Battlesden,?* appointed 1288 Walter de Hoccon,” resigned 1289 Ralph de Eston, appointed 1289, resigned 1301 Richard de Newton,” appointed 1301, re- signed 1310 11 Ibid. Memo. Dalderby, 33d, 48. 12 [bid. 178. 12 See list of masters. 14 Ibid. Memo. Bek, 32d. 16 Tbid. Inst. Beaufort. 16 It appears in the First Report of the Crown Bailiff as part of the property of Dunstable, and its value is given as above (Dugdale, Mon. vi. 242). It is not in the Chantry Certificates. 17 Linc. Epis. Reg., Rolls of Grossetéte. 18 [bid. 19 Tbid. 20 Ibid. Memo. Sutton. 21 Ibid. He had been a Jay brother at Brackley Hospital, an unusual appointment. 22 Tbid. a3 [bid. 24 Tbid. 26 Tbid. Inst. Dalderby, 259. 51 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Luke of Nutley, appointed 1310, resigned 1310 Richard de Newton,’ appointed 1310 William de Elrichton,? appointed 1321, resigned 1323 Hugh Tracy,* appointed 1323, resigned 1323 William de Edington, appointed 1323, resigned 1323 Robert of Lubenham,® appointed 1323, resigned 1338 John Carpenter,’ appointed 1338, resigned 1340 Ralph of Esthaddon,® appointed 1340, re- signed 1355 Richard of Dorset,® appointed 1356 Nicholas,’° resigned 1400 William atte Mille, resigned 1405 John King,"* appointed 1405, resigned 1405 William Snell,'* appointed 1405 William Stortewayle,' resigned 1408 Richard Ulverton,'® appointed 1408, re- signed 1410 John Kirkeby,’® appointed 1410, died I41t Thomas Burreth,’" appointed 1411, died 1413 William Colestone,’® appointed 1413 Thomas Chase,’ resigned 1422 Adam Symond,”° appointed 1422 22. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST, TODDINGTON The hospital of Toddington was founded by Sir John Broughton in 1433,” for the support of a chaplain, who was to be warden, and three poor men ; they were to pray for King Henry VI., for the founder, and for Thomas Peyvre and his wife Margaret. It was still in existence in 1538,”? though its funds were not applied at that time quite in 1 Inst. Dalderby, 265d. 2 Ibid. 269. 3 Tbid. Inst. Burghersh, 292d. 4 Ibid. 293d. 5 Ibid. 314d. Perhaps this is the same as No. 12. 8 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 318d. 8 Ibid. 320d ; ibid. Inst. Gynwell, 392d. ® Ibid. 396. 10 Tbid. Inst. Beaufort, 135. 11 Tbid. 12 Ibid. Inst. Repingdon, 282. 13 Ibid. 284. 14 Tbid. 294. 15 Tbid. 16 Thid. 298. 17 Tbid. 304. 18 Thid. 305. 19 Ibid. Inst. Fleming, 126. 20 Tbid. 2 Pat. 21 Hen. vi. pt. 1, m. Io. 22 Thid. 23 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xiii. (1), 981. the way that the founder had intended; the Valor Ecclesiasticus gives the names of a warden or master, and three chaplains instead of poor men.” The name ot Thomas Grenefeld, the warden in 1454, is found in a document relating to some property in the neighbour- hood.” The last warden, Sir John Mylward, was the compiler of a book called De potestate Petri, a collation from the Fathers of the Church in defence of the papal supremacy ; it was several times mentioned at the trial of the monks of Woburn in 1538.7 Mylward himself was examined at the same time as the monks, and acknowledged that he had made the book, and also that he had not set forth the royal supremacy in his sermons, but had only read a printed schedule before the bidding prayer. Being further asked what he would do if the law against the pope were yet unmade, and which he would then think better—that the law should be made, or that the pope’s power should remain—he very dis- creetly answered that he doubted what he would then think ; he would like in that case to consult with learned men on the subject.?” Articles were appended to the depositions taken by the king’s commissioners, in which Mylward’s name had a prominent place ;” but he was probably never brought to trial.° The Chantry Certificate of 1546 °° states that the hospital was ‘dissolved already with- out the king’s majesty’s license, by the Lord Warden and Sir George Shefford, gentleman’; and that ‘the said hospital and the use thereof ceased immediately after the death of Sir John Mylward, late parson thereof.” It would therefore appear that Sir John held his bene- fice until his death, which was soon after that of the abbot of Woburn. The Chantry Certificate goes on to state that no money had been paid to the poor since the dissolution ; and that one half of the property of the hos- pital was held by the lord warden by title of Anne, elder daughter of Sir John Broughton, and a half by Sir George Shefford by title of Katherine, the younger daughter.*! The original endowment was only a cer- tain messuage and garden of 2 acres in Tod- dington ; and for divers lands and tenements in Chalgrave, Grove, Broughton and Ment- more (Bucks) the founder assigned a rent of 24 Valor Eccl, (Rec. Com.,), iv. 211. 25 Beds N. and Q.i. 261. 26 DL. and P. Hen. VILLI. xiii. (1), 981. 27 Ibid. Deposition of Sir John Mylward. 28 [bid. 20 See ‘ Ecclesiastical History,’ 330-1. 30 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 4. 31 Ibid. 402 RELIGIOUS HOUSES £8 to the prioress of Dartford, with the in- tention that they should be given to the hos- pital.) In the Valor Ecclesiasticus the stipend of the warden is valued at £8 135. 2d., and those of the other priests at £5 135. 4a., £5, and £8 125. 4d. respectively.2 The Chan- try Certificate ot 1546 gives the clear value of the warden’s stipend as £13 25.° COLLEGE 23. THE COLLEGE OF NORTHILL The parish church of Northill was made collegiate by the executors of Sir John Trailly and his son Reynold? in 1405°; the rectors of the church were from that time forward masters of the college. The endow- ment was intended to maintain four fellows besides the master, and two choristers * ; and this increase of the staff of clergy must have been a real benefit to the parish, which con- sisted of no less than seven hamlets at con- siderable distances from the parish church and also from one another.5 The royal commissioners sent to report on the condition of the chantries, colleges and hospitals in 1546 suggested that the college ALIEN 24. THE PRIORY OF LA GRAVE OR GROVEBURY The manor of Leighton was granted by Henry II. to the abbess and convent of Fonte- vraud in 1164° ; and it is probable that a house was built there for a cell of the order, not very long after. A prior is first men- tioned in 1195-6, and is then called the prior of Leighton’; the name ot La Grave or 1 Pat. 21 Hen. VI. pt. 1, m. Io. 2 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 1. 3 Tanner, Not. Mon., gives the date 6 Henry IV., and says that Sir Gerard Braybrook was one of the executors. Sir John Trailly died 1401, and his son in 1402. An inscription in memory of the first master, John Warden, and containing these two dates, was in the chancel of Northill church in 1582 (Beds N. and Q.i. 67, from MS. notes of Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald). 4 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 1. The master was to have his board, the pay of one servant, and finding for two horses; the fellows their board; the choristers board, lodging and clothing. 5 Ibid. 6 Round, Cal. of Doc. France, i. 377; Dug- dale, Mon. vi. 1085. The charter was confirmed by John (Chart. R. [Rec. Com.], i. pt. 1, 72b, which states that the manor of Leighton was worth 6). = = Reg. R. 6 Rich. I. No. 5; Feet of F. (Rec. Com.), 7 Rich. I. p. 3. It would seem that the cell was founded between 1189, when the manor of Leighton was apparently held directly might well be turned into an almshouse, if that were the king’s pleasure ?°; and in 1548 reported that it was thought one priest alone would not be able to serve the cure." It does not seem that any notice was taken of either of these suggestions, In 1428? the master of the College held two-thirds of a knight’s fee in Tempsford, jointly with Robert Scot, of the barony of Eaton. The Valor Ecclesiasticus assigns to the college an income of £61 55. clear’? ; the Chantry Certificate states it at £56 35. 7d., of which £22 10s. formed the stipend of the master,'4 The first master was John Warden**; the last was Thomas Grene.‘® HOUSE Grava does not appear till late in the reign of Henry III.*7 The dedication of the church is unknown. ‘The prior of Leighton had a good deal of trouble with his tenants on the subject of feudal services during the thirteenth century, which involved him in suits before the Curia Regis from 1213 to1290.'8 William de Lyencourt, who was prior of La Grave during the latter part of the century, was a person of some importance ; he was proctor by Fontevraud, and 1195-6, the first date of a prior. 8 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 211. 9 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 4. 10 Tbid. 11 Tbid. 1. 12 Feud. Aids, i. §7. 13 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv. 196. 14 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 1. 15 Beds N. and Q.i.67. 16 Chant. Cert. (Beds), 1. 17 Anct. Deeds (P.R.O.), D. 222. He is called the prior of Leighton as late as 44 Henry IIT. (Cur. Reg. R. 168, n. 2 in dorso). 1s These difficulties between him and his men belong to the general ecclesiastical history of the county ; they also serve to clear him from blame for the murder of a lay brother of Dunstable, killed by ‘ the men of the prior of Grava’ in 1259 in de- fence of the rights of his church (Ann. Mon. [Rolls Series], iii. 213). The property of the two priories lay in the same neighbourhood, and such a quarrel might easily arise without the knowledge of the head of either house. 403 A HISTORY OF general or the abbess of Fontevraud in England, and had some journeys to take in this capacity,? for which he had to seek safe conducts from the king. Both the mother house at Fontevraud * and the priory of Almesbury* in England, where the king’s mother and daughter had made their profession,® were in great poverty at this time, but there is no mention made of poverty at La Grave. Its history in the fourteenth century is a little difficult to trace; in 1316 the manor was stated to be the property of the abbess of Fontevraud, but ‘now in the hand of the Princess Mary,’* and in 1349 the pope wrote a letter to King Edward III., asking him to allow the abbess and convent to regain pos- session of the house of La Grave, of which they had been despoiled.”. It seems however to have returned to its original position as a cell of Fontevraud, for it was reckoned in the next century among the alien priories, and granted in 1438 to Eton College; and a few years later, in 1481, its property was 1 Pat. 25 Edw. I. m. 18d. 2 Ibid. ; Pat. 15 Edw. I. m. 4. 3 Pat. 20 Edw. I. m. 28, where it states they had only the blackest of bread to eat on Fridays. 4 Ibid. 21 Edw. I. m. 18. 5 Ann, Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 326 (in the year 1285). 6 The daughter of Edward I. at Almesbury (Feud. Aids, i. 21). 7 Cal. of Pap. Letters, iii. 39-40. BEDFORDSHIRE transferred Windsor.® The original endowment of the house was simply the royal manor of Leighton, with land belonging to Walter Pullan, worth 325.9 Some smaller gifts of land in Edles- borough,’® and Stewkley?! (Bucks) and in Studham* were added later. The value of the manor in Leighton in 1291 was £32 6s. 8d.; and other temporalities of the priory in the deanery of Dunstable amounted to £2 25. 2d.% In 1302" the abbess of Fon- tevraud held one knight’s fee in Stewkley ; in 1316%° the manor of Leighton, and half a fee in Studham; in 13467° only half a fee in Stewkley. to the dean and canons of The names of only two priors remain :— Nicholas,*” occurs 1258 and 1263; William de Lyencourt,'® occurs 1287, 1297 1283, 8 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 1085 and Pat. 20 Edw. IV. 9 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 1085. 10 Pat. 9 Edw. I. m. 3. Licence for alienation in mortmain of 6} acres in Edlesborough. 11 Feud, Aids, i. 82. 12 Tbid. 21. 13 Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.) 14 Feud. Aids, i, 82. 15 Tbid. 21. . 18 Tbid. 128. It was at this time that the abbess said she had been despoiled of the priory. 17 Anct. Deeds (P.R.O.), D. 222, 331. 18 Pat. 11 Edw. I., 15 Edw. I., 25 Edw. I. 404 INDEX TO DOMESDAY OF BEDFORDSHIRE [Names sometimes occur more than once on the same page. The index shows only the pages, and not the number of times the name may appear on the page. The personal names are indexed according to the descriptions given in the text, when any is given; but the different descriptions are not necessarily those of different persons, e.g. the same man may be described as ‘ thegn of King Edward,’ ‘ man of King Edward,’ ‘ man of the Bishop,’ etc., in different entries. In only a few cases does the text afford actual proof that the man was the same, and in these instances the descriptions are gathered into one entry in the index.] Achi. See also Anschil, thegn of King Edward, 2385, 2414 Adeliza wife of Hugh de Grent- maisnil, 2215, 26024, 260b Adelold. See Alwold Adelulf or Adelold, 253, note 2534 ZEilmar of Ow, 241 fElfleda, 229) AElfric, thegn of King Edward, 208. See also Alvric Alfwine, man of the Bishop of Lincoln, 208 ZElveva, Flfgifu, 2336, note 2330 Albert of Lorraine, 203, 209, 2215, 2555 Albini of Cainhoe, 199 Albini, Albingi, Nigel de, 198, 199, 200, 211, 2214, 228), 2315, note 231b, note 232a, 242), 243), 2444, 244b, 2454, 2455 Albini, Robert de, note 244b Alestan, 2424 Alestan of Boscombe, 202, 2330, 2344 Alfred (Alvered, Alvred) of Lin- coln, 211, 2224, 2494, note 2494, 2504 Alfric Wintremelc. tremelc and Alric Algar, man of Queen Eddid See Win- Alli, 2545 Alli, thegn of King Edward, 2582, 264b Allic, 26624 Almzr, man of Aschil, 2414 Almar, burgess of Bedford, 204, 206, 2634 Almar, man of Alvric of Flitwick, 246a Almar, thegn of King Edward, 257b Almar, man of Earl Tosti, 209, 2550 Almar, man of Ulmar, 2615 Almsmen of the king, 2225, 2634 Alric, 235, 2505 Alric, burgess of Bedford, 204, 2634 Alric, thegn of King Edward,2314 Alric, king’s bailiff, 2645 Alric son of Goding, 2425, 2434 Alric Wintremelc. See Wintre- melc Alsi, brother and man of Alli, 2545 Alsi of Bromham man of Queen Eddid [Edith], 223), 2404 Alvric bedell [of King Edward], 2644 Alvric, man of Alvric the Little, 246a Alvric of Flicteuite [Flitwick], 246a Alvric the Little, 2464 Alvric, man of Borred, 2264 Alvric, thegn of King Edward, 2444 Alvric the priest, 239) Alward Belrap, man of Alric son of Goding, 2432 Alward, man of Alric, 246 Alward, man of Bishop Wlwi of Lincoln, 2454 Alwin, note 246a, 2594, 2604 Alwin, Alwine, 2662, 266 Alwin Deule, thegn and man of King Edward and man of Bis- hop Wlwi, 215, note 215, 2265, 2274, 2665 Alwin Horim or Horne, thegn of King Edward, 203, 2483 PERSONAL NAMES" Alwin, thegn of King Edward, 204, 2534 Alwin, man of King Edward,258b Alwin, man of Alestan, 2344 Alwin, man of Borred, 225, 2262 Alwin, man of Earl Harold, 2515 Alwin, man of Stori, 2544 Alwin, brother of Bishop Wlwi ot Lincoln, 2314 Alwin, man of Bishop Wlwi of Lincoln, 248) Alwin Sac, man of Bishop of Lin- coln, 2274 Alwin, man of Eudo Dapifer, 235 Alwin the priest, 265 Alwin, king’s bailiff, 263b, 2642, 2654 Alwin, sokeman, 2614 Alwold (Adelold) thegn of King Edward, 201, mote 202, note 2244, 230b, 2314, 2574 Alwold of Steventon (Stiveton), 2244, note 224a Alwold, man of King Edward, 230d, 2314 Alwold, man of Bishop Wlwi of Lincoln, 2515 Ambrose, 2365 Angers, S. Nicholas of, monks of, 198, 245 Anschetil the priest, 2414 Anschil, Aschil, Achi of Warres [Ware], 200, note 200, 201, note 202, 208, note 208, 209, 2334, note 2334, 233b, 2374, 2376, 2384, 239b, 2404, 240b, 2414, 241, 2424, 2624 Anschil a sokeman, 2614 Ansfrid, canon of S. Paul, Bed- ford, 2304 1 Including those of Religious Houses holding lands and the names of Baronies, 405 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Ansgar. See Asgar Ansgot of Rochester(Rouecestre), 196, 223d Ard(r)e(s), Ernulf de, 202, 210, 230d, 2314 Argentan, David de, 221), 2564 Asgar the staller, 2234 Augi, Avigi, man of Anschil of Ware, 209, 2334, note 23324 Auti, housecarl of Earl Algar, 2394 Azelin, man of Earl Tosti, 2604 Azelina widow of Ralf Talgebosc, 200, 201, 211, 222b, 2614, 2618, 2624 Azor, man of Borred, 2235 Azor, See Henry Bailiffs, the king’s, 2225, 2632, See Alric, Alwin, Chelbert, Goduin, Herbert, Ordui, Osiet, Saiet, Turchil, Turgot, Wintre- melc Baldric, 247) Barking (Berchinges), abbess of, 2214, 229b Barking (Berchinges), abbey, 2295 Basset, Richard, 2484 Basset, William, 239) Bayeux, Bishop of, Odo, 195, 196, note 202, 2214, 223), 2534 Beauchamp of Bedford, Barony of, 201, note 201, note 240b Beauchamp of Bedford, House of, 199, 201, note 201 Beauchamp of Eaton (Socon), Barony of, 201, note 2354 Beauchamp, Hugh de (Belcamp), 198, 199, 200, 201, 205, 209, 210, 211, 213, 217, 2214, 226D, 232b, 2330, 235, 236b, 2374, 237), 2384, 238b, 2394, 239), 2404, 240), 2414, 241d, 2424, 2425, 246b, 260), 2624 Beauchamp of Worcestershire, house of, 201 Bedells, the king’s, 222) Bedford, burgesses of, 204, 206, 222b, 262b. See also Almar, Alric, Edward, Godmund, Godwin, Ordwi, Osgar, Ulmar, Ulsi Bedford, canons of St. Paul in. See Ansfrid, Osmund Bedford, church of St. Paul of, 195, 221 Belvoir, Lord of [Robert de To- deni], 198 Benedict, St. See Ramsey Bernard, 241), 245a, 2624. See also Burnard Blach, man of Avigi, 2334 Blosseville, Gilbert de, 2582 Bolbec, Hugh de, 202, 2314 Bondi the staller, 2644 Borgeret, Borgret, Borred, Bor- ret, Burgret, Burred, Burret, 195, 196, 207, 2230, 224), 2254, 225b, 226a, note 226a, 2465, 2614 Ulsi son of. See Ulsi Boulogne, Count of [Eustace], 201, 210, 2214, note 2244, 230b, 2314 Branting, 2424, 2644 Breton, Gozelin the, 2215, 2563 Brictric, Bricxtric, Brihtric, Brix- tric, a thegn, 196, 202, 205, 2344, 2496 Brodo, 2615 Broi [or Bray], Robert de, 201 Broilg, Osbern or Osbert de, 201, 239), 2404, note 2404 Burg. See Peterborough Bury, St. Edmund of, 198 Butler. See Hugh Burnard, 233), note 233. See also Bernard Caron, Robert de, note 235a, note 236b Caron (Carun), William de, 200, 226), 2274, 2354, 2350, 2362, 2455 father of, 210 Chamberlain, the. Wenesi, William Chelbert, king’s bailiff, 264a Chetel, 2445 Chetelbert, 206. See also Chel- bert Cilt. See Lewin Cioches [Chocques], Gunfrey de, 203, 221, 2524 Cioches [Chocques], Sigar de, 203, 221, 2254, 2524 Clare, Gilbert de, 198 Clare, Richard de [or de Tun- bridge], 198, mote 198, note 252a Cnut [King], note 207 Coutances, Bishop of, Geoffrey, 195, 210, 211, 2214, 224), 2254, 225), 2264, 2494, note 249a Crispin, Miles, 196, 202, 205, 2214, 2344, 257b See Turstin, Dapifer. See Eudo David. See Argentan Derman, 203 Deule. See Alwin Domnic’, 235) Dot, 2654 Durham, Bishop of, 196, 2214, 2274, 227b Eadwine, father of Leofwine of Caddington, 198 Ederic, 259) Edric the Bald, 2624 Edith [Eddid, Edid], Queen, 2234, 223, 2404, 2555, 264b 406 Edward, note 212, 2644 Edward, burgess of Bedford, 204, 206, 2634 Edward, King, Confessor, 198, 203, 210, 2224, 225), 226a, 226b, 2274, 227b, 2304, 2305, 2314, 233), 2342, 234b, 2360, 2374, 2384, 2385, 2392, 240b, 2414, 242b, 2444, 244b, 2472, 247b, 2484, note 2484, 248), 249b, 2504, 250b, 2514, 252a, 2534, 254a, 254b, 256b, 2570, 2584, 2584, 2594, 2604, 260b, 261a, 261b, 263b, 2644, 264), 266 Edwin, man of Asgar the staller, 2234 Elstow, abbess of, note 204 Elstow, St. Mary of, nuns of, 2574 Elstow nunnery, 198 Ely, abbot of, 215 Ernald, 2605 Erfast, man of Nigel de Albini, 2315, 2434, 2450 Ernuin, Ernwi, priest, 206, 2214, 226d Ernulf. See Ard(r)e(s) Espec, Walter, 203 Espec, Walter, sisters of, 203 Eu. See Ow Eudo Dapifer [son of Hubert], 197, note 200, 201, 205, 211, 213, 2214, 2294, 234b, 2354, 235b, 2364, note 236a, 236b, note 236b, 246b, 2482 Eustace Count of Boulogne. See Boulogne Eustace sheriff of Huntingdon- shire, 214, 215, note 215 Fafiton, Robert, 203, 2224, 248 Fitz Richard, Osbern, 203 Fleming, Hugh the, 203, 221), 251b Fleming, Walter the, 199, 200, 203, 211, mote 211, 221), 228), 2494, note 2494, 249b, 2504, 250), 2514 Franpold, Franpalt. See Goduin Froissart, William, 2394 Fuglo [also Suglo] man of Alric son of Goding, 2434 Fulcher of Paris, 2324, 2454, 2450, 258d Germund, 2324 Ghent (Gand), Gilbert of, 203, 2224, 2484, note 2484 Giffard fief, note 2315 Giffard (Gifard), Walter, 202, 2214, 231a, 231b, note 231d, 2324 Gilbert, 2582 Gilbert de Blosseville, 25824 Gilbert son of Salomon, 221), 248), 2554 INDEX TO DOMESDAY Gilbert, Earl, son of. See Rich- ard Gleu, 2494 Gloucester, Earl of, his fief, 197 Gloucester, Robert, first Earl of, 197 Goda, Countess, 2365 Godirey, 2264, 226d Goding. See Alric Godmar, man of Alestan of Bos- combe, 2335 Godmund, burgess of Bedford, 204, 2634 Godric, thegn of King Edward, 226b Godric, man of Edric the Bald, 2624 Godric the sheriff, 2395 Godric, man of the sheriff, 2334 Goduin, thegn of King Edward, 248b Goduin, 259 Goduin, man of King Edward, 2585 Goduin, man of Borret, 2614 Goduin, man of Earl Harold, 257 Goduin, man of Earl Tosti, 2545 Goduin Dere, king’s _ bailiff, 2654, note 265a Goduine, man of Earl Guert,2605 Goduin, Franbolt, Franpold, Franpalt, 2494, 2504, 2545 Godwi, 230) Godwin, burgess of Bedford, 2623 Godwin, man of Alestan, 233 Godwin son of Lewin, 2435 Godwine, 206, 2384 Golderon, man of Levenot, 2452 Grentmaisnil, Hugh de, 200, 248 Grentmaisnil, Hugh de, wife of, 200, 221b, 2604 Grentmaisnil, Hugh de, Ivo steward of, 260) Grimbald, 2534 Gudmunt, man of King Edward, 2250 Guert [Gyrth], Earl, 204, 208, 2574, 2605 Guines, Counts of, 202 Gunfrey (Gonfridus), 2424 Harold, Earl, 193, note 195, 214, 2374, 2515, 256a, 266) Hastings, Henry de, 216 Hastings, Ralf de, note 197 Hastings, Robert de, note 197 Henry son of Azor, 221), 2536 Henry I., note 194 Henry IT., note 204 Henry VI., 198 Henry VIII., 199 Herbert, 2244 Herbert, king’s bailiff, 2634 Herbert son of Ivo, 196, 2244 Homdai, man of Earl Harold, 2564 Horim, Horne. See Alwin Hubald or Hubold, Hugh 2536, 253), note 253), 2432 Hugh, 2464, 2474, 249b, 250a, 250b, 2514, 2574, 257b, 258a, 258b, 259b, 2604 Hugh the butler (pincerna), 221), 251 Hugh. See Fleming ; Hubald Hugh nephew of Herbert, 2244 Hugh. See Hubald, or Hubold Humphrey, 2264 Huntingdon, earldom of, 204 Huntingdon, Malcolm IV. Earl of, note 204 Huntingdon, honour of, 216, note 2584 Iiger. See Rannulf Ingewar, 2664 Insula, Ralf de, 203, 221d, 256a Ivo, steward of Hugh de Grent- maisnil. See Grentmaisnil Ivo, Taillebois. See Tallebosc Ivri, Acard de, 238 Judichel, 2614 Judith, Countess [widow of Earl Waltheof], 197, 198, 203, 205, 210, note 210, 214, 216, 2210, note 232a, 234b, 256b, 2572, 257b, 2582, note 2584, 258), 2594, 2596, 2604, 260b, note 260b Kimbolton, Honour of, 215 Langetot, Ralf de, 231d, 2324 Lant, 200, 2645 Lant, man of Levenot, 2502, Ledmar, 205, 2415 Leicester, Earls of, note 2614 Lemar, bedell of King Edward, 2644 Lemar, thegn of King Edward, 2474 Leofgifu. See Leveva Leofnoth thegn, 200, 203. See also Levenot Leofric, 205 Leofstan, Abbot, 198 Leofwine Cilt, 198. See also Lewin Leofwine thegn, 200, 205, 211. See also Lewin Lepsi, man of Earl Tosti, 2574 Levegar, 2594 Levenot, 2454 Levenot, thegn of King Edward, 249, 2504, 2514 Levet, Wlward, 2345 Leveva [Leofgifu], 209, 238), 257b, note 257b Leviet the priest, 197, 2302, 2405 Levric, man of Borgred, 2465 Levric, man of Brixtric, 2344 407 Levric, man of King Edward, 230) Levric, man of Bishop of Lincoln, 226b Levric son of Osmund, thegn King Edward, 2365 Lewin, 2294, 25024 Lewin [Cilt], 2302, xote 2302, 2445, 2476, 2552. See also Leof- wine Lewin, thegn of King Edward, 250b Lewin. See Godwin Lewine, man of Earl Wallef, 2534 Liboret, 2424 Lincoln, Bishop of, 195, 196, 200, 215 Lincoln, Remi [Remigius], Bishop of, 197, 221, 2214, 226a, 226), 2274, 2664 Lincoln, Wlwi [Wulfwi], Bishop of, 197, 2224, 2454,248b, 2510. brother of. See Alwin Lisois [de Moustiers], fee of, 2364, note 236a Locels, William de, 201, 239a, 239 London, Bishop of, 197 London, St. Paul of, 198, 229d, note 230 Canons of, 206, note 206, 2214, 229b Lovet, William, 221, 2534 Malcolm. See Huntingdon Malet, 236d Matilda, Queen, 2224, 222h Marwen, 2304 St. Mary. See Barking, Thorney Moding, man of Queen Edid [Edith], 240 Morcar, priest of Luitone[Luton], 222, 252) Mordaunts of Turvey, 198, 199 Mortuing, 2415 Moustiers, Lisois de, note 2362, note 248) Nigel. See Robert Norman, 2424 Norman of Beeston, 205, 2364 Northampton, earldom of, 204 Northumberland, earldom of, 204 Northumberland, Siward Earl of, 204 Odell [Wahull], barony of, 199, note 2504 Odell fee, note 216 Olgi, Oilgi, Robert de, 202, 2224 2344, 2484 daughter of, 202 Ordric, man of Levenot [Leof- noth], 200, 2504 Ordui, king’s bailiff, 2645, 2654 Ordui, Ordwi,burgess of Bedford, 206, 211, 227), 2625 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Osbern the fisher, 213, 2215, 2544, 254b Osbern [Osbert] son of Richard, 221, 253, 2544 Osbern son of Walter, 2215, 2544 Osbern, 2294, 2570 Osbert, 2494, 2504 Osgar, burgess of Bedford, 2625 Osiet, 2425 Osiet , king’s bailiff of the Hun- dred, 209, 2655 Osmund, canon of St. Paul, Bed- ford, 2304 Osulf, thegn of King Edward, 2484 Oswi, 2363 Oswi, man of Earl Tosti, 2635 Oswulf son of Frane, 198, 203, 2470 Otto, note 212 Oviet, man of Aschil, 239b, 2482 Oviet, man of King Edward, note 2484 Ow [Eu], William de, 2214, 2334, note 233b, 2344 Paris. See Fulcher Peterborough Abbey [St. Peter of Burgh], 214, 2284 Abbot of, 2214, 2284, note 2284 Peverel, Pevrel, William, 196, 2214, note 2264, 236b, note 236d, 266a, 2665 Pirot, 211, 2364, 2445, 2454 Pirot, John, note 2445 Pirot, Ralf, note 2364, 244 Pungiant, Puniant, Richard, 203, 221b, 2525 Rainald. See William Raineward, 246b Ralf, 2364, 2394, 2464 Ralf Passaqua(m), 2464 Ralf Tallebosc. See Tallebosc Ramsey, Abbey of St. Benedict of, 196, 197, 199, 212, 2284, 228d, 2294 Ramsey, abbot of, 205, 211, 2214, 2284, 2285, 2294, 2344 Ramsey, monks of, 202 Rannulf brother of Ilger, 211,214, 2224, 248), 266d Ravan, man of Ulmar of Eaton, 236a Reeves, the king’s, 2632 Remi, Remigius, Bishop. Lincoln Richard, 2414 Richard. See Osbern Richard [de Clare] son of Count Gilbert, 2215, 2524 Richard’s castle, fief of, note 2530 Riwalo, Ruallon, Rualon man of Hugh de Beauchamp, 240d, note 240b, 244.4, 246 See Robert, 210, 241), 2424, 2515, 252), 2594 Robert son of Nigel, 248d Robert son of Rozelin, 2314 Robert. See de Olgi, Fafiton Roches, John de, 199, 211, 2280, 2430 Roger son of Teodric, 2414 Roger the priest, 2424 Roger, 241}, 2444 Rolland, 2364 Ros, house of, 203 Ros, Serlo de, 201, 2404, 2462 Ruallon. See Riwalo Saiet, king’s bailiff, 2654 St. Alban’s Abbey, 198, note 218, 2384 St. Alban’s Abbot, 2594 St. Edmund’s Abbey, 216, 2275 2284 St. Edmund’s, Baldwin, abbot of, 2214, 227), 2604 St. Neots Priory, 198, note 198, 216 St. Neots, monks of, 2524 St. Paul’s, canons of, 212, note 212, 2645 St. Paul’s. See Bedford St. Paul’s. See London St. Peter. See Westminster Salomon the priest, 2485 Samar, man of Lewin, 245 Samar the priest, man of Countess Goda, 2365 Seier, Seiher, 203, note 211, 2514, Seier, Walter brother of. See Walter Sigar de Cioches. See Cioches Spech, Walter, 2475 Spech, William, note 196, 203, 221a, 232b, note 2404, 2462, 246b, 2474, 247, 2625 Starcher, thegn of King Edward, 2224 Stephen, 2434 Stigand, Archbishop, 203, 2322, 252), 256a Stori, man of Earl Tosti, 203, 204, 253d, 2544, note 2540 Sueteman, manof Ulmar of Etone [Eaton Socon], 2624 Sueting, 2594 Suglo, man of Alric son of Goding, 242b. See Fuglo Taissel, Wimund de, 201, note 2390, 240), 2414 Talebot, Richard, 2314, note 2315 Tallebosc, Talliebosc, Taillebosc, Tallgebosc, Taillgebosc, Talge- bosc, Ivo, 194,2224, 2225, 2265, 2384 Ralf, 193, 194, note 196, 197, 200, 201, 205, 207, note 207, 203, 210, 211, 217, 2224, 408 2234, 226b, note 226), 2304, 232b, 2334, 237b, 2382, 2414, 2424, 2444, 2544, 260b, note 260b, 263, note 263), 2644, 2654 daughter of, 201. Tedbald man of Countess Judith, 234b. See also Tetbald Tedric, 2324 Tedric. See Roger Tetbald, Tetbaud, 2414, 2534 Thorney [Tornyg], Abbey of, 229 Thorney, abbot of, 2214 Todeni, Toeni, Robert de [Lord of Belvoir], 203, 2224, 2476 Tofig, housecarl of King Edward, 207. See also Tovi Torchil, 2594. See also Turchil Tosti, Tostig, Earl, 203, 204, 205, 209, 210, 241b, 2444, note 253, note 254a, 254b, 255), 2574, 258b, 259a, 259), 2602, 260), 263d Tovi, housecarl of King Edward, 2544, 258a. See also Tofig Tovi the priest, 223d Trailly, 203 Trailly, Trailli, barony of, 196, note 2255 Traillgi, Tralgi, Geoffrey de, 196, 210, 224), 2255 Tuffa, man of Earl Wallef [Waltheof], 2595 Turbert, man of King Edward, 2255, 2594 Turchil, king’s bailiff, 2655 Turchil, thegn of King Edward, 2394 Turchil of Warwick, note 207 Turgis, 2264, 242b, 2434, 2445 Turgis, thegn of King Edward, 2394 Turgot,almsman of King William, 2654 Turstan, 2255 Turstin, 2614 Turstin the chamberlain, 221d, 2545, 2554 Ulf, thegn of King Edward, 2482 Ulfech, steersman of King Ed- ward, 258 Ulmar, burgess of Bedford, 2625 Ulmar, priest of King Edward, 227b, note 227b, 2644 Ulmar of Etone [Eaton Soconl, 234, 2354, 2350, 2544, 262a, 262b Ulmar, thegn of King Edward, 261b Ulmar, man of Ordui, 259) Ulnod, man of Ulsi son of Borret, 246b Ulsi son of Borgret [Borred], 2465 INDEX TO DOMESDAY Ulsi, prebendary, burgess of Bed- ford, 2634 Ulvric, 233d Ulvric,man of King Edward, 2602 Ulvric, sokeman of King Edward, 2614 Uvenot, man of Godric the sheriff, 2392 Wahull. See Odell Wallingford, Honour of, note 202 Walrave man of Queen Eddid [Edith], 2232 Walter, 233), 241b, 246b, 26224 Walter the monk, 2614, note 2615 Walter brother of Seier, 203, 2514. Walter. ing Waltham Holy Cross, Abbey, 196, 227), note 227b Waltheof (Wallef), Earl, 198, 204, 209, note 209, 2282, note 2282, 2384, 259 See Osbern and Flem- Achelei, Acheleia. See Oakley Aieworde[Aisseworde]. See Ey- worth Ampthill [Ammetelle], 199, note 199, 243b Arlesey [Alricesei], 227), 233, 2455, 2634 Aspley Guise [Aspeleia], 209, 218, 238d Astwick [Estwiche], 205, 2415, 250b Aubigny, S. Martin d’, 199 Barford [Bereforde], 201 Barford, Great, note 239, 240b, 2414 Barford, Little, 2294, 2544 Barford, Hundred of, 217, 218, 224a, 226b, 228b, note 234), note 2374, note 237b, 238b, 240b 2454, 246b, 252a, 2582, 2614, 264d Barton-in-the-Clay [Bertone], 199, 200, 211, 212, 2285 Battlesden [Badelesdone, Badel- estone], 197, note 222b, 2314, 252), 2614 Beauchamp, Moyaux (Calvados), note 201 ‘Beauchamp, Vouilly (Calvados), note 201 Bec (Normandy), 198 Bedford [Bedeforde], 195, 213, 217, 218, 221, note 2304, 2654 Bedford, Church of S. Paul of, 195, 196, 197, 221, 2274, 2304 Beeston [Bistone] in Sandy, 2364, 246d, 2545, 2634, 2654 I [Judith], wife of, 198, 2282. See also Judith Wardon Abbey, 203, 208 Ware. See Anschil Warenne, William de, 200, 202, 208, 209, note 209, 214, 215, 2214, 232), 2334 Warner, 2404 Warwick. See Turchil Wast, Nigel de, 199, 243, 2454 Wenelinc, 2413 Wenesi the chamberlain, 2224 Westminster, St. Peter of (abbey), 2294, 229b Westminster, St. Peter of (abbot), 197, 2214, 2294 Widrus, 2624 Wig, thegn of King Edward, 251b, 252a Wigod of Wallingford, 202 daughters of, 202 Wigot, huntsman of King Ed- ward, 2565 William, 221), 253b, 2664 PLACE NAMES Biddenham [Bideham, Biden- ham], 197, 204, 206, 211, note 225b, 226b, 227b, 2304, 2404, note 240a, 246a, 2625 Biggleswade [Bicheleswade, Bi- chelesworde, _ Picheleswade], 203, 208, 212, note 2324, note 233, note 2415, note 243b, note 2450, note 2504, note 250b, 256a note 2564, 256b, note 2580, note 2644 Holme in. See Holme Stratton in. See Stratton Hundred of, 216, 217, 2274, 227b, 2294, 231b, 2330, 2354, mote 2354, 2410, 2454, 2474, 2504, 252), 254a, 2564, 2585, note 2585, 2615, note 261d, 2635, note 2642 Biscot [Bissopescote] in Hough- ton Regis, 194, 205, 217, 2234 Bleadon [Bledone] (Somerset), 196, 2254, note 225a, 225b Bletsoe [Blacheshou, Blecheshou], 239d, note 2404, 257b Blunham [Blunham, Bluneham], 192, 201, 216, 2284, 2354, 2604, note 260b Charlton in. See Charlton Bolnhurst [Bulehestre, Bolehes- tre], 2235, 2254, 229b, 2575 Boscombe, (Wilts), 202 Breuil (? Broilg) (Calvados), 201 Bromham [Brimeham, Brune- ham], 2305, 2404, 2570, 2655 Broom [Brume] in Southill, 243d, note 243b 409 William the chamberlain, 197, 221b, 222b, note 222b, 2234, 252b, 2534 William Gros, 2465 William, King, note 193, 197, 203, 2214, 2224, 2225, 2234, 2304, 248), 2494, 250b, 2544, 262b, 263, 264, 266a William son of Rainald, 2464 William son of Raineward, 246d William, steward of Bishop of Coutances, 2255 William Spech. See Spech Wimund, 2242. Wimund. See de Taissel Wintremelc, lfric — [Alric] (king’s bailiff), 212, 2645 Wlward Levet. See Levet Wlwi, Bishop of Lincoln. Lincoln Wlwin, man of King Edward, 2604 Wulfmar of Eaton Socon, 201, 208. See also Ulmar See Brouay (? Broilg) (Calvados), 201 Buchelai [Bochelai, Bocheleia, Buchelai] (Boclow, Bukelowe), Half Hundred, 217, note 217, 218, 2244, note 225b, 226), 227b, 2304, 230), 2374, 2396, 248), 254, 257), 262b, 2655 Buckinghamshire, 202, 214, note 2254, note 2284, note 236b, note 2484 Caddington [Cadendone], 198, 206, 214, 2304, note 2304 Cainhoe [Cainou, Chainehou], 199, 208, 2444, 2614 Caisot [Caissot, Chaisot]. Keysoe Cambridge, 195 Cambridgeshire, 194, 217, note 2364 Camestone. See Kempston Campton [Chambeltone], 2324, 2344, 2554 Cardington [Chernetone], 193, 204, 2376, 2604 Carlton [Carlentone], 206, 2244, 244), 2454, 254), 2644 Catworth, Little (Hunts), 215 Chalgrave [Celgrave], 203, 2345, 2555 Channells End [? Chainhalle], 2374 Charlton [Cerlentone] in Blun- ham, 204, 210, 2605 Chawston [Calnestorne (Calue- storne), Chavelestorne], 193, 201, 211, note 2345, 235a, 240b, note 240b, 246b, note 246b 52 See A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Chellington, note 2255 Chenebaltone. See Kimbolton ‘Chenemondewiche’ (Kimwick, Kym’yke, Kenemu’ de Wyk), 216, 227b Chenotinga. Chester, 195 Chicksand [Chichesane, and also ? Cudessane], 216, 2274, 2324, 242b, 2624 Clapham [Clopeham], 196, 202, note 202, 2344 Clifton [Cliftone, also Clistone], 205, 2274, 2294, 236a, 2455, 2604 Clifton, Hundred of, 217, 218, 2274, note 227a, 227b, 2294, note 232a, 233b, 236a, 238, 242b, note 242b, 245b, 2514, 2554, note 2554,260a, note 260a, 2624, note 262a, 2634 Clistone. See Clifton Clophill [Clopelle], 192, 199, 211, 2444 Cockayne, Hatley. See Hatley Colchester, St. John’s, note 2363 Colchester, St. Peter’s, note 197 Coldentone. See Goldington Colmworth [Colmeborde, Culme- worde], note 200, 208, note 208, note 237b, 239d, note 239), 2414 Cople [Chochepol, Cochepol], 192, 210, 2415, 2424, 2604 Cétentin, The, 199 Cranfield [Cranfelle], 212, 2282 Cravenhest. See Gravenhurst Crawley (Husborne) [Crawelai], IQI, 2425, 2534 Cudessane. See Chicksand Cuxwold (Lincolnshire), mote 2494 See Knotting Daintone. See Dunton Dallow, a manor in Luton, 197 Dean [Dena, Dene], 192, 196, 205, 207, 214, 215, 224b, 226a, 232b, 2654 Dodintone. See Toddington Dunstable, note 194 Dunton [Daintone, Domtone (? Donitone)], 192, 203, 2310, note 231b, 252), note 252b Eastcotts, note 230a, note 2455, note 260a Eastcotts, Harrowden in, Harrowden Easton [Estone] (Hunts), 208, 209, 211, 213, 215, note 215, 225a, 226b, 232b, 2334, 239), 251d, 2524, 2535 Eaton Bray [Eitone], 2235, note 2345, note 253a Eaton Socon[Etone],192, 198, 201, 208, 212, 213, note 223, note 228), 234), note 234), note 2354, See note 240b, note 2454, 252a, note note 2584, note 2614, 2624, 262b Wyboston in. See Wyboston Sudbury in. See Sudbury Echam. See Higham Gobion Edlesborough[Edingeberge, Edin- berge], 2482, note 248a Edworth [Edeworde], 2330, 263d Einulfsbury. See St. Neots Elstow [Elnestou], 208, 2574 ‘Elvendone,’ 2544 Eseltone. See Shelton Essex, 197, note 236a Estodham. See Studham Estwiche. See Astwick Eversholt [Eureshot], 192, 223, 2394, 2634 Everton (Euretone, Evretune], 210, 214, 259b, 2664 Evesham, Battle of, 199 Eyeworth [Aieworde, Aisseworde], 192, 2474, 261b Farndish [Farnedis, Fernadis], 214, 253b, 2664 Felmersham[Flammeresham], note 2454, note 248b, 2554, 2584, note 2584 Radwell in. See Radwell Flanders, French, 203 Flitt [Flictham], Hundred, 194, 217, 218, 2234, 228), 2296, 2334, 238), note 2394, 2444, 2464, 2485, 2514, 2614, 2644 Flitton [Flictham], 2485 Flitwick [Flictewiche], 213, note 2434, 246a, note 2464, 2534, note 263b Priestley in. See Priestley Gamlingay (Cambs), 201 Giveldene. See Yelden Gladley (farm) ([Gledelai] in Heath and Reach, 256 Goldington [Coldentone, Gold- entone], 205, 212, 226b, note 237a, 237b, note 237b, 2414, 264 Gravenhurst [Cravenhest], 2394 Hanefelde, 214, note 214, 216, 2325, 2654 Hants, note 233), note 254d Harlington [Herlingdone], 212, 2434 Harrold [Harewelle], 212, 2584 Harrowden [Herghetone, Her- gentone] in Eastcotts, 197, 204, 206, 2304, 2455, 2604 Hartwell (Bucks), 197 Hatley (Cambs), 201 Hatley Cockayne [Hatelai], 201, 210, 2595, 261b Haynes or Hawnes [Hagenes], note 200, 238 Heath and Reach, note 256d 410 Henlow [Haneslawe, Haneslau], 198, 200, 212, 245), 2514, 2624 Henwick or Hinwick in Poding- ton [Hanewich, Henewich, Hanewic, Henewic], 206, 225, note 225b, 246b, 251b, 2524, 2545, note 254b, 2634 Herts, 195, 200, 214, 2554 Higham Gobion [Echam], 239) Hitchin (Herts) [Hiz], note 193, 195, note 195, 266b Holcutt [Holecote], 2464 Hocliffe [Hocheleia], 2614 Holme [Holma] in Biggles- wade, 203, note 232a, 233d, 241b, 2456, 250b, 256a, 2580, 2644 Holwell [Holewelle], 192, 2292, 229b Houghton Conquest [Houstone, Oustone], 192, 238), 2574, 2605 Houghton Regis [Houstone], 194, note 194, 205, 217, note 217, 222), 2234, note 2234 Church of, 197, 2234 Biscot in. See Biscot Sewellin. See Sewell Hunsdon [Hodesdone] (Herts), 201 Huntingdon, 195 Hunts, 203, 214, 215, note 215, note 225a, note 226b, note 2274, note 232b, note 239b, note 251), note 2524, note 253b, 266, 266d Husborne Crawley. See Craw- ley. Irchester (Northants), 196 Ivel river, 212 Kempston [Camestone], 208, note 208, 2574, 2604 Kendals in Wrestlingworth, note 2276 Kent, 196, note 2534 Keysoe [Caisot, Caissot, Chaisot], 204, 214, 215, 2374, 2544, 266a, 266b Kimbolton[Chenebaltone](Kene- bauton), 202, mote 202, 214, 215, 232, note 232b, 2664 Knotting [Chenotinga] 195, 224 Lalega, La Leigh, La Leye, Le- ga. See Thurleigh Langford [Langeford], 212, 250), note 250b Lavendon (Bucks), note 2582 Leagrave, note 2234 Lee in Podington (Puddington), 216 Leicestershire, note 260d Leighton Buzzard [Lestone], 193, 194, 205, 213, 2224, note 256) Church of, note 197, 2224, 2274 INDEX TO DOMESDAY Lidlington [Litincletone], 229) Limbury, note 2234 Lincolnshire, note 2494 Lintone. See Luton Long Stow. See Stow. Loucelles [Locels] (Calvados), 201 Luton [Loitone, Luitone, also Lintone], 194, 2224, 2234, note 223a, 252b, note 252b, 2644 Church of, 197, 2220 Manshead [Manesheve, Mane- heve], Hundred of, note 216, 217, note 217, 218, 223b, note 2236, 231a, 2345, note 236d, 238b, 242b, 246a, note 247), note 248a, note 2494, 252b, 253a, 255), 256b, note 256d, 2614, 2634, 266) Marston Morteyne [Merestone, Merstone], 192, 2315, note 231d, 243a, note 2434, note 2555, 2604 Shelton in. See Shelton Maulden [Meldone], 199, note 199, 231b, 2384, 243b, 256, 263b Melchbourne [Melceburne], 196, 224 Meppershall[Malpertesselle], 212, 214, note 214, 2554 Milbrook, Millbrook [Melebroc], 199, 2435 Millow [Melehou], 2274, 232a, 2330 Milton Bryant [Mildentone], 2235, 2394 Milton Ernest [Middeltone, Mildentone], 202, 2344, 239), 244b, note 244), note 248), 249), 260b, 2656 Newton Bromshold [Newentone], 196, 214, 225, note 2256 Northants, 195, 200, 203, 214, 215, note 225b, note 226a, note 2284, note 236b, note 260b, 266 Northill [Nortgible, Nortgivele, Nortgive], 192, 2364, 2425, 247) Oakley [Achelei], 192, 247), 2575 Odecroft, Hundred of, 217, 2234 Odell [Wadelle, Wahull], 192, 199, 210, 212, 2314, 249) Otone. See Wootton Ouse river, note 248) Oustone. See Houghton Con- quest Pavenham [Pabeneham], 192, 211, 230), 248), note 248), 254) Paxton, Little (Hunts), note 2524 Pegsdon [Pechesdone] in Shilling- ton, 197, 228), note 228b Perry, near Kimbolton (Hunts), note 215 Pertenhall 266a, 2665 Picheleswade. See Biggleswade Pileworde. See Tilsworth Podington, Puddington [Podin- tone, Potintone] (Podyngtone), 196, 214, note 216, note 225), 249), 2515, note 251b, note 2524, note 253b, note 254b, 266b Potsgrove {Potesgrava, Potes- grave], 192, 197, note 2226, 252b, 256b, 2636 Potton [Potone], 204, 210, 2582, 259) Priestley [Prestelai] in Flitwick, 213, 2434, 263d Pulloxhill [Polochessele], 2445 Putnoe [Puttenehou], 2374, 2375 [Partenhale], 215, Radwell [Radewelle] in Felmer- sham, 193, 207, 2454, note 2544, 2584 Raunds (Northants), 196 Redbornstoke [Radeburnesoca, Radbernestoche, Radborge- stoc, Ratborgestou, Ratber- nestoche, Ratborgestoche, Radburnestoc], Hundred of, 217, 218, 2284, 229, 2310, 2384, 243a, note 243b, 2464, 2514, 2534, 2555, 256), 2602, 263d, 2654 Richards Castle (Herefordshire), 203 Ridgmont, note 2514 Ridgmont, Segenhoe Segenhoe Riseley [Riselai], 192, 196, 2254, 2265, 2374, 239), 253, 2564 Rothwell (Lincs), note 2494 Rots [Ros] (Calvados), 201 Roxton [Rochesdon], 192, note 2354, 240b, note 240b, note 246d, 2474 Rushden [Risdene, Risedenel, 196, 214, 2264, note 226a, 2365, note 2494 in. See St. Neot’s (Einulfsbury), 198, note 198 Salford [Saleford], 238 Salph End, Salpho [Salchou] in Renhold, 238), note 238b Sandy [Sandeia], 200, 201, 211, 213, 216, 2354, note 247b, note 254, note 2654 Beeston in. See Beeston Segenhoe [Segenehou] in Ridg- mont, 203, 212, 2514 “Segresdone,’ 214, 216, 251d Sewell [Sewelle] in Houghton Regis, 194, 205, 217, 2234 Sharnbrook [Scernebroc, Serne- broc], 202, 206, 207, 213, 225), 226a, 2314, 2404, 251b, 2542, 255), 2584, 2634 AIl Shelton [Eseltone], 2254 Shelton [Eseltone] in Marston Morteyne, 209, 2434, 255), 2604 Shillington [Sethlindone], 212, note 228), 2294 Pegsdon in. See Pegsdon Shrewsbury, 195 Shropshire, note 2535 Silsoe [Sewilessou, Siwilessou], 2444, 2514 Souldrop, note 2255 Southill [Sudgivele], 203, 211, 213, 2350, note 235b, 2375, note 237), note 24.1), 2474, note 2474, 250b, 252b, 259b, note 261b, note 264b Broom in. See Broom Stanford in. See Stanford Southwark, note 2534 Spaldwick (Hunts), 215 Stagsden [Stachedene], 193, 213, 2244, 230b, 2374, 257 Stanburge ([Stanbridge], Half Hundred of, 217, note 217, 223b, 236b, 247b, 2484, 2494, 2534, 2565 Stanford [Stanford] in Southill, 208, 235b, 237b, 241b, 2474, 2615, 2645 Stanstead Abbots (Herts), 201 Stanwick [Stanewiga, Stanewica} (Northants), 214, 2284, note 2284 Staughton, Little, 213, 215 Stepney, 197 Steppingley [Stepigelai], 2462 Stevington [Stivetone, Stiven- tone], 202, note 202, 2244, note 2244, 2300 Stodden [Stoden, Stodene], Hun- dred of, 216, 217, 218, 223), 224b, 2264, 228a, note 229), 232b, 2344, 236b, 2395, note 244b, note 247b, 249b, 2515, 252a, 253b, 256a, 257b, 2606, note 2614, 2654 Stondon [Standone], 2294, 2624 Stotfold [Stotfald, Stotfalt], 198, 200, 201, 2384, 2624 Stow, Long, 215 (Hunts) Stratton [Stratone] in Biggles- wade, 203, 2324, 2504, 256a, 2585 Streatley[Stradlei, Stradli, Strail- lei], 192, 198, 200, 211, note 228), 233, 2394, 244), 2462, 2644 Studham [Estodham], 198 Sudbury [Subberie], in Eaton Socon, mote 198, 216, 2524, note 2584 Suffolk, note 231, note 2364 Sundon [Sonedone], 2334 Sutton [Sudtone, Suttone], 201, 205, 235), 2594, 264a A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Swineshead (Hunts), 214 Tadlow (Cambs), note 2615 Tempsford [Tamiseforde], 192, 201, 208, 212, 2274, 2354, 252b 2635 Tessel (Calvados), 201 Thurleigh [Lalega], 192, 205, 216, 2344, 240b, note 240b, 2484, 2504, note 2504 Tillbrook [Tilebroc], 200, 208, 214, 215, 232d Tilly-sur-Seulles (Calvados), 201 Tilsworth [Pileworde], 236d Tingrith [Tingrei], 242d Toddington [Dodintone, Totin- gedone], note 196, 2345, 246a, note 246a, 246b Totternhoe [Totenehou], 197, 211, 2494, 2534 Trelly near Coutances, 196 Turvey [Torveia, Torveie, Tor- nai, Tornei, Torneia, Torueia], 198, 199, 210, 2244, 225), note 2255, 2314, 240a, 2454, note 2452, 2482, 249), note 249), 265D ‘Turweston (Bucks), note 2224 Vast, le, near Cherbourg, 199 ‘Wadell [Wahull]. See Odell Warden [Wardone] 2474, 2562, note 256b, 2615 Ware [Wares, Warres] (Herts), note 196, 200, note 216, 237), 238), 2414, 241b, 2424 Weneslai, Half Hundred of, 217, 2354, 258), 2615, 2644 Westcote [Wescote], in Wills- hamstead, 212, 243), note 243), 2654 Westoning [Westone], note 193, 212, 213, 216, 2664 Wigginton (Herts), 202 Wilden [Wildene], 2244 Willey [Wilga], Hundret of, 209, 217, note 217, 2244, note 2244, 2255, note 2255, note 226b, note 227b, note 2304, 2314, 2342, 236b, note 2374, note 239), 2404, 244b, 246), 248a, note 248b, 2494, 249), 251b, 2524, 2530, 254a, note 254b, 2554, 255b, note 257b, 2584, 262), 2634, 2644, 265), note 265d Willington [Welitone, Weltone], 2384, 2424, Willshamstead [Winessamestede], 208, note 243d, 2574 Westcote in. See Westcot Wilts, note 2330, note 254b Wincot (Gloucestershire), 197 Wixamtree [Wichestanestou, 4t2 Wichestavestou], Hundred of, 217, 218, 2284, 2304, 235), 237b, 241b, note 243b, 245), 2474, 250b, 252b, 254), 256a, note 256b, 2596, 260b, note 2614, 2615, 2634, 2645 Woburn [Woburne, Woberne], 202, 2314, 2635 Wootton [Otone], 209, 2555 Wratsworth [Warateworde], in Orwell, 216 Wrestlingworth, 216 Kendals in. See Kendals Wyboston [Wiboldestone] in Eaton Socon, 193, note 198, 201, 228), note 228), note 234b, 235a, 240b, 2454, 2524, 2614 Wymington, Wimmington [Wi- mentone], 192, 211, 2465, 2494, 2504, note 2546, 264b, 2655 Yelden [Giveldene], 196, 216, 2240 Unnamed in Manshead Hundred, 242b Unnamed in Willey Hundred, 225b, 265d Unnamed in Biggleswade Hun- dred, 2454 Etter Pipe sileay neat