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(Continued from previous page)MEDIEVAL TIMES
After Domesday no further records are known until the
early thirteenth-century. In 1205 we find Icene leased to Emma de
Stanton who gave forty marks and a palfrey for the privilege.
This was confirmed by the King in a dispute with a James de
Poterna. When the lease expired Icene reverted to the abbess. A
substantial flock of sheep was grazed on the manor pasture. In
1260 the abbess ordered that 222 sheep be driven from Icene to
Froyle, twenty four miles away, to increase her flock there. She
was, apparently, a strict landlord. In 1276 she sued Nicholas de
Ichene for trespass and she also recovered 100 shillings from the
owner of three greyhounds
who killed three of her swans. In 1280 the first recorded Rector
of the parish, John of Leckford, made suit to the abbess for a
virgate of land (about 30 acres) which she gave to him. It can
still be identified as the 'prebendal' field to the north-east of
the village.
The parish of Ichene was one of only four prebends or livings in
the gift of the abbey. The prebendal priest was a 'rector', a
gentleman cleric of repute and learning, who enjoyed many
privileges not accorded ordinary priests. He was provided with
several acres of land, food from the convent kitchens, the parish
church and the great tithes (a tenth of all crops each year). He
had a stall in the abbey church, was a full member of the chapter
and could speak and vote in the nuns' elections. His
responsibilities included repairing the parish church chancel,
assisting the nuns with their legal and financial affairs and
auditing the accounts. When he resided elsewhere he could appoint
a vicar to care for the souls of the parish!
The identities of these early rectors are recorded in the 'Registers
of the Bishops of Winchester'. Some remained in office for
several years. Henry de Stockbrigge, for example, ministered for
28 years. An enquiry of 1322 found him unsound 'in limb or wind'
and two other parsons were duly appointed to assist him. Some
rectors seemed to stay only for a short while. Indeed, when the
Black Death swept through Hampshire, in 1349, John de Bromden
appears to have retained the living for less than a month; he was
most likely a
victim of the disease. The records show him as being presented to
the living on April 22nd but by May 19th he had been replaced by
John de Cranbourne. During 1349,49% of all the beneficed clergy
in the Winchester Diocese died and the numerous letters received
by Bishop Edington reveal the devastation caused in Hampshire by
the pestilence. As a result, in the late fourteenth-century,
there was a great shortage of farm labour and substantial loss of
income by the abbey; in 1384, St Mary's valued the manor at only
£10 yearly. By the early fifteenth-century the manor had been
leased, a common feature of the times, and the abbey and its
community had become landlords collecting money rents from tenant
farmers.
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The War Memorial |
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: A NEW PATRON
Between 1531 and 1539 Parliamentary Acts were swiftly passed
revoking the authority of the Pope in England and confirming the
King as Supreme Head of the Church. The effects of these sweeping
changes were soon to be felt in Itchen Abbas. The Bishop of
Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, was dismissed from his post of
Principal Secretary to the King for opposing the new policies
urged by Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell, on becoming Principal
Secretary, sent Gardiner to France to remove all opposition and
then made himself Vicar-General. The Bishop was thus unable to
resist the dissolution of the monasteries and abbeys of Hampshire.
St Mary's Abbey fell on November 17th 1539 and, at the same time,
the abbess lost control ofitchin Abbess. Members of the King's
circle were keen to benefit from monastic spoils. Edward and
Thomas Seymour, related to Henry VIII by marriage, through their
sister, Jane, pressed their claims. First Edward, later Duke of
Somerset and Lord Protector, took the Wiltshire manors of St Mary's
and then Thomas received the manor of Romsey Abbey. The Seymours'
sister, Elisabeth (first married to Thomas Cromwell's son),
married John Paulet. He had three brothers. Richard and George
were county commissioners and receivers for the surrender of the
abbeys. The third was Sir William Paulet, Chief Steward of
Wherwell Abbey and Wintney Priory. In April 1539 he received the
manor and rectory of Itchen Stoke from Romsey Abbey and, in
November, he received the manor and rectory of Itchen Abbas from
St Mary's.
THE MARQUIS OF WINCHESTER
Sir William Paulet was a courtier and a man of considerable power.
He was created the Marquis of Winchester in 1551, when he was the
Lord Treasurer of England. He and his family resided at Basing
House, near Basingstoke. During the Civil War Oliver Cromwell
destroyed Basing House, a great symbol of royalty, and the family
removed to Bolton Hall in Yorkshire before returning to a 'hawking
seat' at Abbotstone in the late seventeenth-century and,
subsequently, to the newly built Hackwood House, two miles south
west of Old Basing. During all this time they held the manor and
were patrons of the living of Itchen Abbas. In 1689, Charles the
sixth Marquis, a man of great eccentricity, was created Duke of
Bolton. The third Duke had three sons by his mistress, Lavinia
Beswick (or Fenton) an actress known as Polly Peachum from her
performance of that character in the 'Beggar's Opera'. In 1763
the Duke made a provision of the living of Itchen Abbas for the
eldest boy, Charles. Some sources cite him as rector but,
although he was rector of Looe in Cornwall, he is not mentioned
in the official records as ever having been presented to the
living of Itchen Abbas. Although he did perform some services
here as late as 1796, is it more likely that he did so as a
seconded parson or visiting cleric? The living was subsequently
sold by the Boltons' descendants'to John Wright of Stourbridge
who secured it for his son, Robert.
VILLAGE LIFE
The inventory attached to the will of Robert Smythe of 'Abbas
Itchin', made in 1593, gives some idea of the contents of a
husbandman's dwelling house in the village in the late
Elizabethan period. The house was most probably built of timber
with wattle-and-daub infilling and a thatched roof. He had 'one
tabel, one forme, two
tressels and one cubbert in the hall' together with 'three
kettells, three panns, one pott and four candlestickes'. Other
utensils listed were, 'one pothanger, one augur, two broches (spits),
one gridiron and iron barre and three wedges'. He also had 'five
hennes, a cocke, three kyne, a bullocke, five hogges and six
sheepe'. The inventory also recorded, 'tenne bushells ofmault,
wheat in the barne, wheat in the fields and five acres of dredge
(a mixed cereal crop of oats and barley).'
A Glebe Terrier of 1635 provides evidence of the living of itchen
Abbas in the early seventeenth-century. It recorded the parsonage
ofitchen Abas' as follows:
'First the parsonage house, Barnes stabells and other out
houses ther unto belonginge with a garden plott, a little orchard,
and a little hoppgarden.
Secondly the parson hath two yard landes contayninge 48 akers
more or less of arable ground 2 little meadowes of a quarter of
acres a peece more or less a litle close about haife an acre more
or less w[ilth all the tythes of east and west Itchin 2 little
villages in the same parish . . . The prebend of Itchen Abbas
hath one yard land contayninge about 30 acres ... a meadow called
prebend mead haife an acre of ground ... a close called prebend
close by estimation half an acre.'
Unfortunately, no map was produced to accompany the glebe terrier
and we can only speculate about the exact location of the
parsonage house at this time.
After the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, the
country fell prey to a certain amount of religious turmoil. This
appears not to have been reflected locally. Country-wide surveys
were made of peoples' beliefs and a report of 1676 listed the
inhabitants ofitchen Abbas as 83 in number of which 81 were
conformists.
There were just two papists and no non-conformists suggesting
that the village was a stable community.
Later records seem to show that the poor in the village were not
neglected. For example, Jane dark gave, by will, £10 to the Poor
of the Parish, to be invested by Mr Benjamin Bear, the
churchwarden, with the interest to be distributed as occasion may
require.
Memorials to the descendants of the
redoubtable Mr Bear are still to be found in the churchyard.
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