Bampton Hundred [Oxford]
Though not named in Domesday book, the hundred may be identified with two hundreds attached in 1086 to the large royal manor of Bampton. Their composition in 1086 was probably little different from that in the 13th century, when the combined hundred already contained the 16 parishes (with their constituent hamlets) included later: the Domesday assessment of those places was c. 201 hides, and in the carucage of 1220 the hundred, excluding the exempt ecclesiastical manors of Bampton Deanery, Shifford, Hardwick and Brighthampton, and Witney, paid on 207 ploughs. The composition of the separate Domesday hundreds may have been reflected in the later hundred's division into east and west parts, each of which accounted for c. 100 Domesday hides.
DUCKLINGTON In 958 the 'old church of East Lea' stood on the site of Cokethorpe chapel on the periphery of the Ducklington estate. The antiquity of Cokethorpe chapel presumably accounts for the tradition that it was the 'mother church' of Ducklington; its possible origin in the period of the conversion is from any of the Bampton manors. By 958 there may have been a church in the principal settlement of the estate, although the fabric of the surviving Ducklington church contains no dateable features earlier than the 12th century. William I's confirmation to Leofric and Exeter cathedral in 1069 included 'all the king's tithes', later interpreted by the chapter as those arising from ancient demesne within the former Bampton manor. Rectorial tithes, owed in 1317 from lands in Brize Norton, Shilton, Yelford, Ducklington, Hardwick, Standlake, Black Bourton, and Clanfield as well as from Bampton, Weald, Lew, Haddon, Aston, and Shifford, remained with the cathedral except during the Interregnum. 1074 Robert d'Oilly granted two thirds of his demesne tithes in Ducklington to the canons of St. George's in Oxford castle, a grant later confirmed to their successors, the canons of Osney. In the 1170s, after a dispute between Ducklington's incumbent Niel and Osney abbey, Ralph de Chesney also confirmed the abbey's right to two thirds of all tithes from some additional demesne. The abbey defended its rights against the rector's tithe farmer in the early 14th century, and its portion was still valued at £1 6s. 8d. in the 16th century. The later parish included Claywell, partly separated from the Ducklington estate by the mid 11th century, suggests that Ducklington church was established early enough to retain the tithes of most of the estate described in 958.
EGERTON - Great Berkhampstead Berkhampstead St. Peter [Herts]-Beorhhamstede, Berchehamstede, xi cent.; Berchamstede, Berkhamsted xii to xiv cent. Berkhampstead St. Peter- As in all western Hertfordshire, this parish was apparently at one time forest land; the extensive wastes, described in mediaeval times as woods, the frequent references to assarted lands, the large amount of pannage which is recorded in the Domesday Book, and also the great extent of the manor, which included the parish of Northchurch. The Roman road called Akeman Street, the main highway from London to Aylesbury, runs through the parish, and there are numerous roads northward and southward. It is evident that the kings of England utilized Berkhampstead Castle as a stopping place in their journeys to the north-west counties when travelling along the Akeman Street, and they maintained here great stables, which are frequently referred to in the accounts and surveys of the castle and manor. An important occurrence in the history of Berkhampstead is the submission here of the English to William the Norman in 1066.
 | From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that after the battle of Hastings and the death of Harold, Archbishop Aldred and the people of London chose Edgar Atheling as their king, so William marched from Hastings, crossing the Thames at Wallingford, laying the country waste as he went, till he came to Berkhampstead. Here, however, there came to meet him Edgar Atheling, Aldred archbishop of York, Earls Edwin and Morcar, and all the chief men of London, 'and then from necessity submitted when the greatest harm had been done; and it was very imprudent that it was not done earlier, as God would not better it for our sins: and they gave hostages and swore oaths to him; and he promised them that he would be a kind lord to them.' William then went to Westminster, where he was crowned king by Archbishop Aldred. The old parish church of Brampton was situated on an eminence overlooking the vale of the Irthing, about a mile and a half from the town. What caprice led to the selection of such an inconvenient site it is impossible to say. It was in existance as early as 1169 AD about which time it was given by Robert de Vallibus to the Abbey of Lanercost. |
In the 12th century BAMPTON was still occasionally called a double hundred, but the two parts may never have been separately administered and by the 13th century had been combined. Divided among sixteen ancient parishes, three parishes within those bounds belonged wholly or partly to other counties, and two to another Oxfordshire hundred.
In Ducklington, Eynsham abbey's right to the tithes of 40 a. in Claywell, confirmed in 1239, may have derived from Ralph de Chesney's grant to the abbey of a hide of land there in the late 12th century; the abbey's tithe there was not recorded later. In the early 15th century the dean and chapter of Exeter were claiming that tithes in Ducklington manor were being withheld by the Lovels, perhaps from Claywell where some demesne tithes were said in 1317 to belong to Bampton rectory, or from Barley Park where some land was later thought to be tithable to Bampton.
In the later 12th century and earlier 13th the hundred was evidently granted at pleasure with Bampton manor, with which it passed in 1248 to Henry III's half-brother William de Valence. At Nesse parish, the road runs from Shresbury to Owestry and Whittington. Morris / Meurich, the son of Roger de Powys, lord of White-Town and Fulk Fitzwarin were on march when John became king after Richard. It descended with the manor to the Talbots, later earls of Shrewsbury, and was divided with it in 1660. Lords of the two, unequal moieties remained joint lords of the hundred thereafter: courts were held in both names and the profits were divided.
Among places later excluded from the hundred, Langford and, probably, Little Faringdon and Shilton were held in 1086 by Aelfsige of Faringdon with the manor of Great Faringdon (then Berks.); by the 13th century all three formed part of the Berkshire hundred of Faringdon, though Langford's hamlets of Grafton and Radcot remained in Oxfordshire and in Bampton hundred. Widford, owned by St. Oswald's priory in Gloucester, belonged in 1086 to the Gloucestershire hundred of Barrington and later to Slaughter hundred, and Northmoor, as an outlier of Taynton manor, belonged probably to the three hundreds attached to Shipton under Wychwood, later Chadlington hundred. Tenurial connexions probably also explain Minster Lovell's and Little Minster's inclusion in Chadlington hundred by 1220.
At one time the Bampton, present parish of Berkhampstead St. Peter, or Great Berkhampstead, which is bounded on the east and west sides by the parish of Northchurch or Berkhampstead St. Mary, formed a part of the latter parish. In the entry in the Domesday Survey relating to Berkhampstead there is mention of a priest with fourteen villeins, possibly indicating a manor of the rectory, which we know existed at Northchurch, while there is no evidence of such a manor at Great Berkhampstead, so that we may perhaps recognize the priest of Domesday as belonging to Northchurch. It was most unusual, at all events in this part of the country, to find two parishes occupying the whole extent of one manor. Between 1087 and 1104 William count of Mortain granted the advowson of the church of Berkhampstead, probably the church of Berkhampstead St. Mary, together with the advowson of the chapel of the castle and the tithes and lands which Godfrey the chaplain held, to the monastery of St. Mary of Grestein in Normandy, and it was about this time possibly that the parish of Great Berkhampstead was created.
The old church continued to be used as a graveyard and includes an old monumental slab with the following inscription: "Hic jacet Dominus Ricardus de Caldecoates, qui fuit vicarius Ecclesiae, Obiit A.D. 1343" (Here lies Sir Richard Caldcote, who was vicar of this church. He died A.D. 1343. In 1357 the wood called the Frith is said to have contained 763 acres I rood of land, the herbage of which was common to all the tenants as well free as villein, except in the time of pannage, which extended from the feast of St. Michael to the feast of St. Martin; in return for this right, the tenants of the borough, except widows, had to mow and do other work on the lord's lands. It appears from some legal proceedings in the time of Edward VI that the tenants and inhabitants of the lordship of Berkhampstead and the towns and parishes of Berkhampstead, Northchurch, Aldbury, Pitstone, Cheddington, Little Gaddesden, Frithsden, Nettleden, Hemel Hempstead, Bovingdon, and Flaunden, to the number of 2,000, also claimed common rights here. There are many small pieces of waste land or greens in the parish.
The chapel of Godfrey the chaplain we may perhaps identify with the chapel of St. James, which seems to have been the parochial chapel of the borough, with its churchyard and consequently its parochial rights of burial. It would seem that about the time of the charter of confirmation by King Richard I or a little later a new church dedicated to St. Peter was commenced, probably by Geoffrey Fitz Piers, which took the place of the old chapel of St. James. When the existing church was built early in the thirteenth century and the parish of St. Peter probably formed, the abbot of Grestein relinquished the patronage of the old church of St. Mary, retaining only a pension of £2 a yeare from it. The chapel of St. James, already referred to, stood apparently on the south side of the main road between Berkhampstead and Northchurch. Adjoining it was a well called St. James's Well, which was probably the principal water-supply to the town. The two keepers or wardens of this well were recognized officials of the Portmote Court, and regulated the use of the water. In 1400 these officers presented persons for washing their clothes at the well against the ordinances. The fair (so frequently held on the feast of the saint to whose honour the parish church is dedicated) was held on St. James's Day. It is possible that the gild organization, which there is little doubt existed in connexion with the chapel of St. James from the survival in the appointment of wardens of the well, was continued by Geoffrey Fitz Piers in the brotherhood of St. John the Baptist. This may be the cause of the confusion in the name of the well, and the position of St. John's Well in Mr. Lane's nursery garden corresponds to the position of St. James's well given in the surveys of the manor of the seventeenth century.
Cokethorpe in Ducklington was a dependent chapelry by the 13th century and remained so until the 20th. Before Claywell was deserted in the later Middle Ages there may have been a dependent chapel there, though none was mentioned in comprehensive lists of local chapels over which Bampton church claimed rights. In 1601, however, Ducklington's glebe included what was thought to have been a churchyard at Claywell, for which the tenants of Claywell farm continued to pay 2s. 6d. a yeare to the churchwardens into the 20th century.
The church of ST. BARTHOLOMEW, in Ducklington built of rubble with ashlar dressings, comprises chancel, aisled nave, west tower, and north and south porches. There is a late 12th-century south arcade, of which the plain, single-chamfered western arch was presumably the earliest part. Flat buttresses supporting the west wall on each side of the later tower probably indicate the length and width of the nave c. 1200. In the early to mid 13th century the long, narrow chancel was built and a tower, of which the entrance arch from the nave survives, was added at the west end. The late 12th-century south aisle was probably narrower than the surviving aisle, of which the scale and fenestration indicate rebuilding in the later 13th century. The small, plain south doorway is probably also of that date. In the later 13th century Bampton hundred contained 45 separate settlements the later lost or shrunken settlements of Benney and Puttes in Clanfield, Alwoldsbury in Clanfield or Alvescot, Putlesley, Eggesley, and East Weald (later Claywell) in Ducklington, and Caswell in Witney. Denleghe (later Delly End) in Witney's hamlet of Hailey was separately listed in 1316.
Many of Ducklington's early rectors were educated men, and some were probably nonresident beneficiaries of the well endowed living. Robert de Askeby, rector 1295-1304, a royal presentee, was a prominent royal envoy. Philip of Hanbury, rector in 1363, belonged to an armigerous family and held estates in Worcestershire and elsewhere. Thomas Raysaker, rector 1447-67, and his successor John Pereson were considerable pluralists; both were wardens of St. Katherine's chantry in Wanborough (Wilts.), which, like Ducklington, was in the patronage of the Lovels. When the manor in Ducklington was divided in the later 14th century the advowson remained with the Lovels, despite a challenge by Edmund, earl of March, lord of the other part of the manor, who made a rival presentation in 1422. In 1467 Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, presented as guardian of Francis Lovel. In 1382 Bampton hundred was leased with the manor for 7 years to Sir Robert Tresilian, and in the later 16th century the right to hold the court was sometimes let with the demesne to the earl's steward. Numerous franchises were claimed within the hundred by the later 13th century, though not all survived in the 17th century and later. Before 1248 Richard, earl of Cornwall (d. 1272) transferred to his court of North Osney the suit of his tenants at Brize Norton, Astrop, Clanfield, Puttes, Asthall, and Black Bourton, for which he established separate views and claimed assize of bread and ale.