Page:A transcript of the first volume, 1538-1636, of the parish register of Chesham in the county of Buckingham.djvu/20

 Ecclesiastical living of Chesham formerly held in medieties.

It will be noticed that the Latin prefatory note mentions two vicars as holding office in 1538, and that the vicarages of Chesham Leicester and Chesham Woburn are severally referred to many times in the book. This is due to the fact that the living of Chesham formerly consisted of medieties, the tithes of which were appropriated to the abbeys of Leicester and Woburn respectively; each of these religious houses appointing a vicar. In early times, two different ministers seem generally to have been chosen, who appear from the note in the Register to have officiated in turn at the parish church. It frequently happened subsequently that the same minister was inducted to both vicarages; and ultimately, in 1767, the medieties of the living, having by purchase come into possession of the Duke of Bedford as sole lay owner, were consolidated by Act of Parliament as the vicarage of Chesham.

Alleged early existence of two Churches at Chesham.

It is doubtful whether the religious houses of Leicester and Woburn ever had separate churches at Chesham. It has been affirmed with some assurance that the present church formerly belonged solely to the abbey of Leicester, and that another church, connected with the abbey of Woburn, once stood near where the National Infant-School now is. But the evidence supporting this assertion appears somewhat inadequate, and there are facts which tend to rebut it. It is not inconceivable that the former existence of a parsonage-house at the place mentioned may have given rise to the supposition that there was once a church there too.

Parsonage-houses, &c.

Of parsonage-houses, properly so called, there seem to have been two in the parish-the rectory-house of Chesham Leicester, in subsequent volumes of the Register called "the upper parsonage,” which, until the beginning of the last century, stood in the park, near the church, and was the residence successively of the families of Ashfield, Whichcote, and Skottowe; and the rectory-house of Chesham Woburn, the site of which has just been referred to. The former house having been occupied by the Ashfields at the date of the entries, it is presumably the latter that is frequently mentioned in the Register as "the parsonage." It is distinctively called " psonage howse of Cheshm woborn" in one place. From these references to it, it would appear that, like "the upper parsonage," it was generally used as a lay residence.

In the obituary notice of Mr. Woodcock, already adverted to, "his Vicaredge howse of Cheshm woborn" is mentioned as the place of his decease. There was a vicarage-house at Bellingdon, on land that is now part of Mount Nugent Farm; and, as this land was comprised within the rectorial manor of Chesham Woburn, the vicarage-house upon it would seem to have belonged to the Woburn vicar. But its situation on a hill at a distance of nearly two miles from the church appears somewhat incompatible with the supposition that it was from there that Mr. Woodcock's mortal remains were "caried by divers & sundry worthy Ministers by turnes to the Church. Accompanied . . . with all his late Parishioners men and wemen." It may be, therefore, that the parsonage-house of Chesham Woburn was at that time the abode of the vicar, and hence is called the vicarage-house.

The present vicarage, built in the course of the eighteenth century, took the place of the house last mentioned and of that