Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/51

Rh been erected on or near this spot from a very remote period, in connection with the ancient cross before mentioned; especially since, as will afterwards be shewn, fragments of at least three other crosses of a similar kind were taken out of the foundations of a part of the present church. But no record has been preserved of any thing respecting its ecclesiastical history before the Norman conquest. In the Doomsday Survey it is stated there were two priests for the church of Bake ell. It was afterwards made a collegiate church, but to whom it was indebted for its endowment is by no means clear. The local tradition, which ascribes to John earl of Morton, afterwards King John, both the building of the present nave, with the exception of the west end, which he is said to have left standing, and the grant of the endowment in 1170, or 1180, or indeed at any later period, does not appear to rest upon any good authority. For John did not come into possession of this domain till 1189. It had formerly been granted by William the Conqueror to his natural son, William Peverel; and having been forfeited to the king by one of his descendants in 1154, it seems to have remained in possession of the crown, till it was given by Richard, on his accession to the throne in 1189, to his brother John. The church was certainly endowed before 1192; for in that year the earl gave it, with all its "prebends and other appurtenances," to the present cathedral of Lichfield, (see Dugdale, Monast. Lichfield,) and he is hardly likely to have so soon transferred this endowment if it had been made by himself. It seems more probable that the church was built and endowed by one of the Peverels, before their lands were forfeited. And as William Peverel, the son, who died in 1113, gave two parts of the tithes of the extensive parish of Bakewell to the priory which he founded at Lenton, in Notts., and was a great benefactor to other religious houses in this and the adjoining counties, it seems a reasonable conjecture that he may have given the other moiety of the tithes for the endowment of these prebends, and may also at the same time have erected the church, of which the present nave and west end formed a part: the date would thus be in the commencement of the twelfth century, and the style of what remains very well accords with that period.

The only other record of importance in the history of this church which has been preserved, is the founding of a chan-