Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/35

 10 s. XL JAN. 9, 1909. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

ton (=Teddington, v. Newcourt's ' Reper- torium'). Next we have the manor of Hyde with demesne lands and tenements, the manor of Eybury with lands, and after much peregrination, sometimes near Neyte, sometimes remote, the list terminates with three closes at East Greenwich !* It is im- possible in this list to distinguish parcels that might have constituted a manor of Neyte.

But it is true that there are several mentions of Neyte as a manor in the reign of Edward II. That king, as has been shown, had Neyte in 1320, and possibly earlier, as a cattle depot. The bailiff re- siding there designated it in his accounts as the King's manor ; in 1325, however, the King gave an acknowledgment that it was by the will of the Abbot and Convent that he held " the manors of Eybury and Neyte " ; here the two are conjoined, the cattle-sheds probably being at Neyte, the manor house ; the pasturage in Eybury, the containing manor. The status is also evident in another writing preserved, viz., the release, in the first year of Edward III., of " the manor of Eybury (Neyte House certainly contained), which his father had held of the Abbot." Also it will be noticed that at the time of the release it was " at Eybury " that were found 60 cows, 500 sheep, and a pigeon-house, although nomin- ally the depot had been at Neyte. f

The ultimate and perhaps clearest proof that Neyte manor was no more than a moated enclosure in Eybury lies in a document at the Record Office found for me by Mr. Salisbury (whose valuable assistance ] cannot sufficiently acknowledge), .viz., a lease of the manor of Eybury, dated 10 Henry VIII. (1519), and granted by Abbot John (Islip) to Richard Whash. By this lease were excluded " the close called le Twenty Acres, lying opposite the manor of Neyte on the south, and the Abbot's Meadow on the east side of same, with a pasture called Cawseyhau." The term was 32 years, the annual payment 21Z. ; fue" was to be cut and carried from woods on the banks of the Thames ; six loads of hay to be reaped and carried into the manor of le Neyte ; and the tenant had also the obligation of transporting the goods of the Abbot from this manor house to any other.

thereof," the King granted the Priory of Hurlej in Berkshire and the possessions thereof.
 * For all this, "in recompence and consideration

t 'Cartulary of Westminster Abbey,' Samue Bentley, 1836 (Brit, Mus. 7709 bb. 34).

Record Office, "K.R. Conventual Leases, No. 53.

Now here the very fields which lay imme- liately beyond the moated enclosure of Veyte are shown to be part of the manor if Eybury, and thus surely it is proved that he manor of Neyte lay only " within the
 * ompass of the moat."

Further, the plan of 1614 containing ' Nete House " is endorsed " the manor >f Eybury," and that of 1675 showing the -.ame is entitled " the Lordship of Eburie." This, perplexing as it was under the con- eption of Neyte as a manor with lands, 3 now understood. The " manoir del !seyt," for which, as we saw, John of Gaunt jesought the Abbot as temporary residence 'or himself and household, was simply the moated manor house of the estate.

After the suppression of the monastery, when Neyte had become the " moated grange " of a tenant farmer, he had probably moreover 108 acres of Lammas land ; this was in 1592, the circumstance presently to have 'urther reference. The plan of 1723 which nas had our attention designates " the Twenty Acres " as " the Balywick of Neat," and it and the other fields excluded in the lease of 1519 were not yet absorbed in the Grosvenor estate, but were in the possession of Mr. Stanley. This bailiwick may perhaps imply a subordinate division of the manor of Eybury, but whether formed before or after the Grosvenor acquisition of 1676 is uncertain. In later plans the bailiwick is given a greater extension, and as cultiva- tion advanced Neyte, like Bayswater, or better, like Pimlico its supplanter, from a small nucleus spread, as the " Neat House Gardens," over the area which naturally presents itself as the Neyte manor or baili- wick. That area lies between the Willow Walk (now Warwick Street, Pimlico) and the Thames, with the Eye or Aye brook (now commemorated in Tachbrook [=T' aye- brook] Street) on the east, and on the west a certain dyke which in the plan of 1723 seems to limit the bailiwick of Neat, and is now covered by the Brighton Railway.
 * hose fields always attached to it, and

Concerning Eybury the words of the Act are :

"The manor of Eybury with all the lands,

meadows, pastures, rents, and services and two

closes late parcel of the farm of Longmore, which manor of Eybury with the said two closes were in the tenure and occupation of Richard Whasshe "-

doubtless the tenant who got the lease seven- teen years earlier. We hear again of the farm in 1592, then said to contain 430 acres a good large farm, but far short of the acreage of the manor. The tenant is again