Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/71

 US. X.JULY 25, 1914.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

RECTORS OF UPHAM (Durley separated}.

Date of Collation. Rector.

Patron.

How Vacated.

Remarks.

1855. Jan. 22

Charles Simon Faithfull Fanshawe, Bishop of

Death.

M.A., Oxon.

Winchester

1873. July 18 Richard Shard

Gubbins, M.A.,

Bishop of

Resignations D - *** e ?" buried at

Cantab.

Lichfield

Upham.

1884. Nov. 18

William Wyke

Bayliss, M.A.,

,

Death.

Formerly V. of 8ton Staffs, buried at Upham'

Date of

Cantab.

Institution.

1890. April 19

Henry Poole

Marriott, B.A., i Lord Chan-

Resignation. 1 V. of Blackwell, Derbys^

Cantab.

cellor

IWXh-UU.

1897. Feb. 6

Edmund Lawrence Hemsted Tew, M.A., Oxon.

,,

V. of Hornsea and R. of Long Riston, Yorks, 1W3- 97. Domes! ii: Chaplain to

the Marquis of Ailesbury.

1911.

N.B. Cardinal Beaufort's Registers for the early part of the fourteenth century and those of Bishop Andrewes for the first part of the seventeenth are missing, which accounts for gaps in the list at those periods.

Upham. E. L. H. TEW.

ALEXANDER POPE THE ELDER AND THE HOUSE AT BINFIELD.

THK interesting information as to the family of Alexander Pope published by MR. F. J. POPE in ' N. & Q.,' US. vii. 281, has only recently been seen by me ; but, as the exact date of the acquisition of the house at Binfield by the poet's father seems unknown to him, he may be glad to learn it through your columns. The history of this house was traced by me in an article which appeared in The Home Counties Magazine in January, 1900. The dates are taken from the pur- chase deeds.

Alexander Pope the elder purchased Whitehill House, with two closes of arable or pasture land containing fourteen acres, in the parish of Binfield in the county of Berks, on 29 July, 1698. The vendor was Charles Rackett, late of Hammersmith in the parish of Fulham in the county of Middlesex, now of Binfield in the county of Berks, gent. In addition to the fourteen acres already mentioned, there were three a^res in the common field of Binfield, and a close, known as Little Comer, of about two acres : al- together about nineteen acres.

Pope is described as of Hammersmith aforesaid, merchant, and the price was 445?., being the sum Rackett had paid for the property three years earlier, when he had bought it of Gabriel Yonge, gentleman, of Warfield, Berks (4 Feb., 1695). A Pope was one of the witnesses to this deed, and Rackett was no doubt his son-in-law the husband of his daughter, Magdalen Pope. At this date the house and ground were in the occupation of one Thomas Holmes as tenant by a lease for three years, dated

13 Sept., 1694. Neither Rackett nor Pope could have come to Binfield before the last- mentioned lease had expired in the autumn of 1697. But on 9 April, 1700, Alexander Pope the elder, of Binfield in the county of Berks, merchant, conveyed to Samuel Maw- hood, citizen and fishmonger of London, and Charles Mawhpod of London, gentleman,. " all that brick messuage or tenement wherein he, the said Alexander Pope the elder, now dwelleth," in trust for his only son, Alexander Pope the younger. The latter was now 12 years of age, the age at which he afterwards said he went with hi* father into the forest, and at which he pro- fessed to have composed the ' Ode to Soli- tude,' in praise of a rural and secluded Hie, Fifteen years later, however, when the pro- ceeds of the ' Iliad ' and other works had rendered him independent, the poet desired 1 to move nearer London, and his father and" the two Mawhoods, " at the request and 1 desire " of Alexander Pope the younger, sold Whitehill House to James Tanner of the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, London, gentleman, for the sum of 5501. paid to Alexander Pope the younger. The price had advanced a hundred pounds. The signa- tures of father and son appear on this deed* r the elder, still described as merchant, signing "Alex r Pope"; the younger, "Alexand, Pope."

On 23 Oct., 1717, the old merchant died at Mawson's Buildings, Chiswick, aged, accord- ing to his monument, 74. He would, there-


 * Dated 1 March, 1715, or 1716 historically.