Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/109

 9 th S. XI. FEB. 7, 1903.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

101

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 190S.

CONTENTS. -No. 267.

NOTES: A Dismantled Priory of Black Canons, 101 Extracts from Bishop Hackefr, 103 Burial of Sir John Moore " Tagnicati," 105 'Everyman' " Release " in Ship-salving Verses by Cowper Abbots of Bury St. Ed- munds, 103 Goths and Huns, 107.

QUERIES :- First Edition of ' Paradise Lost,' 107 Author Wanted Carl vle's ' Past and Present ' Leitnaker Family Motto on Brass Almsdish Hoadley and Warton City of the Violet Crown Murdoch Family, 108' Nobiliaire de Normandie ' Magic Ring Witnessing by Signs " Cyclealities " Picture by Martineau Setting of the Seven Stars Hallowe'en Practice Origin of the Turn- bulls, 109 Sans Pareil Theatre Mistletoe Berries Curran Family Adelphi Society of London Pasted Scraps, 110.

REPLIES : St. Mary Axe, 110 "Ant" and "Emmet" Princess Charlotte " Warth " German Reprint of Leicarraga Old Conduits of London "Le grand peut- Stre" Amy Robsart, 112 "Yeoman," 113 Latin Riddle of Leo XIII." Lesing "Arms of Married Women, 114 " Motor" Bczique Ambrose Rookwood, 115 ' Aylwin ' Marshalsea Prime Ministers: Irish and Scotch Cole- ridge's ' Christabel,' 116 Arms Wanted " Popple " Allusions in 'Sirtor Resartus ' Date of Easter Merime'e's " Inconnue," 117 Quotations Wanted Epitaph of James Bossom, 118.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-Willcock's 'The Great Marquess ' Hein and Becker's ' Commercial German ' Welch's 1 Hamlet and the Recorders 'Reviews and Magazines.

Notices to Correspondents.

A DISMANTLED PRIORY OF BLACK

CANONS AT GREAT MISSENDEN. THE village of Great Missenden consists of a winding, down-hill road of grey houses, which have all their own picturesqueness in summer, but in winter have a look of bleak- ness and loneliness about them. Beyond come picturesque, old-world cottages, bits of coppice, and cottage gardens, and further on the park begins ; and if you follow the road to the left you come to the interesting old church, which is finely situated and has a beautiful stretch of God's acre beside and around it; the park gates open out of the churchyard. The locked door of the church, as is often the case north of London, repels the traveller who fain would look within- for who would willingly go in quest of the often crabby, reluctant-to-wait-while-you-in- vestigate sexton, for the opening of a house that should never be closed to the world, whose property, after God, it is ? The church in shape is nearly cruciform, and is dedicated to St. Mary. There are many pointed arches remaining, and some authorities believe that they are indications of the church having been part of the cloisters of the abbey which used once to be here. There are also some

fine brasses to the Missendens, of whose fame, at a far-away period, this place was full.

Lipscomb, in his ' History of Buckingham- shire,' says that in the reign of Henry I.

" Great Missenden was held by a feudatory tenant named William, who took his surname from the place, and this William de Missenden was the founder of the Abbey in 1133. How long he sur- vived the foundation of the Abbey does not appear, but he was dead in 1165. Hugh de Plessetis, to whom Great Missenden had passed by hereditary right, died in 1291, and was buried at Missenden, having in his last testament expressed a desire that his body should be interred in the conventual ihurch of Missenden, and together with him his white palfrey with the armour and harness belong- ing to him."

One wonders, by the way, if the unfortunate white palfrey had to be killed for the occasion !

Missenden Abbey, founded for the Bene- dictines, was situated in the south-east part of the village. It was indeed where the park buildings are now, and there are supposed to be some small remains of the abbey walls amongst them. To refer again to Lipscomb :

' The Abbey was at first undoubtedly a Priory of Black Canons, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and built within the manor of Missenden on part of the possessions of the Earl of Gloucester. The more correct history seemed to be that it was founded by the D'Oyleys probably much earlier than 1293, and endowed with benefaction of the Missendens 1335."

To go back earlier still, at the Norman survey Missenden belonged to Walter Giffard in Stane Hundred, and Turstin FitzRolf held it of him for ten hides :

"There was land for eight plough teams: in the demesnes there were two ; and nine villeins, with

one bordar, had six The rent of the woods was

four orse per year Turstin FitzRolf, subfeuda-

tory of Walter Giffard, held Hardwick and Little Kimbel of the King in capite and two parcels of land in Maidsmorton of his fee."

Lipscomb says the vicarage was ordained in 1199 by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln.

In leaving the church you turn to the right through a meadow, and there, on your right, after a few minutes' walk, is the present manor-house, lying back in its own grounds. It is not particularly striking from the out- side, but in one of the conservatories are some marble pillars which are said to have been once in the cloisters, and in the large hall were formerly six very antique stone coffins, and there are still, of course, some few remains of the old flint walls of the Bene- dictine abbey which once stood here. The mansion, Lipscomb tells us, was built on the site of the monastery, and the old house, which probably was built out of its ruins, seems to have flanked the church on the west. ! The inevitable appendage in those days of a