Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/498

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. JUNE 22, 1901.

there in the year 1729 he imagined that there stood the church and cemetery " (ii. 1372).

Lysons, writing half a century later, adopts the evidence of the bones, and adds none other, the value of that evidence being enhanced to him by finding, from the ' Bray- broke Kegister,' that there certainly was a churchyard attached to St. John's when licence was given for removal of the church in 1400, and that the parishioners were bound by the terms of the licence to preserve the old burying-ground. Lysons, too, was per- haps confirmed in his belief in the site by having traced the proprietorship from the old owners to the new, but COL. PRIDEAUX has fairly shown the partition of the original manor, and that "Tyborne al's Marybone," the possession of the Mowbray Dukes of Norfolk in the Inquis. p.m. of 1461, was pro- bably only one of the fractions. The next Inquisition in the calendar naming Tyburn, that of 16 Ed. IV., or 1476, appears to refer to another division, viz., " a third part of the manor " which was in the Nevill family.

Lysons also ignored or overlooked Stow's location of " the towne" of Tyburn in Padding- ton. In * Environs,' not writing of the City, he was not concerned with its ancient water supply, and makes but slight reference to apparently having missed what Stow had said of its source.
 * the Conduit at Bays water " (ed. 1795, iii. 331),

Thus Maitland and Lysons having focussed Marylebone for us as the site of the ancient Tyburn that is to say of the church, village, or town as Stow calls it, i.e., the nucleus or kernel of the manor our attention has been diverted from the older, and for that reason the more valuable, testimony of Stow ; and perhaps from the same cause the general conception of the extent of the manor has been contracted. Our sight has been so long centred on the brook-like winding of Maryle- bone Lane, with the few vestiges of old time adjacent, that we unwillingly look elsewhere But re-examining the grounds for belief in the Marylebone Tyburn, we must not only listen to what Maitland and Lysons had to say, but also take the much earlier evidence of Stow. Stow's evidence for the Paddington Tyburn is good, but would be still better had he found " Padington " attached to the words " Towne of Teyborne " in Gilbert Sanford's grant. "Padington" is Stow's location. It is, however, well supported by the lengths which he gives of the several divisions of the watercourse. Having checked these lengths on the maps, I have found them quite ntel ligible and their total accurate. A little tabular exposition will be convenient.

The Watercourse from Paddington to the Cross in Cheap, Stow's lengths (see ante, p. 383).

Rods. Yards. Miles.

Paddington to James Head ... 510=2805=1-60 James Head to Mews Gate ... 102= 561= '32 Mews Gate to Cross in Cheap ... 484=2662=1 "51

1096=6028=3-43

The Cross in Cheap is shown on the map >f Aggass (c. 1560) opposite the end of Wood Street. Taking it as a fixed point, Stow's total length of the watercourse (3'43 miles) would reach to the centre of Sussex Square, Paddington, which square is adiacent to Spring Street, Conduit Place, and Conduit Mews. These names therefore appear cor- rectly to perpetuate memory of the ancient source of water, viz., the wells "of Gilbert de Sanford in his fief of Tyburne.

James Head probably denoting a branch conduit to St. James's Palace is found, by using Stow's measurement on the modern map, to be at Wells Street (off Oxford Street), a name which again speaks of the old conduit.

Mews Gate, which doubtless had reference to the old royal mews in Bloomsbury, falls about Bedford Square.

I think the correctness of Stow's figures, wherever he got them, goes far to prove that his information was based on reliable record, and that he had sufficient reason for stating Tyburn to be in Paddington. Had the town or village been in Marylebone, say at Maryle- bone Lane, the length of the watercourse would have been a whole mile less than he states it. And the Editor's supplementary quotation (ante, p. 383) of Gilbert de Sanford's grant from the invaluable ' Calendar ' of Dr. R. K. Sharpe is most opportune. Such work as Dr. Sharpe's, the goodly series of Calendars emanating from the Public Record Office, the ' Feet of Fines ' calendared by Messrs. Hardy and Page, the index by Messrs. Ellis and Bickley of MS. charters in the British Museum, and all other most useful index work accomplished in later years, give the present generation great advantages over the fathers of history and topography, whose work is the more noble from having been achieved without the aids we now possess. Nevertheless, the result of progressing research will be applied to the work of the Stows, the Camdens, the Dug- dales, and the Lysonses ; for all is put to the test in a critical age when even the Autho- rized Version is thought to require revi- sion. Research, indeed, proceeds too slowly, and authority is niggardly in granting facili- ties for it. We enjoy the grand liberality of the British Museum, the lesser accommoda-