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Rh same doubt about the chapel of the Holy Trinity, Blessed Mary and All Souls in the churchyard of High Wycombe, re-endowed in 1358. A great many private or manorial chapels existed at this time ; but they have not the same interest as the parochial chapels, being mainly for the convenience of single households.

Most of the chantries were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; only two in Buckinghamshire can be proved to be of an earlier date, and it is doubtful whether the name, as we understand it, can be applied to these earlier foundations at all. They were indeed called ' cantariae ' ; but our English ' chantry ' is usually associated, at least in the popular mind, with a service intended primarily for the benefit of the faithful departed. There is, however, a clear instance to the contrary even as late as 1340, in the application made for the foundation of a chantry in the chapel of Aston in Ivinghoe. It was explained to the bishop that the chapel had no proper endowment, and that it was feared that divine service, there performed for the benefit of the hamlet generally, would have to cease : whereupon Ralf Halliwell had undertaken to found a chantry in it, for the sake of his own soul, and the souls of his father and mother. Even in the last year of Henry VIII. the Commissioners reported of this charity that it was ' right necessary,' and served for the needs of 240 ' houselling people,' who could not get to the parish church in winter time. The chantries in the chapels of Colnbrook and Dagnall were probably both founded for similar purposes, and others which were attached to parish churches, as at Newport Pagnel, Hanslope, and Olney, furnished the parish priest with an assistant whose services were much valued. Others again, such as those attached to the churches of Buckingham and Thornton, left provision for free schools, or for the relief of the poor. Besides these, there are of course some of which the main purpose really was to secure a regular commemoration of the founder's soul, like the three chantries founded by Sir John Molyns (who had perhaps some reason to be anxious about his prospects in the other world), and those in the church of Edlesborough, founded by John Crakhall (or Crachely), archdeacon of Bedford, and Thomas Butler.