

ie? tlds 
By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 271 
spiritual abstraction.” Sometimes they lived in little chapels 
on bridges, or by the way-side: receiving offerings at the 
shrine, which they were bound to collect and devote to the 
repair of the bridge, the road, or the chapel. 
A royal license of Mortmain was required for the foundation 
of the hermitage at Codford. This in the original Latin is 
printed at the end of Sir R. C. Hoare’s Heytesbury. Its 
substance in English is thus :— 
Rot. Pat. 10 Edw. II. “For our Brother Henry Marsh 
the Hermit.” 
«Know ye, that we of our special grace, &c., have given 
license to our beloved Oliver de Ingham, to assign two acres 
of land in East Codford, in a place called Crouchland, to our 
beloved brother in Christ, Henry de Marey’s Chaplain and 
Hermit, to construct anew in that place a chapel in honour of 
the Holy Cross, and houses fit for habitation, in order to cele- 
brate therein Divine Service every day for the souls of our 
predecessors, and those of the predecessors of the said Oliver.” 
(The rest is merely formal.) In testimony, &c., witness the 
King himself at. Westminster the 6th day of June (1317). 
Sir R. C. Hoare says [Heytesbury, p. 231] that east of the 
village is a projecting point of the down, clothed with wood 
on the side towards Codford, round the outsides of which are 
eight venerable yew trees. This in old maps is called Her- 
mitage Hill: and it was commonly supposed that upon that 
inclement spot dwelt Henry de Mareys. But Dr. Ingram 
suggested that the remains of an old house close to the church, 
of which no better history could be given, had been the Her- 
mitage: the land on the hill being the two acres assigned for 
maintenance. For female hermits, or Anchoritesses, see 
Preshute, infrd. 
 Comsz, in Enford parish, (Elstub and Everley Hundred.) There 
is in Harleian MS., No. 1623, p. 17 (British Museum), a 
Deed about this chapel, in which the name of Robert Dyngley, 
Lord of the Manor of Fittleton is mentioned. The site of the 
chapel is still visible, and a field bears the name. 
