THE 



WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE, 



"MULTOKUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS." — Ocid. 



^otterne. 



By the Rev. Canon W. H. Jones, M.A., F.S.A., 



Vicar of Bradford-on-Avon. 



[OTTERNE is the name of a parish — of a rural deanery — of 

 a hundred. As a parish or manor, it formed from time 

 immemorial a portion of the possessions of the Bishops of 

 Wiltshire, the Bishop of Salisbury being to this very day a Canon 

 of the cathedral church in the prebend of Potterne, and as such, 

 according to Dean Pierce, entitled to vote as one of the Chapter. 

 Indeed Jocelin de Bolmn, who held the see from 1142 — 1184, in a 

 charter respecting a virgate of land, the profits from which were 

 given for the " correction of the books of the church," recites that 

 he had assigned it to Philip de Sancto Edwardo, the Chancellor of 

 his cathedral (to whose ofiice such duties appertained) as^'clerico 

 nostro et concanonico nostro,^' thus shewing that he reckoned him- 

 self among the Canons of Sarum.^ As a rural deanery, Potterne 

 comprises a large number of parishes in what maybe called the west- 

 central part of Wilts, extending from Bradford in the west to Wilsford 

 and Manningford on the east, and reaching as far north as Monkton 



' Dean Pierce in his " Vindication of the King's Sovereign Eights" (c. 1680) 

 says (p.l2) : " The Bishop of Sarum is indeed one of the Chapter as he is Preben- 

 dary of Pottern," and (at p. 49) " The voice and place which the Bishop has in 

 Chapter (common to him with all the 52 Canons) he has as Prebendary of 

 Pottern." He adds (at p. 70) that the " Bishop as Prebendary of Pottern was 

 bound to residence at first," as vere indeed all the Canons. He gives a re- 

 ference to the Statutes of the Dean and Chapter promulgated in 1214, when 

 Richard Poore (afterwards Bishop of Sarum) was Dean, which were afterwards 

 confirmed by Bishop Roger Mortival (1315 — 1330). 



VOL. XVI. — NO. XLVIII. B 



