^58 Potterne. 



Tlius amongst otlier grants which they obtained was one which 

 forbad any market to be held hifra septem leiicas, that is, within 

 seven miles (equal by the way to about ten-and-a-half of our present 

 miles) of their town : an effectual means of extinguishing the 

 privileges of the more ancient manor, and exalting themselves at 

 the expense and inconvenience of others.' 



Little help moreover I imagine did its episcopal lords render to 

 Potterne. As for Bishop Jocelin de Bohun, he did not enjoy the 

 manor at all for the first fifteen years of his episcopate, for it was not 

 restored to the see till A.D. 1175. Moreover he seems to have per- 

 formed his duties, in part at least, by means of a suffragan, one 

 Geoffrey Bishop of St. Asaph, who, leaving his own sheep upon the 

 mountains of Wales, somehow found time to look after Jocelin's flock 

 in Wiltshire. Then the three successive bishojDS, Herbert and Richard 

 Poore, and Robert Bingham, must have had their hands quite full 

 in carrying out the building of the present glorious cathedral at 

 Salisbury, to have found much time for Potterne or her needs. 



With a solitary exception we know nothing about the good folks 

 at Potterne in the thirteenth century except the names of a few of 

 them. William de Cotes held two knight's fees, or some 1500 to 

 2000 acres, in Potterne.^ Then among the jurors of the hundred, 

 in 1255, occurs the name of Radulfus de Flore, who in more modern 

 times would have been called Ralph Flower, shewing us a greater 

 antiquity than some perhaps suspected for the name of " Flower " 

 in Potterne. Again there was Galfridus de Blund (=Blount)j 

 who held besides lands in the hamlet of Etchilhampton, half a 

 knight's fee in Potterne, and to whom we are indebted for the name 

 " Blount's Court.'" A short account of some of the descendants of 

 this worthy will be found in an account of Etchilhampton in the 

 Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine.^ 



One distinguished man must have a more particular though still 

 but a passing mention, viz., James of Potterne, the " Justiciary," 



^See Wajlen's "Devizes," p. 81, 



^ WayleD's "Devizes," p. 78. 

 » " Wilts Arch. Mag., xi., p. 104. 



