By the Rev. C. S. Ruddle. 335 
the county until now.) The miller, John atte Mulle, paid 6s. 8d. 
Several seem not yet to have a fixed surname: John le Sonkere, 
Clemenas Pellica garde (does this mean a keeper of leather ’), 
Simon le Couper, who paid 2s. 3d., Robert le Mole, John le Fyre, 
Richard le Hope, John le Palmer. But probably John Brown and 
Henry Tony had settled their names; and so had John Giffard, 
Alicia Crouch, and John Hikkes. 
The subsidy amounted to £6 17s. 10d. 
The manor passed from the de Neville family by the marriage 
of their heiress, Elizabeth, to John Lord de la Warre, and to him 
it belonged in 1388. At his death it passed to his brother, who 
was a priest at Manchester, and as he was in want of money for 
his collegiate Church he sold it to William of Wykeham, who 
made it one of the endowments of his new foundation, Winchester 
College. This was in 22 Richard I]. How much was paid for it 
is not clear; because a moiety of the manor of Vernham, Hants, 
was included in the purchase price: which was the large sum of 
£1066 13s.4d. The feoffment by Roger Gayton and another, who 
were Lord de la Warr’s feoffees, to Wykeham, and the acquittance 
by Thomas Chamberlayne and John Heneage, executors, for the 
purchase money, are preserved in the muniment room of the college. 
The evidences of the title which were handed over on the occasion 
of the purchase go back to the time of Henry III., and include 
copyhold grants by members of the de Nevill family. 
Up to this time, that is, up to the end of the 14th century, this 
"was no doubt a prosperous part of the country, because it was in 
a great sheep-breeding district, and the wool trade was flourishing. 
But for some reason in 1441 Henry the Sixth’s subsidy roll shows 
all our part of South Wilts as waste and desolate. Durrington was 
let off for 13s. 4d., and the adjoining parish of Milston for 6s. 8d. 
Boscombe paid only 3s. 4d. And this assessment of Durrington as 
a desolate place went on for a generation, so far as the accounts at 
the Record Office show. Yet Thorold Rogers, in his History of 
Prices, represents the 15th century as the golden age of farmers: 
and although prices of sheep and wool fluctuated there was no such 
fall as to cause sheep farming to be at any time abandoned. Indeed 
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