The Descent of the Manor of Stockton. 281 
refuges for the aged poor of all classes, with their quiet cloisters and 
daily services; welcome and shelter not only for those who had 
toiled with their hands, but religious houses with companions and 
pensions, books and leisure, for worn-out workers with the brain ; 
Cathedrals and chapters, Churches and clergy, and missionaries for 
the overwhelming and almost paralyzing increase of population ; 
brotherhoods and sisterhoods; all those things, in fine, which we 
_try so hard to supply, and supply after all in such inadequate 
measure by guinea subscriptions and charity bazaars and all sort of 
begging devices—when we consider some of these things, I must 
ask you to forgive me the expression of the sentiment that the 
reckless destruction of the monastic buildings, the profligate con- 
fiscation and squandering of their revenues, was a mistake as well as 
a crime, not only iniquitous in conception but disastrous in result. 
The destruction of Stanley Abbey left Derry Hill and the neigh- 
bourhood for more than three hundred years without a Church ; and 
the mere mention of the words “poor rate” makes us feel how 
_ great a burden the dissolution of the religious houses has thrown on 
the country at large. But we must not presume to pass out of the 
details of archeology into wider questions which may not be dis- 
cussed here; our humbler office is but to gather up some of the 
almost-forgotten memories of the past. 
The Mescent of the Alanor of Stockton, 
By J. E. Nieurinaate, F.S.A. 
a N the twelfth volume of this Magazine appears a detailed 
7 history of the parish of Stockton, Wilts, by a late Rector, 
the Rev. Thomas Miles, then recently deceased. The late Canon 
Rich-Jones supplemented this by a paper on an ancient Saxon 
charter relating to Stockton, from the chartulary of St. Swithin’s, 
