241 



By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



SEVERAL short notices of Edingdon ' have already, from 

 jM time to time, appeared in print, but the grand old Church, 

 so well known to architects as " the earliest authenticated example 

 of the Transition from the Decorated to the Perpendicular Style, 

 and as such the more valuable from its date being known," ^ deserves 

 — what it has not yet obtained — a volume to itself, and one that 

 should be rich in illustration. In the meanwhile, the following 

 paper pretends only to make a little contribution of some details re- 

 lating principally to the Monastic establishment connected with the 

 Church, which have not yet been published, and are culled chiefly 

 from the well-preserved register of Edingdon, forming Lansdowne 

 MS., No, 442, in the British Museum. ^ 



The earliest fact in the history of this place is that when King 

 Edgar in A.D. 968 founded Romsey Abbey, in Hampshire, he be- 

 stowed " Edyngdon " upon " the Holy Church of God at Romesey 

 for the use of the Nuns dwelling there. ■'^ It is not now quite clear 



' The name is spelled Eding«?o» (or Edyngdon), almost invariably in the oldest 

 records, and not Eding^oM. 



2 J. H. Parker. 



* The register is very fairly written on vellum, in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries, 458 pages, the rubric headings very bright. It contains a great number 

 of documents and title deeds of the various estates of the monastery, many of 

 which also relate to the Abbey of Eomsey, Hants. An alphabetical list of the con- 

 tents is printed in Dugdale's New Monasticon, vol. vi., p. 535 : where also are 

 given all the references to be found in Tanner's Notitia Monastica, and to the 

 Public Records. In the Record Ofiice are documents of the reigns from Edward 

 II. to Henry VIII. Of the latter, a rental of Edingdon and Tynhide, 3 Henry 

 VIII., of Coleshill, 11 Hen. VIII., fragments of steward's accounts of Coleshill, and 

 leaves from a manor court book of Edingdon, 1 to 8 Hen. VIII. Other general 

 descriptions of Edingdon are to be found in Britton's Beauties of Wilts, vol. iii., 

 p. 363 : The Gentleman's Magazine, a paper by the late J. G. Nichols, with print of 

 the remains of the monastei-y : and another by the late Rev. Arthur Fane, Vicar 

 of Warminster, in Wilts Archceological Magazine, vol. iii., 1. 



