Parish of Broad Chalke, Wilts. 217 
The Church is dedicated to All Saints, or All Hallows. In the 
“ Taxatio Ecclesiastica’ of Pope Nicholas IV., 1291, the rectory of 
Chalke is stated to be of the annual value of £42, and the vicarage 
of £4 6s.8d. In the “ Valor Ecclesiasticus,” time of Henry VL, 
the rectory is not noticed, but the Vicarage is put down at the clear 
annual value of £18, In the time of Queen Anne it was discharged 
of first fruits and tenths. 
In the year 1447 the Abbess of Wilton granted the prebendaryship 
of Chalke, together with the patronage and advowsons of the three 
vicarages, to King Henry VI. In return for this gift the King 
released the abbess and her successors for ever from a pension of 
£4 5s. per annum, part of a fee-farm rent of £14 5s. payable to the 
Crown by that monastery for the hundred of Chalke. He also 
granted to the abbess the custody and possessions of the abbey 
during a vacancy occasioned by the death, resignation, or cession, of 
any abbess, upon a payment of £10 on every such vacancy. In the 
following year, 1448, the King made over the prebendaryship to his 
newly-founded King’s College, Cambridge. This grant of the King 
was revoked by Edward IV. in the beginning of his reign. In the 
year 1466, however, a re-arrangement was made between the King, 
the abbess, and the college, and Edward IV. confirmed the grant of 
his predecessor. One of the terms of this composition was the 
reservation of the old rent of £14 5s. to the Crown for the hundred 
of Chalke, and another was that the abbess and convent should 
receive a pension of twenty marks per annum for ever. The new 
arrangement was confirmed the same year by the Bishop of Salisbury, 
with the consent of the Dean and Chapter, and from that time till 
1575 the College appointed to the three vicarages as separate livings. 
In 1575 they were consolidated, but in 1861 Alvediston was sepa- 
rated, the Vicar of Broad Chalke being made the patron. Bower 
Chalke was constituted a separate vicarage in 1880, the patronage 
remaining in the hands of King’s College. 
Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wilts, says that in his time 
there was “a tradition that the Church was built by a lawyer, whose 
picture is in severall of the windowes yet remaining, kneeling in a 
purple gowne or robe, and at the bottome of the windowes this 
