30 BURTON, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
it may. hereafter be proved that I am wrong in my guesses. 
But before leaving the question of the origin of the town, 
I should like to mention one other consideration which I 
think supports the view that it was connected with the 
foundation of the Abbey. There seems to me to be no 
evidence or even a tradition of its having been an ancient 
parish. By an ancient parish I mean of course a pre- 
Reformation parish. Mr. Rye, in his paper on the Ground 
Plan of the Burton Abbey, which he read to us in 1896, 
told us that the Benedictine Church was divided into two, 
the upper and lower churches, the upper being the choir of 
the monks, and the lower the parochial church, and also 
that the building of this lower or parochial church was 
begun about A.D. 1114. I understand him to mean that 
the nave of the Abbey Church—as distinct from the choir— 
was used as a parochial church, and this implies that there 
was not any separate parish church. But I do not think 
this was at all usual in the Abbeys of the Benedictines. 
It was so, I have been told, in those of the Augustinians. 
In the cases of Westminster, S. Mary at York, and Whitby— 
all Benedictine Abbeys, the parish church was always an 
entirely distinct building. | Does not this go to shew that 
there was nothing like a town when Burton Abbey was 
founded, and that a somewhat make-shift arrangement was 
adopted as the population, external to the Abbey but 
attracted by it, gradually increased? Then again, when 
the Abbey was suppressed and its property granted to Sir 
William Paget, he was required to maintain a minister for 
the church. This shews that previously the parochial 
work must have been done by the monks, and that there 
had not been any separate endowment for a Vicar. I have 
not forgotten that for a few years after the suppression of the 
Abbey the church had a dean and four prebends, but I do 
not think this affects my argument. Another fact that 
goes to shew it was not an ancient parish is that there are 
