OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS 



PORTCHESTER 



An examination of church registers and old parish 

 documents — vestry books, churchwardens' accounts, 

 and ancient maps — often yields much interesting in- 

 formation, and throws a flood of light upon the ways 

 and doings of our forefathers in the olden times. We 

 propose in the present paper to lay before our readers 

 the result of much careful and diligent searching 

 among a mass of old parish documents stowed away in 

 an ancient oak chest in the vestry of a Norman church. 

 The church itself originally belonged to a priory of 

 Austin canons founded at the beginning of the twelfth 

 century. The priory has disappeared, but the cloisters 

 against the south wall of the long and lofty nave of 

 the church may still be traced, and the foundations of 

 the monastic buildings often trouble the old sexton 

 when digging graves in the churchyard. 



The oldest document in the chest dates back to the 

 reign of Queen Elizabeth, and is a survey of the parish 

 in the year 1567. Great have been the changes since 

 then; the very names of the village streets are different. 

 In the good old times a large part of the parish was 

 forest and common land, where the tenants had " free 

 pasture " for " all sorts of animals," and pannage for 

 their swine, " whether it be mast season or not." A 

 certain oak tree, " anciently called Portchester oak," 



