By William Long, Esq., M.A. 359 



no other manor is noticed at Abury, but that of the cburcb held 

 immediately of the King. There was probably some reason why 

 the crown reserved its rights here ; and that there was no manor 

 but the manor of the church, may I think be taken as proof of a 

 very early foundation of a Saxon church here, and that the erection 

 of a church preceded the erection of any dwellings. Perhaps at 

 the beginning it was a FelS-cypc (field-church), intended for the 

 use of the shepherds and the few inhabitants dispersed over the 

 plain from the borders of Bishops Cannings to the borders of Marl- 

 borough, and to a great extent to the northward and southward. 

 It must have been erected by some person of eminent rank, perhaps 

 a Saxon sovereign, and not merely (as some of the country churches 

 were) by some lord of the soil living there, that he might have the 

 offices of religion brought home to the doors of himself and his 

 vassals. 



" Abury remained a place peculiarly ecclesiastical till the Refor- 

 mation. Rainbold doubtless held his two hides here only in right 

 of his church, and they would descend not to his heirs but to his 

 successors. A foreign house, the Benedictines of St. George of 

 Bocherville, was placed in the reign of Henry I. in the position in 

 which Rainbold stood. The gift of the church was by William de 

 Tankervile, a person to whom the Crown must have conveyed its 

 right soon after the date of Domesday, and of whom it may be con- 

 jectured that he had never any intention of changing the ecclesi- 

 astical character of Abury. The foreign house retained possession 

 of Abury till the time of Richard II., in which reign many of the 

 foreign houses were deprived of their English possessions. The 

 patronage and protection of Abury and its curious remains were 

 then committed, first to New College, Oxford, and then to the Col- 

 lege of Fotheringay : and it was not till the 2 Edward VI. that any 

 private person had power over this temple to pull down and 

 destroy.^ 



' These observations relate to tlie Rectorial estate aud manor. Tlie patronage 

 of the Vicarage of Abury was in the gift of the Abbots of St. ilary's, Ciren- 

 cester, from Vl'M to 13:jfi (see Wilts Institutions); and since the Dissolution, ia 

 the Crown, The place still gives its name to the Deanery of Abury. 



I) it 



