A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



The church plate consists of a silver communion 

 cup and cover paten of 1687, a silver bread holder, 

 with indistinct date letter, perhaps of 1633, and a 

 silver flagon of foreign, perhaps German, manufacture, 

 which has been assigned to c 1750. On each of the 

 three first is engraved ' Qui hoc alienabit Anathema 

 sit.' 



There is one bell by Tobie Norris, 1673. 



The earliest register begins in 1566. The second 

 volume, given by Earl Fitzwilliam in 1747, extends 

 to 1812. 



SirWilliam Fitzwilliam, who died in 

 CHARITIES 1 53+, charged the Merchant Taylors' 

 Company, of which he was a member, 

 with an annual payment for the support of four alms- 

 houses. In the commissioners' survey of 154.9 ''^'^ 

 charity is called William Fitzwilliam's charity. The 

 recipients consisted of one priest and four poor secular 

 men. The income at that date was £1"] lis. \d. 

 Adam Potts, the priest, aged seventy, ' unmeet to 



serve the cure and hath no other living,' received 

 j^7, and the four poor men 54J. \d. each. The 

 almshouses were rebuilt by a later Fitzwilliam, and 

 j^5 per annum was deducted by him as rent for the 

 buildings. The income of this charity used for the 

 support of the almshouses is now £lz %s. \d. 



Christopher Hodgson's charity, founded by will in 

 1849, is represented by ^^54 3/. ^d. consols held 

 by the offici.al trustees, and the dividends, subject to 

 repair of tombstone, are for the use of the poor of 

 Marholm. 



Under the will of Lady Dorothy Fitzwilliam, 

 proved in 1 883, the income of ;^3oo in Canada 

 4 per cent, bonds, and j^59 12/. 613'. consols, both 

 held by the official trustees, are used for purposes of 

 education in Marholm. 



William Budd, in 1 63 8, left /lo for the poor. 

 The interest of ^^lo 15/. \d. consols held by the 

 offici.ll trustees is applied in the purchase of coal for 

 the poor at Christmas. 



MAXEY 



Makesey (xii to xiv cent.). 



This parish with the hamlet of Deeping Gate has an 

 area of nearly 2,1 74 acres, of which 13 are covered by 

 water, l2o6f are arable land, and 845 J pasture. 

 The soil is a fertile loam, upon alluvium, and corn, 

 pulse and roots are alike grown successfully, and gravel 

 is worked, but to no great extent. A portion of the 

 North Fen extends into this parish. The King 

 Street, a branch of the Ermine Street, a Roman high- 

 way, runs north and south through the parish, the 

 famous Lolham Bridges being on this road at a short 

 distance to the south of Lolham House. There are 

 four sets of arches, built not on account of any river 

 but to afford a passage over a part of the road liable 

 to floods.' They are supposed to have been origin- 

 ally constructed by the Romans who made the road, 

 but they were reconstructed in the 1 7th century, and 

 repaired in the 1 8th, as is testified not only by the 

 style of building but also by two stone tablets, one of 

 which sets forth that ' These several Bridges were 

 built at the general charge of the whole County of 

 Northampton in the yeare 1652'; and the other, ' This 

 was built at ye County charge, Charles Kirkham 

 and John Trj-on, Esq. being Trustees, 1 72 1.' 



In the present day it is not often that the floods 

 are sufficiently high for the water to flow beneath the 

 bridges, and in their normal state they merely offer an 

 easy passage dry-shod from one side of the embankment 

 to the other. Theyare of plain and simple construction, 

 and it is by the absence of ornament and moulded 

 work that (apart from the tablets) their date may be 

 conjectured. 



The village of M.ixey is built in an irregular man- 

 ner and lies at some distance north-east of the church. 

 There is a Congregational chapel erected in 1809 

 and rebuilt in 1862, and a Council school for about 

 a hundred children. In the early i6th century 

 among other field names recorded in the accounts of 

 the royal manor of Mazey and elsewhere are those of 



Crackholme, Craneholm, Ladybridgeclose, Market- 

 stead-furlong, Gattesacre, Cock's Pit Close, Ardern 

 Gordy, and Ardernwong. From the eastern extremity 

 of the vilLage Pounds Lane leads northward to Castle 

 End, where is the site of the ancient moated manor- 

 house of Maxey or Maxey Castle, for which, in 

 1374—5, a licence to embattle was granted to William 

 of Thorpe, then lord of the manor. 



The Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, 

 and lady of the manor, once lived here, and here also 

 John earl of Angouleme lived as a prisoner, letters 

 being dated by him from the castle in 1420, and in 

 several of the following years.' 



The hamlet of Deeping Gate, a separate civil 

 parish, is situated about \\ miles north-east of Maxey 

 on the right bank of the Welland, which is crossed 

 here by two bridges. At the west is Maxey House, 

 the residence of Mr. E. Sutton, standing in large 

 grounds, the remaining houses being mainly occupied 

 by a small agricultural population. Here also is the 

 site, near the south end of Deeping St. James Bridge, 

 of an ancient free chapel of St. Mary. 



Lolham Hall is at the junction of the King Street 

 and the branch road to Maxey. The hamlet of 

 Nunton, consisting of Nunton Hall and Nunton 

 Lodge with a few cottages, is situated in the fields 

 between Maxey church and the low marshy land in 

 the south of the parish. The population of Maxey 

 in 1 901 was 356, and that of Deeping Gate, 172. 



The parish was enclosed in 1 8 14. 



MAXET is not mentioned in Domes- 

 MJNORS day,' but early in the 12th century Ralph 

 de la Mare, a knight of Peterborough 

 Abbey, was holding three knights' fees in Northampton- 

 shire ;* and by 1 1 46 Geofl'rey de la Mare, his suc- 

 cessor, held fees partly in Maxey, while Roger de 

 Torpel, another knight, then a minor, also had 

 some land there.' The de la Mare fee in the reign 

 of Henry II was in the hands of a Geofirey, and was 



' That these bridges were not un- 

 necessary is shown by two cases of drown- 

 ing at Lolham Bridges entered in the 

 Maxey registers. Both were in the 17th 

 century and in both cases the victims 



were * strangers.' Maxey Reg. (ed. Sweet- 

 ing), 30. 



2 Add. Chart. 312, 336, 3532, 361°, 

 3626. 



^ For earlier references of suspicious 



502 



authority see Birch, Cart, Sax. 22, and 

 Fulman, ScriptoreSy 56-62. 



■* Soc. Antiq. MS. No. 60, fol. 19. 



* Sparlce, Scriptorgs, 78. 



