B E R 



289 



B E R 



be considered its mother-town, and in which parish it 

 partly stands. 



Maidenhead consists of one long paved street. It has a 

 (hapul, erected of late years on the site of a former one 

 taken down as being too small. The bridge consists of 

 seven semicircular arches of stone, and three smaller arches 

 of brick at each end. There is an almshouse between the 

 bridge and the town for eight poor men and their wives. 

 The chief trade of the place is in meal, malt, and timber; 

 and it is a great thoroughfare, in consequence of which 

 there are several inns. The market is on Wednesday, and 

 is a considerable mart for corn. There are three fairs. 

 Maidenhead has a corporation, consisting of a mayor, high 

 steward, steward or recorder, and cloven burgesses, two of 

 whom are annually chosen bridge-masters. Tiie mayor, 

 high steward, steward, and the mayor of the preceding year 

 are justices of the peace : and the mayor presides in a court 

 for the recovery of small debts, which is held every three 

 weeks. The corporation have the power of making bye- 

 laws, and there is a jail for debtors and felons. The cor- 

 poration revenues consist chiefly of the tolls of the markets 

 and the bridge. The town is in the parishes of Cookham 

 and Bray ; the chapel is in the former. The minister is 

 appointed by the mayor and bridge-masters, and is said to 

 be exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. The population, 

 owing to the town not forming a distinct parish, cannot be 

 given. It is probably about 1500. There are a National 

 school and a Sunday school, and three dissenting places of 

 worship. 



Wekingham, or Oakingham, is within the precincts of 

 Windsor Fore.st, and on one of the roads from London to 

 Reading, thirty-one miles and a half from London, and seven 

 from Reading. That part of the parish in which the town 

 stands is in Berkshire, the other part of the parish, together 

 with the church, is in an insulated portion of Wiltshire. The 

 town consists of several streets, which meet in a spacious 

 area, containing the market-house, an antient building 

 framed with timber, open at the bottom, and having above a 

 room for the transaction of public business. The church is 

 lar:_ r e and handsome ; the houses in the town arc chiefly of 

 brick. In Camden's time the woollen manufacture was 

 carried on here, but now the malting and meal trades, 

 throwing silk, and making shoes and gauze, furnish the 

 chief occupations of the inhabitants. The market is held 

 on Tuesday, and is well supplied with poultry, which the 

 higglers purchase for the London market. There are three 

 antient fairs, now inconsiderable; two additional ones were 

 attempted to be established about 1780, but did not succeed; 

 one of them, at Lady Day, has been given up, the other, 

 h -Id near Michaelmas, is still kept up. The population in 

 1831 was 1G28 for the town division of the parish, or 313'J 

 for the whole parish, which contains 8450 acres. The living 

 U a perpetual curacy, u peculiar in the jurisdiction of the 

 dean of Salisbury, who is impropriator of the great and 

 small tithes, and patron of the benefice, the income of which 

 is stated at 1261. in the Ecclesiastical Revenues' Report, 

 1835. There are in the parish eight alms-houses, with a 

 small endowment; an hospital at Luckley Green for a 

 chaplain and sixteen poor men ; and an endowed school 

 fur b ivs and girls ; . also a Sunday school, and two dis- 

 senting places of worship. The town is governed hy a cor- 

 poration, consisting of an alderman and eleven capital bur- 

 Ki-saes. Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 

 the time of Elizabeth, was born here in 1517, and died 

 here in 1590. 



Besides the twelve existing market towns already noticed, 

 there are several places in Berkshire which formerly had 

 markets. A list of them is subjoined, with the population 

 of their several parishes in 1831, and such other particulars 

 as seem to require notice : 



B ilking, a hamlet of Uffington, three or four miles south- 

 cast of Faringdon ; population, 185. 



1! i-ilden, cm the Thames, about midway between Reading 

 and Wallingford ; population, 780. 



Catmere, about Mbur miles west of East Ilsley ; popula- 

 tion, 



Cookhiim, on the Thames, a little to the north of Maiden- 

 head, part of which is in the p.irih ; has still two fairs; 

 population, 3337. 



K-i-,1. Ili-iidied. about four miles cast of Wantage. This 

 place was formerly one of the teats of the cloth manufacture. 

 The stewardship of one of the manors in this parish is a no- 

 minal oftieo in the sjit't of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 



and is one of the places given for the purpose of vacating a 

 seat in the House of Commons. There is at East Hcndred 

 an antient chapel, supposed to have been erected by the 

 monks of Sheen, to whom the manor just rvl'erred to be- 

 longed ; this chapel now forms two tenements; popula- 

 tion, 865. 



Hinton, about six miles norlh-east of Faringdon, a little 

 to the north of the road from that town to Abmgdon ; it is 

 near the Thames; population, 348. 



Kentbury, or Kiiubury, antiently Chenetebcrie and Ken- 

 netbury, about three miles south-east of Hungerford, on the 

 banks of the Keunet ; it givs name to the hundred of 

 Kentbury-Eagle ; population, 1781. 



Slirivenham, five miles south-west of Faringdon, gives 

 name to the hundred; population, 2113. 



Speen, about one mile north-west of Newbury. Specn- 

 hamland, a tithing of this parish, forms a sort of suburb of 

 Newbury. It was a Roman station, Spinco, and one of the 

 principal scenes of action in the second battle of Newbury, 

 fought in Oclober, 1644, between the troops of Charles I. 

 and those of the parliament; population, 3044. 



Stanford-in-the-Vale, in the Vale of White Horse, about 

 midway between Wantage and Faringdon, has a hand- 

 some Gothic church ; population, 1U1G. 



Thatcham, on the road from London to Bath, three miles 

 east of Newbury. Its market was first held on Sunday, but 

 changed by Henry III. to Thursday. There is a well-en- 

 dowed free-school here. The parish, which is the largest in 

 the county except Lambourn, contains 12,960 acres; popu- 

 lation, 3912. / 



Wargrave, a little to the right of the road from Maiden- 

 head to Reading, about midway between them. There is 

 an endowment for educating poor children. Wargrave gives 

 name to a hundred ; population, 1423. 



West Woodhay, on the borders of Hampshire, about 

 seven miles south-west of Newbury, and about six south- 

 east of Hungerford ; population, 127. 



Yattcndon, about eight miles north-east of Newbury ; 

 population, 241. 



Two other localities of this county deserve notice. Bray, 

 which gives name to a hundred, and in the parish of which 

 the town of Maidenhead partly stands, is celebrated for the 

 versatility of principle manifested by one of its incumbents, 

 whence ' the Vicar of Bray ' has become a proverbial ex- 

 pression for a man who can shift his principles with the 

 times. The well-known song of ' the Vicar of Bray ' repre- 

 sents this personage as living in the time of Charles II. 

 and his successors, down to George I. ; but Fuller, in his 

 ' Worthies of England,' gives the following account : ' The 

 vivacious vicar hereof living under King Henry VIII., King 

 Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was first 

 a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant 

 again. He had seen sonic martyrs burnt (two miles oft') at 

 Windsor, and found this fire too hot for his tender temper. 

 This vicar being taxed by one for being a turn-coat, and an 

 unconstant changeling, "Not so," said he, " for I always 

 kept my principle, which is, to live and die the vicar of 

 Bray." Such many, now-a-dayes, who, though they cannot 

 turn the wind, will turn their mills, and set them so, that 

 wheresoever it bloweth, their grist shall certainly be grinded.' 

 (Vol. i. p. 79, Nichols's edit. 181 1.) 



Cumncr, or Cumnor, is about three miles nearly west of 

 Oxford. The manor belonged to the abbots of Abingdon, 

 who had a house here for retirement in case of the plague, 

 sickness, &c., prevailing at Abingdon. After the Reforma- 

 tion this house was granted to the last abbot for life, and on 

 his death came into possession of Anthony Forster, whose 

 epitaph in Cumnor church speaks highly of him as being 

 amiable and accomplished. But in Ashmole's ' Antiqui- 

 ties of Berkshire' (vol. i. p. 149, seq.), he is represented as 

 one of the pnrties to the murder of the unhappy Countess of 

 Leicester, who was secretly despatched while staying at 

 Curnnor by the order of her husband, who was then aspiring 

 to the hand of Queen Elizabeth. Sir Walter Scott's novel 

 of 'Kenilivorlh ' has given currency to the dreadful history, 

 which is circumstantially related by Ashmole. Part of the 

 mansion is fitted up as a farm-house, and the shell of the 

 remainder is nearly entire. It adjoins the churchyard, and 

 the traditionary name of the Dudley chamber points out the 

 room in which it is supposed the murder was committed. 

 (Lysons's Alugna Britannia; Beauties of England and 

 Wule, &c.) 



Dii-iiions for Ecclesiastical and Legal Purposes. The 



NO. 241. 



[THE PENNY CYCLOPEDIA.] 



VOL. IV.- 2 P 



