JANUARY 273 



his face, was suffocated there. He is said to have 

 been a very small man, and the last person who 

 saw his wraith, about half a century since, could 

 bring as sole evidence his belief that the shade 

 which appeared to him was "about the height of 

 a donkey." But this testimony has always been 

 considered quite conclusive, for was not Daddy 

 King locally reported to have been an abnormally 

 small man ? 



William Lovell's manor was a portion of that 

 property which belonged nearly a hundred years 

 after his time to William Danvers, who in 1353 

 alienated his possessions to King Edward III., 

 with a proviso that the King should direct masses 

 to be said for William Danvers' soul at the Royal 

 Chapel of Windsor for ever. I fear this pious 

 arrangement has lapsed, and that the only eventual 

 gainers by the proceeding were the Royal Family, 

 for the King promptly made a provision or part 

 of a provision for his daughter Isabella out of 

 the property in question, as recorded in a Pipe 

 Roll of 1360. Queen Katherine of Aragon came 

 in for the estate at a later date, and so, after her, 

 did Lady Jane Seymour Queen Joan of England, 

 as she is called by the chroniclers. 



A knight's fee in the parish was held early in the 

 fifteenth century by a certain Richard Abberbury, 

 a near relative probably a son of Sir Richard 

 Abberbury, the guardian during his minority of 

 King Richard II. Richard Abberbury the younger 

 had married, about 1382, Alice, widow of Edmund 

 Danvers of Chilton, and a few" years later appears 

 to have been living at Donnington, some four miles 

 T 



