A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



Memorandum : the said chapell of the Holly goost, and the yard enviring the same, is the 

 common buryeing place for all the said parishe, and the Vicar there findithe a curate, 

 And the same Vicarage is of the yerely value of 26 2s. yd. t Benefice. 1 Houseling 

 people there, 8 304. 



The wording of the chantry certificate suggests that it was only 

 of then recent years, perhaps only for the previous ten years, that the 

 Brotherhood of the Chapel of the Holy Ghost had appropriated their 

 endowments to the maintenance of a grammar school. This suggestion 

 is to a certain extent supported by the fact that the licence in mortmain 8 

 of Henry VIII. for the establishment of the gild, dated 16 November, 

 1 5 24, 4 does not mention any school or teaching. But then that licence 

 does not mention the chaplain of the brotherhood, or any of its objects, 

 except the furtherance of divine worship. It was purely formal to 

 formally incorporate and license under the Statutes of Mortmain a body 

 which had long existed, without formal incorporation and without a 

 licence in mortmain, probably because it was created before any statute 

 of mortmain had been passed. 



The licence begins by reciting ' that the King's beloved subjects, the 

 inhabitants of our town of Basingstoke, incited, stirred and moved by the 

 very great and pious devotion which they held and bore towards the 

 Third Person in the Deity, the Holy Ghost, did long since virtuously 

 begin ; and to the present time have quietly and peacefully continued, a 

 certain brotherhood or gild to the praise of God and the furtherance of 

 divine worship in honour of the Holy Ghost within the chapel, near the 

 said town, which has been built in honour of the same,' but the brethren 

 now ' fear that that brotherhood or gild was by no means begun or con- 

 tinued according to the requirements of the law,' and desire that the same 

 should be made permanent. The king, on ' the report of Richard 

 (Fox), Bishop of Winchester, and William Sandys, knight, Lord Sandys, 

 ' wherein the same Bishop and William have most humbly petitioned 

 us that we would be pleased to deal graciously with our aforesaid 

 subjects in this behalf,' ' having a hearty regard for the pious intention 

 of our said subjects,' grants ' licence to the said Bishop and William 

 that they their executors or assigns or any of them may have power to 

 found a perpetual gild to be called the Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost 

 in the chapel of the same, near the town of Basingstoke, in the county 

 of Southampton.' 



The gild so founded was to have power to admit persons willing to 

 belong to it as brethren and sisters (for, as usual, women were included 

 as well as men), and the brethren were to elect every year an alderman 

 and two wardens (custodes) to manage its property. It was to be a 



This word is a note, written in a different hand, and no doubt made by an officer of the Court 

 of Augmentations to call attention to the fact that the vicarage was an ecclesiastical benefice, not a 

 chantry, and therefore not within the Act. 



3 Houseling people means communicants, including all above 1 2 years of age, showing a population 

 of not much over 600. 



3 Basingstoke, p. 120, translated from Pat. Henry VIII. 



4 Not 1525 as incorrectly given in Basingstoke, p. 118 (though correctly on p. 120), and in Char, 

 Com. Rej>. loc. cit. 



370 



