A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



great value connected with this county, if we except the two prebends 

 of Aylesbury, worth 133 6s. 8*/., and Sutton-cum-Buckingham, worth 

 173 6s. %d. : of the rest, only one-third amounted to more than 10 

 in the year and among these only twenty-eight to 20 or more, while 

 Hanslope stands in solitary eminence at 40. The greater number 

 averaged about 7, and eight were under 5 a year. 1 



The archdeaconry had had a separate existence since the time of 

 Bishop Remy ; but little is known of the early archdeacons except 

 their names. Henry of Huntingdon 2 could remember five : Alured, 

 the first ; Gilbert, distinguished as a graceful writer both in prose and 

 verse ; Roger, who afterwards became bishop of Chester ; Richard, and 

 David, brother of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. David's name is fre- 

 quently found in the monastic chartularies, witnessing deeds and con- 

 firming grants of churches during the long vacancy of the see of Lincoln 

 which followed the death of Robert de Chesney. Matthew de Stratton 

 held the office of archdeacon for a long time, nearly fifty years, at the 

 beginning of the thirteenth century, together with the prebend of 

 Sutton-cum-Buckingham : he was engaged in more than one suit about 

 the benefices which he held, and seems once to have wounded the 

 feelings of Bishop Grossetete by refusing to accept his arbitration. 3 A 

 chantry endowed by him in the chapel of St. John Baptist at Buck- 

 ingham was still called by his name at the beginning of the reign of 

 Edward VI. 4 The chronicler of Osney Priory says that he governed the 

 archdeaconry in a strenuous and praiseworthy manner. 8 Happening to 

 die at Rome, he was succeeded by a series of foreigners by papal pro- 

 vision : Percy de Lavannia, 8 who was archdeacon for nearly thirty years 

 but scarcely ever in England ; Boniface de Saluzzo, a young Italian 

 nobleman, who while he was only subdeacon and under twenty years 

 of age had been dispensed to hold a papal chaplaincy, a canonry 

 of Lincoln and the rectories of four churches 7 ; George de Saluzzo, 

 whose movements were so little known in England that even the king, 

 his kinsman, in 1322 believed him to be dead and collated somebody 

 else to his archdeaconry 8 ; and Anibaldus, papal nuncio and bishop of 

 Tusculum, who was archdeacon not only of Buckingham but of Not- 

 tingham until his death in 1351, holding also canonries and prebends of 

 Lincoln, Chichester and York, the rectories of Maidstone and East 



1 Pope Nicb. Tax. 32-4. 



2 Letter de Contemptu Mundi in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 696. 



" He was nine years occupied with a suit against John de Vercelli, canon of Lincoln, about the church 

 of Buckingham, which the latter claimed as belonging to his prebend ; it was finally adjudged to the 

 archdeacon. Cat. of Papal Letters, i. 158, 181, 221. Then he had a suit with the archdeacon of Bed- 

 ford about the church of Edlesborough, on which occasion Bishop Grossetete wrote to him. Letters of 

 Grossetete (Rolls Series), 103. 



* Chantry Cert. 4, No. 9 ; Browne Willis, History of Buckingham, 28. 



8 Ann. Man. (Rolls Series), iv. 225. 



6 Ibid. iii. 247 (a description of his farming of his prebends to the Dean and Chapter). 



' Cal. of Papal Letters, i. 568-71. There are two indults to him to serve his archdeaconry by de- 

 puty. Ibid. i. 613, and ii. 55. 



8 Close 16 Edw. II. m. 24. 



290 



