RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



perished in one of the Danish raids of the period. 

 The Danes, we are told, ravaged the country in 

 the year 998 ; no details are given, but the Anglo- 

 Saxon Chronicle, recording fruitless attempts to 

 withstand the destructive march of the enemy, 

 adds sadly : ' In the end they ever had the 

 victory.' " According to Leland Wimborne was 

 rebuilt by ' King Edward,' supposed to be the 

 Confessor, and by him was converted into a house 

 or college of secular canons with a dean at its 

 head.'* No reference is made to it until the 

 reign of Henry III beyond the statement in 

 Domesday, that the church of Wimborne had a 

 hide and a half and a virgate of land in Hinton." 

 From the date of its restoration it appears to have 

 enjoyed the status and privileges of a royal free 

 chapel with college attached under the direct 

 patronage of the crown. In 13 1 8 Edward II 

 addressed an order to Rigaud Asser, then 

 papal nuncio, afterwards bishop of Winchester, 

 forbidding him to exact aught from or to lay any 

 imposition whatever on the dean and preben- 

 daries of Wimborne Minster — 



Whereas it is a free chapel of the king and altogether 

 exempt with the prebends and chapels pertaining 

 thereto from all ordinary jurisdiction and from all 

 exactions, procurations and contributions whatsoever."' 



Owing to this immunity from episcopal juris- 

 diction there are no entries in the diocesan registers 

 which can throw light on the internal condition 

 of the college. A solitary mention occurs in 

 1379 wherein William Crundell, proctor of the 

 dean and college, was summoned with the proc- 

 tors of Ford, Cerne, and Tewkesbury to appear 

 before the bishop's commissary in the parish 

 church of Sonning prepared to exhibit their title 

 to all ecclesiastical benefices, portions, and 

 pensions held by them.^' 



The earliest appointment to Wimborne that 

 is recorded occurs at the beginning of the reign 

 of Henry III, when Martin de Pateshull received 

 letters of presentation to the deanery then vacant 

 and at the royal collation, 6 December, 1223.^^ 



" Anglo-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 108. 



'* Collect, i, 82 ; see also Itin. iii, 72. 



" Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 77^. This may be 

 either in Hinton Martell or Little Hinton, as both are 

 included in the survey of Hinton. 



™ Close, II Edw. II, m. 10. In the event of a 

 general contribution by the clergy to the crown the 

 king was in the habit of addressing a special order to 

 the dean, appointing him collector of the subsidy due 

 from all benefices pertaining to his chapel, which was 

 exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary. Ibid. 

 8 Edw. II, m. 9. 



" Sarum Epis. Reg. Erghum, i, fol. 29. 



■" Pat. 8 Hen. Ill, m. 12. The Rev. R. W. Eyton, 

 in \a%Key to Domesday {Dorset,), suggests that Maurice, 

 bishop of London, and Hugh his predecessor held half 

 a hide in OJeham in the parish of Wimborne in 

 virtue of the deanery, ' having in their time been deans 

 of Wimborne,' but they are not included in any list 

 of the deans of Wimborne. 



The following year the sheriff of Dorset was 

 directed to cause proclamation to be made that 

 the market and fair formerly held within the 

 cemetery of Wimborne should in future be held 

 outside under the walls, on land belonging to the 

 dean on the same days and with the same liberties 

 and customs as formerly.^' 



The deanery was always held by men holding 

 other ecclesiastical benefices and in many cases 

 secular offices, and. was bestowed by the king on 

 his clerks and court favourites as a reward for their 

 services, and by no means always with a view to 

 their spiritual fitness. Martin de Pateshull, 

 early in the reign of Henry III, sat as a justice 

 of the King's Bench, was a justice itinerant and 

 constantly employed as a judge ; besides other 

 ecclesiastical benefices he held a prebend in St. 

 Paul's, London, the archdeaconry of Norfolk, and 

 in 1228 was appointed to the deanery of St. 

 Paul's.^^ On his death the following year he 

 was succeeded at Wimborne, 20 October, by 

 Randolf Brito,^* who in the previous December 

 had been presented by letters patent of the king 

 to prebends in London and Salisbury and to the 

 rectory of Charing (Kent),-^ and the March 

 following appointed constable of Colchester Castle 

 and warden of the ports of Essex.^' John 

 Mansel, the notorious pluralist, who succeeded 

 in 1 247 on the death of Brito, had, as we may 

 gather from the pages of Matthew Paris,"* a very 

 distinguished career in many ways, but the 

 positions which he held and the difficult negotia- 

 tions in which he was frequently employed by 

 the king can have left him no leisure to bestow 

 on Wimborne, and the fact that he held the 

 deanery is not even mentioned in the Chronica 

 Major a, which records his varied appointments.^' 



For examples of pluralism in this county we 

 have only to turn to this deanery, a notorious 

 instance being that of John Kirby the tax- 

 gatherer, who followed Mansel. The number 

 of his clerical preferments, granted solely in 

 reward for his services to the king, and with 

 no regard to his fitness,'" created a painful 



^ Close, 9 Hen. Ill, m. 20. 



" Le Neve, Fasti Eccl.Jngl.u, 308, 371, 482; New- 

 court, Repert. i, 35. " Pat. 13 Hen. Ill, m. i. 



»= Ibid. m. II. "Ibid. m. 9. 



'■^ Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), vols, iii, iv, and v. 



-' He held a prebend in London {Fasti Eccl. Angl. 

 ii, 397), was chaplain to Henry III, made chancellor 

 by the king in 1243 (Pat. 27 Hen. Ill, m. 10), and 

 the following year principal councillor (Matt. Paris, 

 Chron. Maj. [Rolls Ser.], iv, 294). In the same year 

 that he was presented to Wimborne he received the 

 charge of the Great Seal and was made provost of 

 Beverley (ibid. 601). In 1258 he witnessed a charter 

 as chancellor of York (ibid, v, 672). Bilsington 

 Priory in Kent was founded by him (ibid, v, 690-1). 



*° He appears to have held only deacon's orders, and 

 was ordained priest by Peckham the day before his 

 consecration to Ely in 1286; Reg. Epist. Peckham 

 (Rolls Ser.), iii, App. ii, 1 041. 



109 



