THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY & NATURALIST. 



a survival of the ancient moots, all of which were orginally 

 open-air meetings. The proceedings of the Pamber Court 

 were recorded on a piece of wood called a tally, about 3 

 feet long and ig inches square -somewhat like those used 

 centuries ago in the Court of Exchequer. These wooden 

 records were kept till they were worm eaten and decayed. 

 Hazlitt states that he saw one for 1745, and that one of 

 these records was produced in a law suit at Winchester 

 and received as evidence. At the Court the Pamber 

 people had the privilege of annually electing a Bailiff or 

 Lord of the Manor, who had the right to hunt and hawk as 

 far as Windsor, and to whom all the stray cattle belonged, 

 this being evidently a very ancient franchise.. 



SHERBORNE PRIORY AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 



The Priory of Sherborne was of the Benedictine order, 

 and is connected with English history in several ways, 

 especially with the history of our own county. Its founder, 

 Henry de Port, was a Baron of the Exchequer, who lived 

 in the time of Henry I. He was the son of Hugh de Port, 

 the greatest of Hampshire barons at the time of the 

 Doomsday Survey Hugh de Port is mentioned in that 

 Survey as having in his lordship 55 manors or estates in 

 Hampshire, which he held directly of the King, and 12 

 which he he'd ol Odo Bishop of Bayeux. His chief place 

 in Hampshire was Basing, which appears to have been the 

 seat of his baronial Court and the head of his great barony. 

 We have no direct evidence that Hugh de Port was buried 

 within this Priory, but I think it probable that his body was 

 removed here on its foundation by his son Henry, for in 

 the charter of its foundation he says that he gives the 

 lands and tithes at Sherborne to God and to St. Vigor of 

 Cerisy " for the s>oul of my lord King Henry, for the soul 

 of William the king's son, for the souls of my father and 

 mother, also far the souls of myself and my wife and of my 

 children and frieuds and all the people of Shireburn." The 

 immediate cause of its foundation thus appears to have 

 been the establishment of a religious house specially for 

 the spiritual benefit of the whole family of the de Ports, 

 and it would be the most natural thingthat the body of the 

 founder of that family should find its last resting place 

 here, where daily masses were to be said for him and his 

 descendants. 



Henry de Port's foundation must be considered a 

 wide charity, for he included all the people of Sherborne 

 among those for whom the monks were to sing their 

 masses ; a foundation which would find its parallel in 

 these days in those who would establish in Hampshire a 

 provincial college for the benefit of the people. 

 In his day it was quite in accordance with the spirit of the 

 age for great men to found a priory of this kind and for 

 similar purposes, and of this we have a considerable 

 number of examples in Hampshire. Two or three centuries 

 later it was the fashion of the age for distinguished 

 families to build chantries and attach them to the parish 

 churctes, such as we have seen to-day in the case of the 

 Brocas chantry in Sherborne St. John church. The 

 chantries in the i4th and isth centuries were established 

 for similar purposes to the nobler foundations of priories 

 such as this, the outcome of the religious feeling of an 

 earlier age. 



The Norman nobles settled in England appear for 

 several generations to have looked on the land of their 

 forefathers in very much the same way as wealthy English 

 settlers in distant lands look on their mother country now. 



Henry de Port dedicated his priory to St. Vigor of 

 Cerisy, i.e., he attached it to the great monastery of Cerisy, 

 as a branch of it. This circumstance brings before us at 

 once some interesting considerations. At the time of the 



Doomsday Survey, these lands which now form the 

 ancient possessions of the priory were held by Hugh de 

 Port of the Bishop of Bayeux, Odo, the half-brother of the 

 Conqueror, the turbulent bishop, more a soldier than an 

 ecclesiastic, who fought beside the Conqueror at Hastings, 

 armed with a mace, and who afterwards gave his half- 

 brother much trouble to keep him in order. We must, 

 however, give credit I think to Odo for his support to one 

 great artistic work which has survived to modern times, 

 the celebrated Bayeux tapestry, depicting the scenes of 

 the Norman Conquest, and from which we derive our 

 knowledge of the arms and dress of the period. 



Odo's predecessor in the Bishopric of Bayeux, St. Vigor, 

 had founded in A.D. 590 the Abbey of Cerisy, and the 

 Dukes of Normandy had restored it when destroyed, and 

 enlarged this monastery. 



In view of these circumstances, we can see how natural 

 it was that Henry de Port should dedicate some of the 

 lands of Sherborne, which his family had held of the 

 Bishops of Bayeux, to found a priory, which should be 

 attached to the Bishop's great monastery of St. Vigor of 

 Cerisy. 



Henry de Port gave to the priory "a mill at the other 

 Sherborne," the tithes of Woodgarston, of Basing, Upton, 

 the church and tithes of Bramley, and other endowments, 

 and he says in the charter that he desires to be buried in 

 this place. His charter, which is not dated, was witnessed 

 by Hadvis, his wife, and William and John, his sons, 

 among other persons. 



William de Port appears to have died early, for the next 

 charter is that of John de Port, who confirmed and en- 

 larged his father's grant, and says that he has given this 

 to the place in which he desires to be buried. Among the 

 witnesses to his charter are Matilda, his wife, and Adam 

 de Port and Hugh de Port, his sons. 



The next charter relating to this priory is that of Adam 

 de Port, a prominent baron in the time of Henry II. In 

 this charter he confirmed the grants of his father and 

 grandfather, and gave the priory the tithes of all the mills 

 on his manor, Sherborne" omnem decimam omnium 

 molendinorum meorum Sireburnse mese." He also doubt- 

 less intended that his bones should lie here with those of 

 his forefathers, but his life was unfortunate. The case of 

 Adam de Port is one in which Hampshire people may hope 

 that further historical research will be able to discover 

 more about him. He may have been a strong sympathiser 

 with Beckett in that long struggle between the King and 

 the Archbishop. England was much divided in opinion on 

 that quarrel, and Adam de Port, who enlarged the grant of 

 this priory, and, moreover, built the church of Warn ford 

 in this county, which still remains, could not have 

 been disaffected to the church, or perhaps as disloyal as he 

 appears. It is recorded of him that in 1172 he was 

 outlawed for an attempt on the life of Henry II. I need 

 scarcely remind you that forfeiture of his estates would 

 follow outlawry, and at this time all the de Port lands 

 were probably seized, except such as remained to his wife, 

 the Countess Sybill, who witnessed the charter he granted 

 to this priory her name not being Murie 1 , as stated by 

 Professor Burrows in his History of the family of Brocas, 

 but Sybill, for her name occurs on the charter which Adam 

 de Port gave to this priory as " Sibilla Comitissa uxore 

 mea." When he became an outlaw Adam appears to have 

 made his way to Scotland, and was received favourably 

 thereby William the Lion, the Scottish king. Shortly 

 afterwards he joined the army of that king in an invasion 

 of the north of England. A band of 400 English knights 

 and men-at-arms, hearing of this invasion, pushed north- 

 wards in misty weather into Northumberland, which was 



