ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 
These are all who held land for the church i capite. The property 
of the Bishops of Bayeux and Coutances was not held for the church, 
and was moreover very soon forfeited. The manors of Elstow and Wils- 
hampstead with part of Maulden, amounting to 114 hides 14 virgates, 
and worth £20 5s. in all, were held by the nuns of Elstow, but under 
Countess Judith. They need not be further noticed at this point, as 
their history is bound up with that of Elstow Abbey.’ 
In the case of Arlesey, Cranfield, Barton, Shillington and Lidling- 
ton, where the whole manor belonged to a monastery before the Con- 
quest, and afterwards until the dissolution, it seems most probable that 
the parish churches were built by the religious. 
To the period immediately after the Conquest belongs not only the 
transference of the episcopal seat of the diocese from Dorchester to 
Lincoln, but its fuller organisation. Hitherto the bishops had needed 
but one ‘eye’ ; but now almost every county was provided with its own 
archdeacon.” The names of the first archdeacons of Bedfordshire are 
found in Henry of Huntingdon’s letter to Walter, ‘de contemptu mundi’ :° 
Osbert, the first ; Ralf, ‘miserably slain’; Hugh and Nicholas. The 
name of Hugh occurs also in the Dunstable chartulary;* but that of 
Nicholas is very well known. Being archdeacon from 1145 to 1181, 
he was in office nearly all through the long interregnum that followed 
the death of Bishop Robert de Chesney in 1166, and consequently he 
was called upon to ratify or witness a great many charters granting 
land or churches to the religious houses of the county. He witnessed 
the foundation charter of Chicksand Priory,” and various donations to 
Beaulieu,’ Newnham’ and Dunstable.” He had held one of the pre- 
bends of St. Paul’s, Bedford,’ before the founding of Newnham Priory, 
and is named more than once among the old secular canons. He was 
succeeded by Laurence, whose name appears under the year 1185 ;” 
and Richard was archdeacon under St. Hugh.” 
The institution of the rural deans is usually assigned to the same 
period,” but the time when their territorial limits were fixed is uncertain ; 
a complete list of rural deaneries cannot be made out until the end of 
the thirteenth century. : 
A very large majority of the parish churches were in the twelfth 
century granted to various monasteries of the neighbourhood, either at 
their foundation or later ; the tithes were usually given with the advowson 
or very soon after. The consideration of these gifts in detail is more 
appropriate in connection with the ordination of vicarages in the next 
century. The bestowal of the advowson of a church on a monastery 
1 It seems strange that the abbey of St. Alban’s should have held nothing in this county, where 
afterwards it had so much valuable property. 
2 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 117. 
3 Anglia Sacra, ii. 696. * Harl. MS. 1885, f. 20. 
5 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950. ® Lansd. MS. 863, f. 83b. 
7 Harl. MS. 3656, £ 65. 8 Ibid. 1885, f. 19, 21b, 24. 
® Thid. 3656, £. 47. 
10 Tbid. f. 17b, and ibid. 1885, f. 24. 1 Tbid. 3656, f. 60. 
12 Stubbs, Const, Hist. i. 233. 13 See p. 344. 
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