ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



is little doubt that the foundation of manorial churches received more 

 favour among the thegns and other laymen than among the monks of 

 St. Albans, Westminster and Ely who owned the greater part of the western 

 side of the county.*^ A feeling probably existed with the monks that these 

 manorial churches would withdraw the offerings of the people, and hence an 

 endeavour was made to obtain the control of them and their endowments. 



As has already been stated, the manorial churches founded by Saxon 

 laymen had substantial endowments of glebe. At Hitchin this amounted 

 to 2 hides, at Ware to 2 carucates, at Welwyn to i hide,^" at Sawbridge- 

 worth '' to I hide, at Stanstead Abbots to i carucate, and at Hatfield to half 

 a hide.'* The endowments of the Domesday priests apparently became the 

 rectory manors at Hitchin, Welwyn, Cheshunt, Sawbridgeworth, Bishop's 

 Stortford, Standon, Broxbourne, Northchurch, Great Gaddesden, King's 

 Walden, Pirton, Therfield and Wheathampstead.*^ The churches of all 

 these places except Welwyn, Great Gaddesden and Wheathampstead, together 

 with the churches of some twenty other places, where priests are mentioned 

 in Domesday, were a little later acquired by religious houses to which they 

 became appropriated. Thus the endowments, so liberally given by the Saxon 

 thegns, were largely lost to the parish churches. 



Besides the profits from the glebe, the Saxon parish priest received a 

 third of the tithes of the ' shrift district,' which he served under the ordinance 

 of Edgar of 970. The right to dispose of the tithes arising from his lands 

 to any religious foundation remained with the lord of the soil till the third 

 Lateran Council in 1179—80. It is doubtful if those serving the churches 

 on the lands of St. Albans Abbey ever received any tithes till the ordi- 

 nation of vicarages was enforced at the end of the 12th century and later. 

 Tithes were frequently granted away from the church of the parish in 

 which they arose, by lords of the manors and others. Thus Geoffrey de 

 Mandeville granted the tithes of Shenley to Hurley Priory in 1 136, but the 

 advowson of the church was given to Walden Abbey.'* The tithe of Hemel 

 Hempstead was granted by the Count of Mortain to St. Mary of Grestein in 

 Normandy, and the church to St. Bartholomew's, London." Hamo de Villiers 

 in the 1 2th century gave two parts of the tithe of Walkern to St. John's, 

 Colchester, and it was not till later that the church was granted to the same 

 monastery.'' At Bushey Geoffrey de Jarpenville apparently built the church 

 about 1 166 and endowed it with a virgate of land. He then agreed with 

 the Abbot of St. Albans to allot to it the tithe of half his lands, while Watford 

 took the remaining tithe, an arrangement which remains to this day." The 

 foregoing evidence with regard to Hertfordshire seems to indicate that the 

 efficient organization and endowment of the parochial clergy, which had 

 been growing up under the Saxon rule independent of the monasteries, was 



" Of the ecclesiastical arrangements in the nth century on the vast estate of the Abbot of St. Albans 

 we know little, but in the time of Edward the Confessor there were probably only the three churches 

 already mentioned. Westminster had priests only at Wheathampstead (where it never had the advowson of 

 the church, which was probably founded before the lands were granted to it in 1065) and Ashwell, and 

 estates there and at Titberst in Shenley, Aldenham, Stevenage, Tewin, Datchworth, Watton and Ayot 

 St. Lawrence. Ely had a priest at Hatfield for that great manor and lands at Kelshall and Hadham {V.C.H. 

 Herts, i, 311, 312, 313). 82 jbid. 343. 83 ibid. 264. " Ibid. 



** See under the topographical description of these parishes {V.C.H. Herts, ii and iii). 



'" F.C.H. Herts, ii, 273. 8' Ibid. 227. ^8 i^id. iii, 157. '^ Ibid, ii, 185 and 132 n. 



