558 Marlborough Chantries, and the supply of Clergy in olden days. 



10th March, 1497 — 8, hy Augustine Church, titular hishop of 

 Lydda, acting as Suffragan for J. Blythe, Bp. of Sarum. Beg. 

 Blythe, f. 113. 



I gather from what Mr. Pouting tells us (on a subsequent page 

 in this volume) that St. Peter's Church, Marlborough, was built 

 anew — and the tower may have been added a few years later — 

 between Bishop Beauchamp's two visits of 1450 and 1466. This 

 disturbance of the building, or else some difficulty about the en- 

 dowment for the chantry, may have been the reason for the delay 

 till 1475 in founding the chantry in memory of a husband who 

 had deceased before 6th February, 1446. 



On architectural grounds, Mr. Pouting considers the probable 

 date of the tower of St. Peter's and St. Paul's Church, which is in 

 some respects like that of Mere Church, to be about 1470. The 

 whole building at Marlborough was erected anew, somewhere 

 about 1460 — 70, in place of an older Church of St. Peter which is 

 expressly named in a. record of Bp. Bi. Poore, circa 1224, and 

 which was presumably one of the " Churches of Merleberg " 

 mentioned by St. Osmund in 1091. A rector named "Peter" 

 occurs in 1232 {Hist. MSS. Report, i. p. 341), and a complete list of 

 Hectors from the end of the thirteenth century has been compiled. 



The Birds, Byrdes, or Bryds, of Marlborough, were patrons of 

 Huish, or Heuish, in the vicinity. W. Byrde, who held in 1491 

 the vicarage of Bradford, appears to have been attainted for high 

 treason, and K. Henry VIII., in 1540, appointed Tho. Morley (then 

 Bishop Suffragan of Marlborough) to the vicarage of Bradford as 

 well as to the rectory of Fittleton. (Jas. "Way leu, Hist, of Marl- 

 borough, 480, 499.) It was, presumably, to the same family that 

 John Brydde, of Marlborough, belonged. He had a house ill 

 Marlborough, and his widow Isabella in 1446 procured a patent to 

 found a chantry at the altar of St. Katherine in St. Peter's Church, 

 Marlborough, for the welfare of his soul, and to endow a chaplain 

 with lands, tenements, and rents to the value of 12 marks or ±'S 

 per annum. It was a year after a visit of K. Henry VI. to Marl- 

 borough in September, 1448, that she obtained a further patent 



