By the Rev. C. S. Buddie. 



335 



the county until now.) The miller, John atte Mulle, paid 6s. 8d. 

 Several seem not yet to have a fixed surname : John le Sonkere, 

 Clemenas Pellica garde (does this mean a keeper of leather ?), 

 Simon le Couper, who paid 2s. 3d., Bobert le Mole, John le Byre, 

 Bichard le Hope, John le Palmer. But probably John Brown and 

 Henry Tony had settled their names ; and so had John Giffard, 

 Alicia Crouch, and John Hikkes. 



The subsidy amounted to £6 17s. lOd. 



The manor passed from the de Neville family by the marriage 

 of their heiress, Elizabeth, to John Lord de la Warre, and to him 

 it belonged in 1388. At his death it passed to his brother, who 

 was a priest at Manchester, and as he was in want of money for 

 his collegiate Church he sold it to William of Wykeham, who 

 made it one of the endowments of his new foundation, Winchester 

 College. This was in 22 Bichard II. How much was paid for it 

 is not clear ; because a moiety of the manor of Vernham, Hants, 

 was included in the purchase price : which was the large sum of 

 £1066 13s. 4d. The feoffment by Boger Gay ton and another, who 

 were Lord de la Warr's feoffees, to Wykeham, and the acquittance 

 by Thomas Chamberlayne and John Heneage, executors, for the 

 purchase money, are preserved in the muniment room of the college. 

 The evidences of the title which were handed over on the occasion 

 of the purchase go back to the time of Henry III., and include 

 copyhold grants by members of the de Nevill family. 



Up to this time, that is, up to the end of the 14th century, this 

 was no doubt a prosperous part of the country, because it was in 

 a great sheep -breeding district, and the wool trade was flourishing. 

 But for some reason in 1441 Henry the Sixth's subsidy roll shows 

 all our part of South Wilts as waste and desolate. Durrington was 

 let off for 13s. M., and the adjoining parish of Milston for 6s. 8c/. 

 Boscombe paid only 3s. M. And this assessment of Durrington as 

 a desolate place went on for a generation, so far as the accounts at 

 the Becord Office show. Yet Thorold Bogers, in his History of 

 Brices, represents the 15th century as the golden age of farmers: 

 and although prices of sheep and wool fluctuated there was no such 

 fall as to cause sheep farming to be at any time abandoned. Indeed 



VOL. XXXI. — NO. XCV. ' 2 A 



