276 



Notes on Durrington. 



whom I can find any notice is John Mareys, Chaplain of Durrington, 

 who is said by Dods worth to have been one of the witnesses re- 

 quired for the canonisation of St. Osmund. He stated that a 

 certain Robert Clark stabbed John Leyde with a long dagger, and 

 that Leyde fell apparently dead, but on being carried to the tomb 

 of Osmund he was by prayer brought to life. 



There was a Henry Harrison in the reign of Queen Mary ; and 

 in 1582 Thos. Greene; for both these witnessed wills. And from 

 1591 to 1603 Henry Goodyer, who began our Church registers, for 

 before he left to become Chaplain of Bulford he testified in them 

 that thus he had written having been twelve whole years curate, 

 while Philip Poore farmed the rectory. William White and, I 

 think, William Fowler, filled up twenty years till Mr. Maton 

 came. After him was Robert Forster, who seems to have had the 

 curacy for a long time, for he died 1726. But for about twenty 

 of those years he was also Curate of Milston under Dean Addison, 

 Joseph Addison's father, who was non-resident, so that Forster 

 probably lived at Milston ; and as Henry Head, master of Rose's 

 School, served Durrington from 1715 it is doubtful whether Forster 

 lived here at all ; and then for more than a century no curate 

 resided. The house with five rooms and its strip of garden ground 

 was not attractive, and £40 a year in Victoria's reign became 

 impossible to subsist upon. Eichard Head, who served the Church 

 from 1747 to 1799, was still remembered by some old men in 

 1863, as coming over in a carriage on Sunday, the carriage standing 

 at our cross during service. He lived at Amesbury, but was Rector 

 of Compton Chamberlaine, as well as Perpetual Curate of Durrington 

 from 1763. After him came four non-residents ; but in 1838 

 Richard Webb, who, after sixteen years as Curate-in-charge was 

 appointed to the living, came to reside ; and his best and sufficient 

 monuments are the school which he established and the Church 

 which he restored. 



