222 



Early Annals of Trowbridge. 



Of any church or chapel at Staverton in these early days we have 

 no record. The fact, however, to which we have alluded, of the 

 tithes of Staverton having been granted to the Priory of Monkton 

 Farleigh, may possibly imply, that, in return for such a gift, the 

 spiritual charge of this portion of the parish was undertaken by 

 some member of that religious house. We know that at a very 

 early period it became the custom for patrons of churches, with the 

 consent of the Bishop, to confer them in perpetuity upon some monas- 

 tic establishment, the duties of the rural parish being in such a case 

 performed by a monk of the convent, or by a vicar depending upon it. 

 This may have been the case originally with Staverton, though, 

 from the absence of any authentic documentary information, we are 

 not able to speak of such an arrangement as other than possible. 



We have, in the record commonly called " Pope Nicholas' Taxa- 

 tion," an account of the value of the rectory of Trowbridge at the 

 close of the thirteenth century. The possessors of the see of Rome 

 claimed to be entitled, by virtue of their ecclesiastical supremacy, 

 to various payments out of all ecclesiastical benefices and possessions 

 in aid of the maintenance of their dignity, and even assumed a 

 right to dispose of such revenues, or any part of them, in such 

 manner as they judged most advantageous for the welfare of the 

 Church. On the latter pretence, in the year 1288, Pope Nicholas 

 IV. granted to Edward I. the tenth of all ecclesiastical benefices for 

 six years, on the plea set forth by that King, that he was about to 

 undertake a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land. Hence the 

 necessity of the record alluded to, which, though it contains little 

 more than a mere valuation of the various benefices, is interesting 

 as giving some idea of their relative value and importance in the 

 thirteenth century. The extracts relating to this and the surround- 

 ing parishes are brief and we therefore give a translation of them. 

 In the names of places we of course preserve the spelling as we find 



it in the record itself. £ s. d. 



Rectory of Troubrygg * . . . . . . 8 0 0 



Portion of the Prior of Farle in the same . . . . 10 0 



*Mr. Hallam considers any given sum under Henry III. and Edward I. as equivalent in general 

 command over commodities to about twenty-four or twenty-jive times its nominal value at present." 

 It will be easy therefore, at this reckoning, to estimate what we should call the real value of the 

 various livings. 



