The Descent of the Manor of Stockton. 



281 



refuges for the aged poor of all classes, with their quiet cloisters and 

 daily services ; welcome and shelter not only for those who had 

 toiled with their hands, but religious houses with companions and 

 pensions, books and leisure, for worn-out workers with the brain ; 

 Cathedrals and chapters, Churches and clergy, and missionaries for 

 the overwhelming and almost paralyzing increase o£ population ; 

 brotherhoods and sisterhoods ; all those things, in fine, which we 

 try so hard to supply, and supply after all in such inadequate 

 measure by guinea subscriptions and charity bazaars and all sort of 

 begging devices — when we consider some of these things, I must 

 ask you to forgive me the expression of the sentiment that the 

 reckless destruction of the monastic buildings, the profligate con- 

 fiscation and squandering of their revenues, was a mistake as well as 

 a crime, not only iniquitous in conception but disastrous in result. 

 The destruction of Stanley Abbey left Derry Hill and the neigh- 

 bourhood for more than three hundred years without a Church ; and 

 the mere mention of the words " poor rate " makes us feel how 

 great a burden the dissolution of the religious houses has thrown on 

 the country at large. But we must not presume to pass out of the 

 details of archaeology into wider questions which may not be dis- 

 cussed here ; our humbler office is but to gather up some of the 

 almost-forgotten memories of the past. 



gwcent of % jjtoot of j&focfcton. 



By J. E. Nightingale, E.S.A. 



^JJJiJN the twelfth volume of this Magazine appears a detailed 

 Jij history of the parish of Stockton, Wilts, by a late Rector, 

 the Rev. Thomas Miles, then recently deceased. The late Canon 

 Rich- Jones supplemented this by a paper on an ancient Saxon 

 charter relating to Stockton, from the chartulary of St, Swithm/s, 



