84 



The Orders of Shrewton. 



at the u earnest persuasion " of Nicholas Barlowe, the vicar, in 

 order to remedy disorders which had arisen in consequence of the 

 dismembering' of the manor in 1596, and the discontinuance of the 

 Courts Baron wherein orders were taken, in former times, for the 

 u better government and quiet estate of the parish," and they 

 apparently embody what had been the customs of the manor time 

 out of mind. 



The picture of a Salisbury Plain parish at the end of the sixteenth 

 century presented by this document is a very pleasant one. Nicholas 

 Barlowe, the vicar, was a Shrewton man, according to the first 

 entry in the register : — 



" March. 1548. Nicholas the sonne of John Barlowe was Baptised, and 

 afterward Ordered and Collated Vicar of Shrewton by Bishop John Jewell 

 A°. Di 1570." 



If we may judge from tbe way in which he kept the register, 

 which is in his own writing till 29th April, 1609 (the year before 

 his death) , he was a man of scholarly and business-like habits, and 

 in 1599 his long incumbency must have given him great weight in 

 the councils of the parish. The gentry of the village were men of 

 position in the country. Edward Estcourte owned the parish of 

 Rolleston and that part of the parish of Shrewton called Nett. 

 He was an ancestor of the present Mr. Estcourt, of Estcourt, near 

 Tetbury. Thomas Tooker was the brother of Sir Giles Tooker, 

 Recorder of Salisbury, and M.P. for Salisbury, 1601—1621, who 

 lived at Maddington. William Goldisborough and Robert Wans- 

 borowe were owners of considerable estates in the parish — -the latter 

 lived in the manor house, which is now occupied by Mr. Charles 

 Wansborough, his lineal descendant, who possesses whatever rights 

 were left to the lord of the manor, after its sale and dismembering 

 in 1596. Nicholas and John Gylbert were members of a family 

 who for about two centuries owned land in Shrewton and Madding- 

 ton. Robert Tiercey's descendants are to this day respectable 

 tradespeople in Shrewton. 



inscription on the cover :— " This old register, which has been in the careful 

 keeping of my family for more than two hundred years, I now restore to the 

 Church of Shrewton at the request of the Vicar, the Rev. F. Bennett, this 

 second day of April, 1860. Chaeles Wansbeough." 



