By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 



129 



I himself. His possessions were immense elsewhere : in Wiltshire he 

 ! had only the small matter of the Manors of Swindon, Tidworth, 

 i Ditchampton, and Wadhill. The Conqueror had an odd habit of 

 ! throwing away his sponges when they had served their purpose 

 I long enough : and so on a suitable pretext, he threw Bishop Odo, 



not exactly away, but into prison, and deprived him of all his 



estates. 



The next time that the lordship is mentioned is not until the 

 reign of Henry III., when, among others, it was again bestowed 

 by the Crown upon a French nobleman, who also again happened 

 to be the King's half-brother, William de Valence, created in 

 England Earl of Pembroke, of Goderich Castle. He was one of 

 the foreign leeches who sucked the blood of this country, and whose 

 continued importation roused to resistance the native Barons of that 

 reign. He had a son, Aylmer de Valence, who succeeded him, and 

 died in 1323. Upon his death, without children, it was held by 

 his widow, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, foundress of a College at 

 Cambridge, at first called the College of Mary de Valence, but now 

 Pembroke Hall. At her death, Swindon passed to her late 

 husband's niece, Elizabeth Comyn, who brought it in marriage to 

 Richard, second Baron Talbot, of Goderich Castle ; and in 1473 it 

 belonged to his descendant, John, Earl of Shrewsbury. About, I 

 believe, the year 1560, it was purchased by Thomas Goddard, Esq., 

 of Upham, ancestor of the present owner. This was just 300 years 

 ago ; but there is a family deed which mentions Goddard of High 

 Swindon in 1404. 



The Rectory and Advowson belonged at a remote period to the 

 Augustine Priory of Saint Mary, of Southwick, near Winchester. 

 In the year 1323 that Priory obtained licence to impropriate it ; 

 i.e., to apply the great tithes to their own use, converting the 

 resident officiating Minister into a Vicar ; but the endowment does 

 not seem to have been settled (unless there is some error in the 

 dates) until 1359. At the Dissolution of Southwick Priory, the 

 Rectory and certain woods " Super Rectoriam," were purchased by 

 Mr. Stephens, then of Burderop, whose family, in 1602, sold it, 

 and the Advowson, to Nicholas Vilett and his heirs, now represented 

 VOL. VII. — no. xx. m 



