By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 



289 



(anciently called Eblesbourn), to Ebbesbourn Wake, &c, and 

 including lands south of the ' Ebele,' as the stream that flows 

 through it was called. Some of this territory we know belonged 

 to the Bishops of Wessex, and the fact that in the 'Codex Win- 

 toniensis,' the gift of other lands situated in ' Eblesburn ' 

 to divers persons is recorded in several charters, 1 leads us to the 

 inference that they also at one time belonged to the Bishop, or were 

 vested in him for the benefit of some religious establishment at 

 Winchester. At all events the description, brief as it is, enables us 

 to identify the land now in question as having been situated at 

 Tisbury. 



The charter goes on to recite that Catwali, the successor of the 

 above-named Abbot Bectune, had sold the said lands to Wintra, 

 Abbot of Tissebiri, and that Wintra had received a writing 

 (libellum) testifying the purchase, but not the original deed of grant, 

 inasmuch as it formed a portion of other grants from King Coin- 

 raed and could not be detached from them. As the original witnesses 

 died off, a dispute had arisen between the two monasteries over which 

 Bectune and Wintra had respectively presided. The breach was 

 now healed by a declaration of Cynewulf that Egwald and his 

 society in the monastery at Tissebiri, as the successors of Wintra, 

 were entitled to the land in question. To make matters more sure the 

 cop}r of the first grant was inserted in the confirmation charter, 

 the accuracy of the transcript being attested by Cyniheard, Bishop 

 of Winton. 



More than two hundred years afterwards, (a.d. 984) Tisbury was 

 given by King Ethelred to the Abbess of Shaftesbury. This grant 

 was a confirmation rather than an original gift. By King Edmund 

 (c. 941 — 943) it had been permitted to be exchanged by his queen 

 -ZElfgifu for an estate at Bucticanlea ; by King Edwy, after her 

 death, it was restored to the Abbey at Shaftesbury, the lands at 



1 There are no less than eight successive grants, or confirmations, by various 

 kings in the Codex Winton., of lands in Duntune (Downton) and Eblesburne 

 (now Bishopston) to the Bishops of Winchester. See Codex. Diplom., Nos. 342, 

 421, 599, 610, 698, 695, 1083, 1108. There were also several other charters 

 reciting gifts in Eblesburn to different persons. Codex Diplom., Nos. 655, 1079, 

 1088, 1209, 1232. 



