By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 



271 



spiritual abstraction. " Sometimes they lived in little chapels 

 on bridges, or by the way-side : receiving offerings at the 

 shrine, which they were bound to collect and devote to the 

 repair of the bridge, the road, or the chapel. 



A royal license of Mortmain was required for the foundation 

 of the hermitage at Codford. This in the original Latin is 

 printed at the end of Sir R. C. Hoare's Heytesbury. Its 

 substance in English is thus : — 



Rot. Pat. 10 Edw. II. " For our Brother Henry Marsh 

 the Hermit." 



" Know ye, that we of our special grace, &c, have given 

 license to our beloved Oliver de Ingham, to assign two acres 

 of land in East Codford, in a place called Crouchland, to our 

 beloved brother in Christ, Henry de Marey's Chaplain and 

 Hermit, to construct anew in that place a chapel in honour of 

 the Holy Cross, and houses fit for habitation, in order to cele- 

 brate therein Divine Service every day for the souls of our 

 predecessors, and those of the predecessors of the said 01iver. ,, 

 (The rest is merely formal.) In testimony, &c, witness the 

 King himself at Westminster the 6th day of June (1317). 



Sir R. C. Hoare says [Heytesbury, p. 231] that east of the 

 village is a projecting point of the down, clothed with wood 

 on the side towards Codford, round the outsides of which are 

 eight venerable yew trees. This in old maps is called Her- 

 mitage Hill : and it was commonly supposed that upon that 

 inclement spot dwelt Henry de Mareys. But Dr. Ingram 

 suggested that the remains of an old house close to the church, 

 of which no better history could be given, had been the Her- 

 mitage : the land on the hill being the two acres assigned for 

 maintenance. For female hermits, or Anchoritesses, see 

 Preshute, infra. 



Combe, in Enford parish, (Elstub and Everley Hundred.) There 

 is in Harleian MS., No. 1623, p. 17 (British Museum), a 

 Deed about this chapel, in which the name of Robert Dyngley, 

 Lord of the Manor of Fittleton is mentioned. The site of the 

 chapel is still visible, and a field bears the name. 



