300 



Ancient Chapels, fyc. y in Co. Wilts. 



que tibi lego lege. There is also the small letter n by itself 

 on the stone. 



Poulton, or Pulton, (in Cricklade Hundred, but encompassed by 

 Gloucestershire.) Sir Thomas St. Maur of Castle Cary, co. 

 Somerset, and of Eton Meysey, founded here about 21 Edw. III. 

 (1347), to the honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a house of a 

 Prior and two or three Canons of the Gilbertine, or Sempring- 

 ham (co. Lincoln) Order, endowed with land and .Rectorial 

 tithes, worth about £400 of the money of the present day. In 

 the Episcopal Registers at Sarum, the St. Maurs are the first 

 patrons named. In 1340, Thomas St. Maur presents to the 

 " Chantry at the Altar of St. Mary, Poulton." From 1361 

 to 1409, the Prior presented to the Rectory. In the Yalor 

 Eccles. of 1534, Poulton is not registered among monastic 

 houses, but among the ordinary Rectories, though the Incum- 

 bent Thomas Lyndwode calls himself Prior. At the confis- 

 cation, the Priory property was sold to three persons, Stroude, 

 Erie and Paget ; a miserable stipend being reserved, to main- 

 tain a perpetual Curacy ; the present value of which is only 

 £43 a year. 



Preshute. From one of the Liberate Rolls [Waylen's Marlb., p. 

 34], it appears that in A.D. 1215, King John " for the safety 

 of his soul and the souls of his predecessors and successors, 

 gave unto Eve, the Recluse of Preshute, the sum of one 

 denarius a day, which she should enjoy in free gift so long as 

 she lived, to be doled to her by the hands of the Constable of 

 Marlborough Castle. Dated at Ludgershall, 4 Aug." 



This Recluse was a female hermit, sometimes called Anchor- 

 itess, Anchoress, or Ancresse, of a class frequently mentioned 

 in topographical works. Juliana, the Anchoress of Norwich, 

 is named among Ballard's Learned Ladies. There was an 

 Ancresse of St. Helen's at Pontefract, co. York, called Dame 

 Margaret Multone. Whitaker [History of Richmond] men- 

 tions a gift to the anchoritess in seclusion near " the chapel of 

 St. Edmund : " which Leland called " the chapel of a woman 

 anchorite a little beyond the ende of Frenche Gate." 



