210 JEdinr/ton Church. 



The Rectory of Edington belonged to the Abbey of Romsey, of 

 which the Rector was a Resident Prebendary, and the parochial 

 duties, with the services in the Church (the predecessor of the 

 building" under notice) were discharged by a Vicar. About the 

 year 1300 William of Edington (whose surname is unknown) was 

 born in the village whose name he adopted ; after education at 

 Oxford, and having held two previous livings, he, in 1322, became 

 Rector of Middleton Cheney, in Oxfordshire. In 1345 he was, by 

 Royal favour, appointed to the See of Winchester, and shortly 

 afterwards made Lord High Chancellor of England. In the last 

 year of his life, 1366, Bishop Edington was nominated Archbishop 

 of Canterbury, which office, however, he declined, probably on ac- 

 count of infirmity. 



Soon after his consecration to Winchester he appears to have set 

 about improving the state of the Church in his native parish of 

 Edington. He first (in 1351) arranged with the Abbess of Romsey 

 for the establishment at Edington of a Collegiate Body of Secular 

 Priests under a Warden. But a short time after this, at the special 

 request of the Black Prince, he converted his College into a Monas- 

 tery of the Augustinian Order of " Bonhommes/'' and built the 

 present Church. [There was a previous parish Church on the same 

 site, and during the recent restoration, the base, of late Norman 

 character, of the west respond of the south arcade was discovered in 

 situ, and opened out. This appears to have been the starting-point 

 in setting out the new, and larger, Church — the corresponding 

 respond of which stands on the old one.] 



Leland gives the following extracts from a certain Latin book of 

 Edington Monastery : — 



" 3rd July A.D. 1352. was laid the first stone of the Monastery 

 of Edindon." 



" A.D. 1361. The Conventual Church of Edindon was dedicated 

 by Robert Wyville Bishop of Sarum to the honour of St. James 

 the Apostle, S. Katharine and All Saints. " 



[Canon Jackson states: " St. James the Apostle, as one of the 

 saints to whom the Church was dedicated, may have been an error 

 of LelancFs copying. In the foundation charter, printed in the New 



