256 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. X. 
have you to know that I have given to Christ and to Saint 
Peter, unto Westminster that “cotlif” in which I was 
born, by name Githslepc, and one hide at Mersce scot-free 
and gafol-free, with all the things therein that thereto 
belong in wood and in field, in meadow and in waters, with 
church and with church-jurisdiction, as fully and as largely 
and as free as it stood to myself in my hands : so also as 
Elgiva Imma my mother at my first birthday gave it to me 
for a provision.’ ” 1 
The font in which, according to tradition, Edward was 
baptised, stood in the Rectory garden ; but Buckland, who 
pronounced it to be fourteenth-century work, had it care^ 
fully cleaned, and presented it to a church which was being 
restored in the neighbourhood.. The form of Islip is not 
that of a village, but of a town ; and a “ town ” it is still 
called, with streets branching out from an open centre 
which might have been a market-place, and where a cross 
once stood in front of the church. This cross was replaced 
by a lofty elm tree, which Dean Ireland had supported by 
large Stonesfield slates. The village stocks were here. The 
Rectory was built by Dr. South, Prebend of Westminster, 
the famous preacher and wit, who was for thirty-eight 
years Rector of the parish. Although living occasionally 
in the place, he never occupied the parsonage ; neither did 
his successor, Sir R. Cope, Chaplain to the House of 
Commons, who was Rector for forty years ; and it had 
therefore to be restored, as, at the beginning of this century, 
it was in a ruinous condition. 
The Rectory, 2 and the garden, which had evidently been 
1 “The Early History of Oxford, 727—1100,” Parker, p. 176. 
2 The roof slates are from the Stonesfield quarries, where Dr. Buck- 
land often worked and which he frequently took his pupils to examine. 
