during your visits to this seat of your jurisdiction, or who have experienced the still greater gratification of being occasionally inmates of your happy and refined home. Indebted as I am to you for many pleasant visits there, as well as for the other favours to which I have already alluded, I can only entreat that you will accept the renewed assurances of esteem and gratitude, from, Dear and Very Reverend Sir, Your obliged and faithful servant, WILLIAM ATTHILL. The Deanery, Middleham, Yorkshire, Jan. 1, 1847. UNIVERSITY PREFACE. THE desire which so generally prevails at the present day of illustrating the ecclesiastical annals of our country, and of recording whatever may be interesting or valuable in the pious and munificent institutions of our ancestors, has led to the production of the present volume. The College of Middleham, one of the very few religious foundations which escaped the sacrilegious rapacity of the Eighth Henry, seems doomed at length, after an existence of nearly four centuries from the date of incorporation by its royal founder, to sink beneath the more specious but no less positive sacrilege of the nineteenth century. To preserve some faint memorials of this establishment, for which the princely Gloucester procured privileges and immunities rivalling those of Windsor,* and exceeding those of any other ecclesiastical institution in the kingdom; to save from the decay into which ere long they might otherwise have fallen, some most interesting documents of bygone days; to rescue from oblivion the few notices which may still be collected of its history; and to throw every possible light on the exemptions and liberties of a jurisdiction, which, with every other PECULIAR throughout * See Introduction, infra, p. 28, note. "Merrie England," soon will have passed away-these are the primary objects of the editor of the present volume; should it, however, be instrumental in preserving the faintest memorial, the most trifling remnant, of an establishment for the incorporation of which its royal founder laboured so assiduously, he will consider himself well repaid. The sources from which this brief history of the collegiate church of Middleham has been drawn, are fully detailed in the notes appended to the foot of each page; and no available source has been left uninvestigated to render it at once correct and interesting. Amongst the mass of materials which the Editor has searched for these ends, it is possible some few facts may have escaped his notice, but he can confidently assert that not one statement has been put forward which does not rest on sufficient authority; and, however others may differ from him in opinion on the inferences to be drawn, the data upon which those conclusions rest must remain unimpeached; and perhaps, when, in a few short years at most, he shall sleep with those who have preceded him as ministers in its collegiate church, this little volume may form the basis of some more interesting and perfect history of a place, of which a distinguished and attractive writer of the present day says, "MIDDLEHAM-not Windsor, nor Shene, nor Westminster, nor the Tower-seemed the Court of England."+ Although it is the principal design of the present volume to give a brief history of the church and parish of Middleham, from the period that, under the auspices of Richard duke of Gloucester, it was erected into a college and deanery, still it seems desirable, *Sir E. B. Lytton, Bart. + Last of the Barons, vol. ii. p. 160. before the editor proceeds with his allotted task, to throw together in this place a few memoranda of its earlier condition. Middleham, or as it is called in Domesday, Medelai,* formed a portion of those extensive possessions which the Conqueror bestowed on his nephew Alan Rufus, earl of Bretagne, first earl of Richmond, and lord of Middleham, after the conquest of England. Alan, who died without issue A.D. 1089, gave the manor and honor of Middleham, with its appurtenances, and various other lands which, in the time of the Confessor, belonged to Ghilpatric, a Dane, to his youngest brother Ribald, whose grandson Robert† built the castle of Middleham. "Contiguous to a castle of this period," says Whitaker,‡ "was almost always a church. The village of Middleham had none before; as a member of a parish in the Saxon times, it must have been attached to Wensley. With equal probability, therefore, we may ascribe to Ribald both the one and the other." And in another place§ he remarks, "All this while" (i. e. at the period when Robert de Neville, called the Peacock of the North,|| who died previously to the year 1331, was lord of Middleham,) we hear nothing of a church at Middleham, nor till the following instrument; but there can be little doubt that it was the work of one of the first lords, who endowed it with an ample glebe, and as "The land of earl Alan, Medelai (Middleham), to be taxed five carucates, and there may be three ploughs. Ghile Patrick had a manor there; Ribald now has it, and it is The whole one mile long and one broad, value in king Edward's time twenty shillings." Bawdwen's (Rev. W.) Translation of Domesday, p. 108. waste. Inter "Robertus hic tempore suo fundavit et ædificavit Castrum de Middelham." Collectiones Dodsworthii in Bibliotheca Harl. See Gale's Honor of Richmond, Appendix, pp. 233, 234. Whitaker's Richmondshire, vol. i. p. 343. Dugdale's Baronage, vol. i. p. 292. CAMD. Soc. § Ibid. p. 332. b usual with the tithes of the town." Such is Dr. Whitaker's statement, and the instrument he mentions is given below.* * "Omnibus hanc cartam indentatam visuris vel audituris Radulphus Comes Westmerlandiæ Dominus de Nevill et Marescallus Angliæ salutem in Domino sempiternam. Sciatis nos quandam cartam indentatam Mariæ de Nevill quondam Dominæ de Midilham, antecessoris nostræ, cuidam Domino Johanni Rectori ecclesiæ de Midilham prædicta et successoribus suis factam, inspexisse in hæc verba. UNIVERSIS Christi fidelibus ad quorum notitiam præsentes literæ pervenerint, Maria de Nevill Domina de Middilham salutem in Domino sempiternam. Noverit universitas vestra me in pura viduitate ac ligea potestate mea, concessisse et præsenti scripto meo cyrographato confirmasse Domino Johanni Rectori ecclesiæ de Middilham et successoribus suis communiam pasturæ per totum annum ad octo boves et duo jumenta, in bosco meo de Middilham qui vocatur Westwode exceptis clausis meis separabilibus in prædicto bosco existentibus, ubi prædictus Dominus Johannes et successores sui non solebant habere nisi tantum sex boves et duo jumenta: habendum et tenendum prædicto Domino Johanni et successoribus suis prædictam communiam pasturæ ad octo boves et duo jumenta prædicta in prædicto bosco, exceptis duobus clausis in eodem bosco existentibus dummodo permanserint clausa, de me et heredibus meis liberè, quietè, benè et in pace cum pertinentiis suis imperpetuum; decimis fœni in prædictis duobus clausis prædicto Domino Johanni et successoribus suis in omnibus sibi salvis. Et si contingat quod aliqua averia de prædictis octo bobus et duobus jumentis prædicti Domini Johannis vel successorum suorum, in prædictis duobus clausis pro defectu clausuræ aliquo tempore intraverint et absque wardo facto, sine gravamine et reparatione retractentur. Et prædictus Dominus Johannes pro se et successoribus suis, prædictæ Dominæ Mariæ et hæredibus suis totum jus et clameum communis in prædictis duobus clausis in bosco prædicto dummodo clausa permanserint penitus relaxat. Et quam cito prædicta duo clausa pro non clausis teneantur prædictis Domino Johanne et successoribus suis, ad statum communis pasture sex boum et duorum jumentorum prius habitorum revertantur. In cujus rei testimonium præsenti scripto cyrographato alternatim sigilla sua apposuerunt. Hiis testibus, Willelmo de Burgo tunc Ballivo Richemundiæ, et aliis. Datum apud Middilham die Sancti Jacobi Apostoli, anno Domini Millesimo tricentesimo decimo.- -Quam quidem cartam ac omnia et singula in eadem carta contenta Ricardo de Pykering nunc Rectori Ecclesiæ de Middilham prædictæ et successoribus suis secundum formam cartæ prædictæ indentatæ, approbamus, confirmamus et ratificamus firmiter per præsentes. In cujus rei testimonium uni parti hujus cartæ indentatæ, penes prædictum Ricardum et successores suos remanenti, sigillum nostrum apposuimus; alteri vero parti penes nos et hæredes nostros remanenti, dictus Ricardus sigillum suum apposuit. Datum apud Raby vicesimo nono die mensis Decembris, Anno Domini Millesimo, quadringentesimo, quinto et regni regis Henrici quarti post conquestum septimo."-Middleham MSS. |