Old Days of Eton Parish - CHAPTER IV - The 200 years Before The College was founded

MORE ABOUT THE TOWN AND PARISH, 200 YEARS BEFORE THE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED.

IT appears that in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. (1216-1307) the Abbey of Reading held property in both Windsor and Eton, but there is no evidence of the monks being employed in Eton.

 A solitary relic of their presence is the Abbot's pile,' a wooden pile at the head of an eyot near Tangier Mill. This still forms the boundary-mark of the right of fishery belonging to the borough of Windsor.

Sometime before 1239, the close connection with the Priory of Merton came to an end; and the patronage passed into private hands. In that year Thomas de Lacel resigned the living and Hugo de Hoddeg, a sub-deacon, was presented for the vacant post by Hugo de Hoddeg, a soldier. After some delay owing to the defect in his qualifications, he was instituted¹ and is designated Rector as holding all the tithes.

The next recorded Rector was Thomas Holte, presented to the living by the family of Huntercombe in 1299 and holding it till his death.

 A list of the Rectors who succeeded him, until the foundation of the College, will be found in Appendix I.

There were no less than seventeen during this period. From the frequent mention of exchange or resignation, it was evidently not considered a very eligible piece of preferment.²

In 1288, the tenth of all ecclesiastical Benefices in England was granted to King Edward I. towards his expensive wars and expeditions. In order to carry out this taxation, a general assessment was made. The living of Eton, then, and until 1847, in the Diocese of Lincoln,³ is mentioned as taxed at £10 13s. 4d. in the money of the time. In the same return Clifware or Clewer was assessed at £10, Upton at £13 6s. 8d., Stoke at £10, and Dorney at £6 13s. 4d.

Probably in the same reign, stables for the King's horses were built in Eton. Hence the name King's Stable Street, where, as a map in the Woods and Forests Office shows, the Crown had house property, till the middle of the eighteenth century, known as the King's Stables. In 1319 King Edward II. granted to Oliver de Bourdeaux, the keeper of the castle and forest, his lands in Eton. Soon after he also gave him all hereditaments in Windsor and Eton which had belonged to John of London and Roger de Mowbray, on condition of his finding a man with a lance and a dart to attend the King's army.

In the fifteenth year of King Edward IIl. (1341) (just I00 years before the College was founded), a ninth part of the corn, wood, lambs' fleeces, and other profits was granted by Parliament to the King to meet the expenses of a war with France. In the assessment then made, the duties for Eton Parish were set down at fourteen marks; those for Old and New Windsor together amounted to twenty marks. The return for Eton is supposed to have been less than the full amount, as thirty acres of arable land and six acres of pasture were exempted from the tax as being Church property. In 1360, William of Wykeham, afterwards founder of Winchester College, was engaged on works at Windsor Castle, and his name appears in a commission appointed by the King to dispose of certain tenements and lands Belonging to the Crown, including unnecessary houses in Windsor, Eton and Upton.

Among the private owners of lands, mention is made of one Thomas atte Wyk de Etone (Thomas of Eton Wick) who held one virgate⁴ of land at Ditton, on behalf of the Abbess and Convent of Burnham.

The Brocas family was well known in the reigns of Edward II. and III. They fought on the Lancastrian side in the War of the Roses. For centuries they were hereditary masters of the Royal Buckhounds. Sir John de Brocas was chief forester of Windsor Forest and Warden of Windsor Hospital in 1351 and was entrusted with the work of enlarging the Castle. He acquired land in Windsor, Clewer and Eton.

A descendant of his, son of Sir Bernard Brocas who was beheaded in the beginning of Henry IV.'s reign, served the two following Kings, and received, among other rewards, what is known as Brocas Meadow. According to a local tradition this meadow was given to the town of Eton by a Lady Brocas, but for more than a century past the College has claimed the right of grazing cattle there.

In 1391 an incident occurred which brings Eton into notice, and doubtless caused some little stir in the town.

The citizens of London had caused the displeasure of the King by refusing to lend him a thousand pounds and also by ill-treating and nearly killing a Lombard who was willing to advance it. In consequence of this, the Mayor of London, the Sheriffs, and the best citizens were arrested and imprisoned. After a time, the Chronicler tells us, "the King was somewhat pacified and by little and little abated the rigour of his purpose, and determined to deal more mildly with them," and so sent orders that they should come to Windsor, " there to shew their privileges, liberties, and laws."

Whether it was that the town of Windsor was still so small, or that it was ill provided with a suitable place of meeting, must remain uncertain; but the inquiry took place at Eton, on the feast of St. Mary Magdalen, before Edmund Duke of York, Thomas Duke of Gloucester, and others. The commission decided that the City of London should be governed in future by a Warden, two Sheriffs and twenty-four Aldermen.

This decision was communicated to the offending parties by the King at a Council held in the Castle, and new officers were appointed.

This is the last incident recorded before the foundation of the College, which, so far as it affected the town and the parishioners generally, must now engage our attention.

For further particulars about the College, our readers must consult the many interesting books already published on the subject.⁵

1 Lincoln Episcopal Register—Bishop Grey.

2 It is possible that the Priory of Merton in parting with the advowson had kept its grip on most of the Church property.

3 The Diocese of Dorchester was now known as the Diocese of Lincoln, the Bishop having again settled in the latter city; as many ten counties were at this date under his care.

4 A virgate is a measure of land varying from 15 to 40 acres.

5 Especially Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte's Eton College and Willis and Clark's Architectural History of Cambridge, from which the present writer has drawn most of the information about the Chapel.

OLD DAYS OF ETON PARISH by The Rev. John Shephard, M.A. was published in 1908 by Spottiswoode and Co Ltd. The text is has been copied from the original book that is now out of copyright.

A report on the 1977 Story of a village exhibition.

Its fair  to say that the Eton Wick History Group was started on foundations laid by Dr Judith Hunter. In 1977 she published her first book, The Story Of A Village, Eton Wick 1217 to 1977. The exhibition reported on in this Windsor Express newspaper clipping was put on with the assistance of Frank Bond and a band of willing volunteers.

A short history of the Manor of Eton cum Stockdale and Colenorton.

In 1204 there were only daughters to inherit the manor, Christiana and Gunnora de Windsor, and within two years it was officially recorded that their husbands had paid livery for their wives' halves of the divided manor.  For a few decades the connection between the two manors and the Castle was broken; but when the heir was a minor, according to custom, he was made a ward of court and his lands administered by the Crown, through the Castle. Then in the middle of the fourteenth century the manor which had been inherited by Christiana a century and a half earlier was exchanged by Edward III for land and privileges in Berkshire. For the next six centuries the manor, now the Royal Manor of Eton, was to remain with the Crown and be administered for much of that time as part of the honour and jurisdiction of Windsor Castle.

The inheritance by the daughters of Walter de Windsor had divided the original manor into two smaller manors, but not many decades were to pass before Christiana's son had granted part of his area of Eton, together with that of Cippenham, to Prince Richard, the younger son of King John, thus creating a third manor stretching into Eton. Almost certainly the tenants of this manor had to attend the manor courts at Cippenham. In the fourteenth century it was acquired by the de Moleyns family of Stoke Poges. Sir John de Moleyns already owned land in Eton, part of which was granted to Burnham Abbey in 1339. The remainder seems to have been transferred to the Crown in 1447 and was then granted to Eton College. This appears to have been a fourth manor in Eton and known simply as 'Moleyn's fee' or 'Brigstreef’. The Royal Manor of Eton at this date had the name 'Church fee' since the right of advowson was held by the lord, or 'Bordeux's fee' after the previous lord of the manor. (See chart).

The part of Eton and Eton Wick which had been attached to Cippenham Manor and then Stoke Poges continued to be administered by the lord of that manor, and courts were held at least as late as the mid sixteenth century.

It is more difficult to understand how the other manor, the half originally inherited by Gunnora and known for many years as the Manor of Huntercombe, came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to take on the names Colenorton and Stockdales. Colenorton was first mentioned in connection with the manor in 1526 after the manor had passed into the hands of the Crispe family through marriage. It may be that it represented land of John Crispe rather than his wife Margaret, who had inherited the Eton Manor.  Certainly even a century later when Andrew Windsor was lord of the manor the court for the Colenorton portion was held a day later than the Manor of Eton with Stockdales. Where the manor house stood is unknown, though there was one; the demesne land included seventy four acres of arable and pasture spread over the parish, and a house at Eton Wick.

The name Stockdales was first used in 1610 and again appears to have been a separate estate, but when John Penn bought the Eton Manor in 1793 the three were amalgamated; in future the name Eton cum Stockdales and Colenorton was applied to the whole property. This is the name by which it is still officially known.  The last Court Baron was held in 1948 soon after the Provost and Fellows of Eton College became the Lords of the Manor. The College had already bought the Royal estates in Eton and so after some seven centuries the various manors were once more reunited.

                   

Whether they were king, baron, knight or plain Mr or Miss, none of the lords or ladies of the manor even lived in the parish, let alone Eton Wick, with the sole exception of the Provosts and Fellows of Eton College, who held the Royal Manor for a short period in late medieval times and again this century when the two manors were once more united under one lord. But how much did it   matter to the people of the village who was the lord of the manor and where he lived? There is no simple answer, but it could have mattered a good deal, for the lord of the manor was often a considerable landowner and in the early centuries the manor was the main unit of local government. The affairs of the manor were conducted through the manor courts, the Court Baron and the Court Leet. Through these courts the village officials were appointed, dues exacted, misdemeanours punished and the regulations governing the use of the common fields and commons enforced. These courts were presided over by the lord's right-hand man, or steward, and the lot of the villagers would depend upon his character and that of the Lord of the Manor himself.

Only a few of the records of these courts of the Eton manors have survived, parchment rolls written in Latin of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and printed leaflets from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The full title of the court often incorporated the phrase, 'View of Frankpledge', which refers to the medieval system of grouping households into tithings (originally ten families). Each tithing was responsible for the good behaviour of its members and represented by one or more tithingmen at the court when cases of lawbreaking were considered.

Those who were liable for punishment were said to be 'in mercy' and were frequently fined, the money being kept by the lord of the manor.

Read the rest of this article here.  

 This is an extract from The Story of a Village: Eton Wick 1217 to 1977 by Judith Hunter.