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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY These are all who held land for the church in capite. The property of the Bishops of Bayeux and Coutances was not held for the church, and was moreover very soon forfeited. The manors of Elstow and Wils- hampstead with part of Maulden, amounting to 1 1 hides i| virgates, and worth £20 5J. in all, were held by the nuns of Elstow, but under Countess Judith. They need not be further noticed at this point, as their history is bound up with that of Elstow Abbey. 1 In the case of Arlesey, Cranfield, Barton, Shillington and Lidling- ton, where the whole manor belonged to a monastery before the Con- quest, and afterwards until the dissolution, it seems most probable that the parish churches were built by the religious. To the period immediately after the Conquest belongs not only the transference of the episcopal seat of the diocese from Dorchester to Lincoln, but its fuller organisation. Hitherto the bishops had needed but one ' eye ' ; but now almost every county was provided with its own archdeacon. 2 The names of the first archdeacons of Bedfordshire are found in Henry of Huntingdon's letter to Walter, ' de contemptu mundi ' : 3 Osbert, the first ; Ralf, ' miserably slain ' ; Hugh and Nicholas. The name of Hugh occurs also in the Dunstable chartulary ; 4 but that of Nicholas is very well known. Being archdeacon from 1 1 45 to 1181, he was in office nearly all through the long interregnum that followed the death of Bishop Robert de Chesney in 11 66, and consequently he was called upon to ratify or witness a great many charters granting land or churches to the religious houses of the county. He witnessed the foundation charter of Chicksand Priory, 5 and various donations to Beaulieu," Newnham 7 and Dunstable. 8 He had held one of the pre- bends of St. Paul's, Bedford," before the founding of Newnham Priory, and is named more than once among the old secular canons. He was succeeded by Laurence, whose name appears under the year 1185; 10 and Richard was archdeacon under St. Hugh." The institution of the rural deans is usually assigned to the same period," but the time when their territorial limits were fixed is uncertain ; a complete list of rural deaneries cannot be made out until the end of the thirteenth century. 13 A very large majority of the parish churches were in the twelfth century granted to various monasteries of the neighbourhood, either at their foundation or later ; the tithes were usually given with the advowson or very soon after. The consideration of these gifts in detail is more appropriate in connection with the ordination of vicarages in the next century. The bestowal of the advowson of a church on a monastery 1 It seems strange that the abbey of St. Alban's should have held nothing in this county, where afterwards it had so much valuable property. 3 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 117. 3 Anglia Sacra, ii. 696. * Harl. MS. 1885, f. 20. 5 Dugdale, Mon. vi. 950. 6 Lansd. MS. 863, f. 83b. 1 Harl. MS. 3656, f. 65. 8 Ibid. 1885, fF. 19,21b, 24. 9 Ibid. 3656, f. 47. 10 Ibid. f. 17b, and ibid. 1885, f. 24. " Ibid. 3656, f. 60. 13 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 233. 13 See p. 344. I 313 40