Abbey, includes among them ' the wood called Horuudu ' and three
manses at ' Scelfdune '[1] and certainly Little Horwood as well as
Winslow were always traditionally reckoned amongst the earliest endow-
ments of the abbey.[2] Another (and equally doubtful) charter of some-
what later date assigns to the same house 10 manses at Turville [3] (Thyre-
feld) of the gift of Egfrid the son of Offa.
Of the foundation of the church at Buckingham and the still more important church at Aylesbury, there is no clear account ; but it seems probable that they were two of the oldest churches in the county. Buckingham, being of sufficient importance to give its name to the shire somewhere in the ninth century, would probably be provided with a church at any rate from that time ; and it is possible, if the conjec- ture of Mr. Morley Davies in his recent paper on the Buckinghamshire Hundreds is correct, that there was a church in Aylesbury earlier still.[4] From the first, indeed, the church at Aylesbury tended to become the chief ecclesiastical centre of the county. It seems strange that Bucking- ham, as the county town, should never have had more than one parish and one church ; still stranger that its one church should be dependent originally as a mere chapelry upon King's Sutton in Northamptonshire. [5] On the other hand, it is clear from the Domesday Survey that Ayles- bury not only possessed valuable lands, but received from an early date contributions of grain from the sokemen of eight surrounding hundreds.
It is difficult even to guess at the number of churches which may have existed in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest. Only two are named in Domesday besides those above mentioned the church of Haddenham and the minster of St. Firmin at (North) Crawley. There is a Saxon church still standing at Wing, which Professor Baldwin Brown assigns to the tenth century,[6] and the name of Whitchurch speaks for itself. There were probably many more of which no trace or record remains.
The sees of Canterbury, Winchester and Dorchester, were endowed with lands in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest, and Barking Abbey, as well as St. Alban's, had property in this county.[7] There is an interesting series of charters referring to the manor of Monks' Ris- borough, which seems to have been bestowed at an early date upon the
- ↑ This may refer to Salden next Mursley (Sceldene in Domesday), as one of the boundaries given is Swanbourne : the abbots of St. Alban's had a great deal of property in this neighbourhood in the thir- teenth centurysee Gesta Abbatum Man. S. Albani, i. 425 ; also Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), ii. 337-8.
- ↑ Kemble, Cod. Dipl. clxxiii. Both gifts are named in Cott. MS. Nero D. vii. ff. 4, 4d.
- ↑ The church of Turville had been the property of St. Alban's for some time in 1276. Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 430-1.
- ↑ Home Counties Magazine, vol. vi. No. 22, p. 136. The suggestion rests upon the mention of men from eight hundreds ' in circuitu de Elesberie ' (see Domesday translation) contributing to the church. This would seem to include the hundred of Tring in Herts, and to point to an association of hundreds earlier than the shire divisions.
- ↑ It is expressly called a chapel to King's Sutton at the ordination of the vicarage in 1445. It is not easy now to explain the connection, which was evidently very early, and based traditionally on the legend of St. Rumwald, born at Sutton and buried at Buckingham.
- ↑ Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England., ii. 73.
- ↑ See Domesday translation.
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