of Richard Actedene his sister’s husband, who had no child. He was to present a pair of gloves of one penny value to the prior and canons, to be given annually by the said Richard; and to quit all claim to the said lands in reversion, provided the prior and canons would engage annually to pay to the king, through the hands of his bailiffs of Aulton, ten shillings at four quarterly payments, “pro omnibus serviciis, consuetudinibus, exactionibus, et demandis.”
This Jo. de Venur was a man of property at Oakhanger, and lived probably at the spot now called Chapel-farm. The grant bears date the 17th year of the reign of Henry III. (viz. 1233).
It would be tedious to enumerate every little grant for lands or tenements that might be produced from my vouchers. I shall therefore pass over all such for the present, and conclude this letter with a remark that must strike every thinking person with some degree of wonder. No sooner had a monastic institution got a footing, but the neighbourhood began to be touched with a secret and religious awe. Every person round was desirous to promote so good a work; and either by sale, by grant, or by gift in reversion, was ambitious of appearing a benefactor. They who had not lands to spare gave roads to accommodate the infant foundation. The religious were not backward in keeping up this pious propensity, which they observed so readily influenced the breasts of men. Thus did the more opulent monasteries add house to house, and field to field, and by degrees manor to manor, till at last “there was no place left;” but every district around became appropriated to the purposes of their founders, and every precinct was drawn into the vortex.
LETTER VIII.
Our forefathers in this village were no doubt as busy and bustling, and as important, as ourselves: yet have their names and transactions been forgotten from century to century, and have sunk into oblivion; nor has this happened only to the vulgar, but even
