included part of the present parish of Hatfield, there must have been at that time at least 2,000 acres of our present parish which was uncultivated forest ground. The present sites of Blunts Hall, Powers Hall, and Hobbrege Hall show where the old mansions stood. It is possible that a solitary hut containing one of the dependants of Blunts Hall on the north, and another dependant on Hobbrege on the south, were at a very early period run up on the forest near the road, forming the humble commencement of the present Duck End. It is also most probable that a similar log hut in the forest may have belonged at this time to the lord of Powers, which would account for a small portion of the present town, including the houses of Mr. Ardley and Mr. Savill, and the gardens behind them, being at this time in the manor of Powers Hall; having, in fact, belonged to the lord of that manor before the new land was taken out of the forest by the king's permission, and by the Knight Templars or Hospitallers formed into the manor of Newland. It is uncertain, and therefore left to us to conjecture, where the mansion of the lord of Witham was placed, but a strong probability seems to point to the house now in the possession of Mr. Shaw Manly, where Mr. Abbott, the shoemaker lives, or to the house adjoining the church-yard lately sold to Mr. Cousens; this must then have been the most populous part of the parish, and though the popu lation of the four manors can hardly have exceeded 500 persons: yet the chief portion of that number must have resided in the lowly dwellings of Edward the Elder's Saxon village. Witham-street and Witham market-place then only existed at a distance from the road, which lay still through the forest, and presented no attractions for men to fix there their dwellings, the security of which from thieves depended on the distance they dwelt from the highway, and on their being able to congregate together under the mansion of some lord of the manor.

As the lord of Witham manor was also lord of the hundred of Witham, and as this property and dignity was worthy of being held by the king himself (for the sheriff held it in the king's name); it is probable that whatever waste ground was not included in the other manors was claimed by the Lord of Witham; and perhaps this fact will account for the successive lords of the manor of Witham having among the manors of the parish the lion's share. But whether this were the case or not, at the time we are speaking of; the Lord of Witham must have held a superior place, as far as his property was concerned, above the Lords of Blunts and Hobbrege, and even Little Witham or Powers.

From the time of Edward the Elder, the sovereign must have claimed the chief if not the only right to the country around the town which he had founded, and it is highly probable that the other manors were mere grants of land and feudal privileges to those who in the first instance defended the burgh of Witham, and afterwards were known for their adherence to the Saxon interest.

Be this as it may, the rude incursion of the Danish invaders, their acquisition of the eastern coast by force of arms, and their gradual settlement upon the Saxon estates, which took place during the 150 years which elapsed between the foundation of Witham and the Domesday survey, must have completely altered, and in many instances violently changed, the tenure and ownership of lands and manors. It is remarked by our best historians that "important political benefits resulted from the invasions of the north-men; they appear to have planted in the colonies they occupied a numerous race of freemen, and in consequence, in the eastern counties and Essex among them, appear even in the survey of the Norman Conqueror a far greater number of freeholders and persons occupying small estates and a fewer number of slaves than in the other counties of England. There was a wise and humane law, which directed that if a slave were not claimed by his lord within a limited period, he should be presumed to be free. It was, therefore, perhaps as much by the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon great proprietors, as by their own colonists from the Baltic, that the number of the free were so numerous in the districts where the Danes had predominated."

In accordance with this statement we find that the lands of Witham, which William the Conqueror gave with so unscrupulous hands to his Norman soldiery and Saxon adherents, were before that time held by freeholders; the chief manor of Witham and the fairest portion of the parish were indeed good enough to be retained in royal hands, and therefore it probably passed from Edward and his successors into the hands of the Danish Canute, and so again to those of Edward the Confessor and Harold, who possessed it when he fell before his Norman rival; but the names of Borcard, Lestan, Aluin, are still preserved as free men, besides a free lady, who held in whole or in part the manors of Blunts-hall, Hobbrege-hall, and what was in later times called Powers-hall. Nor was this all: In the manor of Witham, probably residing in what was then Witham, but now is Chipping-hill, were as many as 23 copyholders, who each held land for themselves, in all amounting to 200 acres, and paid

a customary fine to the lord for their holding. Nay, further still, there are seven estates, all lying in the manor of Witham, separately enumerated, amounting in all to 650 acres, and given by William to his followers, (who paid quit rents to the lord, amounting in all to 10s. 6d.)-estates which seem to have been made up of smaller holdings, and to have been held previously by as many as 34 Saxon or Danish freeholders. At this time the chief manor of Witham kept 24 oxen to plough, and about ten plough lands in cultivation; the quantity had been greater, but owing to murrain among the cattle, almost half the former quantity of plough land had been allowed to go out of cultivation. They had upon this estate 9 slaves, 25 labourers in a greater or less degree of dependance, 30 acres of meadow, 100 sheep, and woodland sufficient to feed with its acorns 286 pigs. The other manors or farins were smaller in extent, at least within this parish; they had their plough oxen and woodland in somewhat the same proportion; but none of them but the owner of Powers-hall held slaves, and that manor being situated further in the forest, and on higher ground, and probably having more heath growing on its waste, was put down by the Norman commissioners as having a revenue from bees, and yielding four jars of honey, to make mead for the landlord or his steward.

Though I fear I have dwelt too long on this subject, and the details have been but dry and uninteresting, yet I must not leave it without adding the names of the persons to whom these estates were assigned by the Conqueror. Witham he still kept in his own hands, as I have observed. This, however, is not quite accurate, for it would appear by Domesday that while the survey was going on Witham manor passed from the hands of the King into the hand of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, one of his ablest adherents by whom he had won his kingdom, and of whose family we shall have to speak again. The other manors were given to persons who resided at a distance, and let them to tenants for a small rent. Blunts also was given in part to Eustace; another part of Blunts Hall, probably that in Hatfield parish, was given to Ralph Peverell, who married the concubine of the Conqueror; another part, probably that in Terling, was given to Richard, the son of Earl Gilbert. Of Earl Gilbert himself it is recorded that he alone among the Norman warriors refused to accept the spoil of the conquered country. He told his sovereign that he had followed him to England, because it was his duty, but that plunder

was to him no inducement, that he would return to Normandie, there to enjoy his own estate, which though small was his own, and that satisfied with his own he would take nothing that belonged to another. Howbridge Hall and Powers Hall were both given to Robert Gernon, the ancestor of the Lords of Stansted Mountfitchet, and the seven estates, of which I have before spoken, were parts of the reward given to his military adherents-Ilbold, Tederic Pointel, Ralf Peverell, William Gross, Ralf Baynard, Hamo Dapifer, and Goscelm Lorimar. We must not however be surprised if there is some difficulty in tracing the ownership of property: the art of conveyancing did not imply the aid of the lawyer and so many closely written skins of parchment as are now common,many farms and manors were given by bare words, I give this or that to thee-without writing, and the proof of gift, or title deed, consisted in something given at the same time, such as the sword of the lord, or his head piece, a horn, or standing goblet, and many tenements were conveyed with a horse combe, a bow or arrow, as late as the reign of William the Conqueror, but afterwards this manner was altered."

66

I will not dwell upon the misery which the alienation of lands from their former peaceful possessors into the hands of a foreign soldiery must have occasioned. The wives and daughters of the English were forced into the embraces of their conquerors; the Saxon freeholder became oftentimes a slave on the land which he had owned: (the slaves in Witham manor had, before the conquest, been 6, afterwards they were 9)

and almost universally the land from this violent disturbance became reduced in value; but to all this was added the natural consequence, a bitter feeling of antipathy between the Saxon peasantry and the Norman lords, a feeling which brought forth its fruit in the disaffection of many succeeding reigns.

But I must hasten to the point which I have assigned to myself as my conclusion this evening, viz. the settlement of the manor of Witham, and the foundation of our present parish church. We pass by, therefore, the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I., and arrive at 1135, when Stephen usurped the throne of England, at the age of 31; he was himself descended from William the Conqueror: his mother, the Countess of Blois, being the daughter of that king; he married in early life Matilda, the only child and heiress of Eustace Count of Boulogne, the granddaughter of that Eustace to whom we have seen the manor of Blunts Hall was given at the Conquest, as well as the manor and church of Witham. It was at that time as well as now

D

an easy virtue to be generous at the expense of others. Churches were given to this or that religious body as a meritorious act, while the very persons for whose benefit the original endowment was given remained unthought of in the bargain; and thus we hear nothing of the serfs and cottagers, and copyholders and freemen of Witham; while the royal owners of the tithe were giving away the endowment of the church for the good of their own souls. Thus runs the ancient document in the name of the royal heiress, Queen Matilda:"The mother church of my manor of Witham, called the church of St. Nicolas, with the church of Cressing, belonging to the same, I give to the church of St. Martin's London, to constitute a prebend tenth and a regular tenth for the health of my Lord King Stephen and me aforesaid, for the safeguard of religion, and for the rest of the souls of our parents." At this time the church itself must have been a very humble structure, probably of wood and thatch, left to the uncertain protection of absent royalty or absent nobles, who in their political struggles gave little concern to the numberless parish churches whose endowment, together with the manors, had become their property. In this respect the churches which belonged to bishops or abbeys fared better. At the time we are speaking, probably the church of Little Braxted existed of a far more substantial character than the church of Witham because the former constituted a part of the property of the Bishop of London.* For the same reason the church of Kelvedon was built in its present form earlier than Witham, because it was part of the possessions of the Abbey of Westminster. But whatever was the character of the church before King Stephen and Queen Matilda's grant, it is most probable that at this time, or very soon after, some attempt was made to improve it; the handsome doorway that now forms the chief entrance to the church within the porch is unquestionably of a much older date than the rest of the building, and its style belongs to a period not much later than that of which we are speaking. It is therefore most probable that this doorway may either have been the royal gift, or subsequently made by the Knight Templars or by St. Martin's, as a memorial of the royal gift; and though at first built on to a structure rapidly decaying and unworthy of such a noble addition to it: yet when the new church was built more than a hundred years afterwards this doorway would be preserved to form a fitting approach to the more spacious church which was then erected. I am tempted to

It is remarkable that there is a resident presbyter of Braxted recorded in Domesday, though not at Witham.