the new manor of the vicarage, it would account for the fact that, in all early documents, and in his own court rolls, the vicar of Witham is described as lord of the manor of Hog-end.

In one sense they provided for the dignity of the new spiritual lord, for Morant tells us that all the other manors of the parish used to pay to this manor the yearly sum of 4d. and did their homage. I am bound to consider this a degenerate age, for homage and groats have alike passed away, and the only indication of any such payment which I can find, is a quit-rent which is due to me from the owner of what I consider the old manor house at Chipping Hill, who now owes me, as I have neglected my manorial rights, the multiplication by 15 years, of six-pence and two fat capons.

Up to this time, and for many years beyond it, I find no trace of any collections of houses near the place which now usurps the name of Witham, The highway was still in the forest, a dangerous place after dark, and those who first squatted upon some piece of waste near the road, must have done so for purposes of their own not difficult to be understood; the freedom of a roving life, the companionship of lawless but merry fellows, the relish for game, and especially for venison, whether it were a dappled buck or a white hart, together with the opportunity of relieving a luckless traveller of some of the gold which he carried in his saddle-bags, such motives may have caused even at this time some huts to be run up near the road: but the more peaceable inhabitants of Witham dwelt in Witham-street and Witham market-place. Wythamstreet, and forum de Wytham, occur as names applicable to Chipping Hill as late as Henry 6th, in the court-rolls; and there, near the church, was the chief part of the population to be found. Of this we have almost certain proof, because some fifty years afterwards, on the application of the Templars, a market, to be holden on Sunday, was granted by Richard I., and we know where that cheping or cheapening or market was held, not only from the hill which still bears the name of Chipping Hill, but also because it is stated in authentic records that nearly two hundred years later a licence from the crown was obtained by Robert Hales, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem and lord of Witham Manor, to have the market in the hamlet of Newland, as well as in the old town of Witham. It may be observed that Witham market day had been changed in Henry 3rd's reign from Sunday to the Wednesday, and subsequently from the Wednesday to the Tuesday.

It must be remembered that a market in those days was a much more important concern than it is now. In the infancy of trade, and in the absence of regular shops, the open market was the only place in which wares of every kind were exposed for sale. Not only the farmer brought for sale the produce of his farm, but the clothier, the shoemaker, the draper, the travelling jeweller, and druggist, all came together, paid their toll to the lord of the manor for leave to set up a stall; and at the market only, could the produce of a parish be sold or the wants of a neighbourhood supplied.

But though the population of Witham must have gradually increased by the Sunday market on Chipping Hill, yet I fear this was no sign that civilization had made any great progress in England; I am afraid the manners of the people and the justice of the rulers had not arrived at a very high point, if we take the courtesy of the bishops as a sample of the one, and the exactions of King John as a sample of the other, for thus we read -"In March, 1179, the king called a convocation of the clergie at London: when the Pope's Legate was set, and the Archbishop of Canterbury on his right hand as Primate of England, the Archbishop of York disdained to sit on the left hand, came and swapt him down, to have thrust his tail between the legate and the Archbishop of Canterbury, which archbishop being loathe to remove, the other set himself in his lappe, but he had unneth touched him, when the bishops and other of the clergie and laitie stept to him, pulled him, threw him to the ground, and began to lay on him with fistes and battes, so that the Archbishop of Canterbury (yielding good for evil) was faine to defend the other archbishop, who with his rent coape got up and away straight to the king with a great complaint, but when the truth of the matter was once knowne, he was well laughed at for his remedie." And now for king's justice

A. D. 1210.-"The king (John) commanded all the Jews, both men and women, to be imprisoned and grievously punished, because he would have all their money. Some of them gave all they had, and promised more, to the end they might escape so many kinds of torments as he did put upon them, for every one of them had one eye at the least pulled out: amongst whom there was one, which, being tormented many ways, would not ransome himself, till the king had caused every day one of his great teeth to be pulled out by the space of seven days, and then he gave the king 10,000 marks of silver, to the end they should pull out no more.

It is difficult to account for the disputes which, from time to time, arose between different religious bodies

E

as to their claim to portions of the tythes in certain parishes. Under certain circumstances the owner of an estate might at first devote a portion of the tythes to any church which he preferred; but the circumstances were not clearly defined, and it probably happened through carelessness that the same revenues were given as an endowment to more than one church. One of these disputes occurred as early as 1241, between the college of St. Martin's and the priory of Crux Roisia or Roystone; the claim was settled by way of friendly composition, on condition that St. Martin's should pay to the Prior of Roystone half a mark of silver yearly. This sum of 6s. 8d. was received instead of a claim to the tythes of "harbage, i. e. of hay, flax, of the mill, of springs or woods, and of all living things growing or increasing of the lordship which is called the lordship of Newland." Now this dispute, and its settlement, show us that at that early date new land had been reclaimed and perhaps enclosed from the forest; the old manor of Witham had been so far divided that a new lordship was created out of it, and also that it was probably the poorest part of Witham from the sum at which the tythes of that whole lordship were valued. (By another composition or arbitration between the master and brethren of the Holy Spirit and the Dean of St. Martin's it was agreed that the tythes of Long Mead, of Ricnor, of Slade's Meadow, and of the land of the park, belong to the Dean and Chapter of St. Martin's.)

There was another dispute which occurred in later times, which was of a more important character, between St. Martin's and the abbey of St. John's, at Colchester, in which the abbey of St. John's claimed two parts of the tythes of great quantities of the land in Witham and Cressing, which was settled by St. Martin's agreeing to pay to St. John's the yearly sum of seven marks. I have purposely anticipated the period of this dispute, in order to state here the connection of parts of Witham with that abbey, of which now nothing remains but a handsome gateway, but which was once for its riches and magnificence, if not for its piety, the glory of Colchester and of the whole county.

On the rising ground to the north of Chipping-hill stood a mansion very lately taken down by Mr. Bretnall, inhabited successively by the families of Southcot, Stourton, and Talbot, and known by the name of Witham-place. Before that mansion had been built, there was a small dwelling, and a few acres of land belonging to it, called by the name of Bacons or Abbotts, because it had originally belonged to one Roger Bacon, and

because the property, which then consisted of a house and 29 acres, had been made over by Bacon to the abbot of St. John's. A confirmation of this transaction remains to this day, in the coarse rushy field near the river belonging to Mr. Bullock, and still bearing the name of Abbots. (N.B. Abbotts and Longfield, which lie together on each side of the old road to Faulkbourne, together make up 29 acres.) As there were other lands in Witham, which in the time of the Conquest were held by the sheriff in the king's name, nothing is more probable than that some portion of these lands came into the hands of his favorite steward, called Eudo Dapifer, who we know received the manor of Great Braxted, and who endowed the abbey at Colchester with a large portion of his easily acquired property. This, at least, would account for the claim of St. John's abbey: if Eudo Dapifer had these lands in Witham, and gave them for an endowment to his favorite monastery at Colchester. To return, however, to the church of Witham : the Vicarage had long before the time of this dispute been settled with a residence, fixed revenue, and cure of souls, including the chapelry of Cressing, under the patronage, but independent of the interference, of the college of St. Martin's: Eustace de Fauconbridge, Bishop of London, in 1229 from his influence as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Treasurer, being able to require what the great men of that day deemed a fair allowance from the rich chapter in London to their poor substitute the vicar of Witham. It appears also from Newcourt, that the benefice of Witham, though from that time in the patronage of the Bishops of London (who appointed the vicar) did not consist of such ample revenues as to make the vicars very permanent occupiers of the living; for a period of 200 years after the building of the church, there were as many as 26 vicars of Witham, most of whom resigned the living for something better, and who did not minister to the people of Witham for more than seven or eight successive years, on an average.

And now I come to the time when the present church of St. Nicolas was built, which I cannot help connecting with one of the most extraordinary facts which history presents--the suppression I mean of the military order of the Knight Templars throughout Europe. The Knights of the Temple, as we before had occasion to notice, first formed themselves into a religious brotherhood in imitation of the Knight Hospitallers of St. John, the only difference between the two bodies being that the latter were devoted to the reception and care of the poor pilgrims who visited the holy sepulchre:

the former to the defence and protection of the wayfarers on their road. The knights of both orders vied with each other in the feats of valour which they performed during the Crusades; the flower of European nobility of every nation enrolled themselves in the lists of one or of the other, and before long they became remarkable, not merely for their courageous defence of the oppressed, but for the large possessions with which kings and lords had hastened to endow the military brotherhoods. One of these religious communities is said to have possessed at one time more than 1,000 manors in different parts of Europe. It was thus that the Knight Templars became possessed of the manors of Witham and Cressing. But in a moment Europe was astonished by their sudden suppression; with the extraordinary cleverness, of which a Frenchman alone is capable, and with the same dashing boldness which characterized Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat at Paris, in 1852, did Philip the 4th, the then monarch of France, in one night surprise and imprison every Templar in his dominions. Heresy, cruelty, and profligacy, were laid to their charge, upon very uncertain testimony: some of the accusations were so monstrous as to be from their very nature incredible; but certain it is, that with the consent of the Pope, the order was suppressed throughout Europe, many of the Knights having been racked with torture before they were executed. Their possessions, however, were transferred to the Knights of St. John, into whose hands thus unexpectedly came an immense increase of lands and revenues. Nothing could be more natural than that the new possessors of the property should signalise their first entrance into it by some acts of liberality, and in no way could they obtain a more sure and well-founded popularity than in building or restoring the churches in their newly-acquired manors. Now, in examining carefully the character of the building, the mouldings of the windows and arches and columns, the best authorities fix this very time as the date of St. Nicolas' church. Another independent ground for supposing that the church was built about this time is the fact that the list of vicars of Witham is preserved from the year 1327, but not before.

But we must remember it was replacing a mean church by a handsome one. Had not the old church been a mean and dilapidated building, some part of it doubtless would have remained. The chapel of Cressing was built by the same knights at the same time with Witham. You may see the identical form of window, the identical mouldings in the arches