Saxon tower, Sompting Church, Sussex.
From the same source we learn that the usual quantity of land assigned to a church was from five to fifty acres; in some cases the glebe was larger. Bosham, in Sussex, was one of the largest; in the time of Edward the Confessor it had 112 hides. Barsham, in Norfolk, had 100 acres; Berchingas, in Suffolk, 83; Wellingrove, in Lincolnshire, 129 acres of meadow and 14 of other land.
The private origin of ecclesiastical benefices, together with the feudal ideas of the tenure of property, produced in the minds of the owners of advowsons a certain sense of property in the benefices which shows itself in various ways: in the bargaining with the presentee for some advantage to the lord, as a present, or a pension, or the tenancy of part of the land.
The advowson descended with the manor, and was often subdivided among the heirs.[43] In later times we not infrequently find a rectory held in medieties, but in Domesday Book we find a benefice divided into any number of fractions up to one-twelfth.[44]
CHAPTER V.
THE SAXON CLERGY.
