Her great nephew, King Edgar, being of the race of the Northumbrian Prince Alkmund, increased the original endowment, and (under the direction of Archbishop Dunstan) appointed a dean and ten prebends.
In the reign of Edward the Confessor, this College possessed eleven manors, nine of which, containing upwards of 4000 acres, it retained at the Norman survey.
After experiencing many of the fluctuations common to property, sacred or otherwise, during the dark ages and under lawless government, these estates were at length alienated in 1147, at the particular request of the Dean, Richard de Belemis, and with the consent of King Stephen and Pope Eugenius III. to the monastery of Lilleshull, which the dean’s brother, Philip de Belemis, had just commenced, the Prebendaries however taking care to reserve to themselves a life interest in their several stipends.
The college being thus early dissolved and deprived of its valuable estates, fell into a humble vicarage, which remained in the patronage of the monks of Lilleshull until the dissolution, when it lapsed to the crown, in whose hands it continued until 1628, when Rowland Heylin, Esq. [23] of Pentreheylin, Montgomeryshire, purchased the advowson for the “feoffees of St. Antholines,” a society instituted for founding lectureships and augmenting small livings in populous towns.
This society having been publicly denounced, and the orthodoxy of its principles questioned, the ministers of King James, in 1663, directed its suppression, when the living again reverted to the crown.
The Collegiate Church of St. Mary is considered to have been founded by King Edgar, about the year 980; although, from the extensive limits of the parish, it is probable this was only the renovation of an older church destroyed by the ravages of the Danes, who, in revenging the slaughter of their predecessors, not only exercised their warfare against mankind, but even those works of ingenuity and labour which were consecrated to devotion did not escape their desolating hand.
In the time of Edward the Confessor, this college possessed an estate of nearly 1300 acres, “for the maintenance of a dean, seven prebendaries, and a parish priest,” which appears to have diminished in point of cultivation and consequent value at the survey of Domesday, in which, however, the “vill of Chorleton,” held in conjunction with the church of St. Juliana, is unnoticed, having probably been acquired afterwards.
At the suppression of colleges the revenue was £42, when Edward VI. appropriated the greater part of the tithes of this, as he had done those of St. Chad’s parish, to the bailiffs and burgesses, for the foundation of a free school.
This church from very remote times has been a “royal free chapel,” and thereby exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop.
The Church of St. Juliana.—Little is known of this, further than its origin was Saxon, and that it held in the Norman survey “half a hide of land in the city.” Soon after this period it became distinguished as a rectory and royal free chapel, and was early united to the church of St. Michael within the Castle, now destroyed. [24]