[276] His ancestor accompanied the Conqueror to England.
In the time of James I., 1615, Sandleford was declared to be a separate parish, and unratable from Newbury, but the chapel being dismantled and unfit for use, £8 a year was ordered to be paid to the Rector of Newbury, which entitled the occupants of the Priory to a seat in the Newbury parish church, which has been continued ever since.
The lessees from the Dean and Canons of Windsor appear, from a paper of my uncle, Lord Rokeby’s, to have been, early in the eighteenth century, the Pitt Rivers of Stratfieldsaye, by whom the lease was sold in 1717 to William Cradock, Esq., after an intermediate alienation. The lease was purchased in 1730 by Mr. Edward Montagu, grandson of the 1st Earl of Sandwich. A letter of April, 1733, of Mr. John Rogers to his aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Sarah Montagu, at Sandleford, about the death of his mother, Mrs. Rogers, and her leaving her sister £10, and each of her three children a ring, is in my possession, and shows she was then living or staying with her son Edward.
The chapel is erroneously stated in several works (vide Tanner, etc., etc.) to be destroyed. It was disused, not destroyed, though the bells, seats, and the tomb of the crusading knight[277] had disappeared. As we proceed further into the manuscripts we shall see it was used as a bedroom or rooms!
[277] Probably Count Thomas de la Perche, son of the founder, as his father was buried at St. Denis Nogent. Thomas died in 1217. For a description of the tomb, etc., see note at the end of this book.
The situation of the Priory is charming, the principal rooms fronting south on a slight eminence, sloping to the river Alebourne, now called Enborne, which crosses the high-road just below the lower lodge, and skirts the south side of the park. On the east the ground slopes to a wooded valley, down which are many ponds, dating from the monks’ time, some of which were joined together by Mr. Montagu, afterwards more by his widow, to form lakes. Many fine trees surround it in these days, and at the time of Mr. Montagu’s first living there, seem to have been exceedingly numerous; also walled gardens, which are now removed. Beyond the valley to the east the ground rises in a wooded ridge. The village here mentioned must have been a few cottages near the mill on the west, which existed where Sandleford Lodge is now built: these have all long ago disappeared.
SANDLEFORD PRIORY.
A PARSON AND HIS WIFE
To the duchess Mrs. Montagu wrote in raptures of the beauties of Sandleford, but in the middle of her description states, “Here was I interrupted by a Parson, his wife and daughter, and I shall not be reconciled to ‘Prunello and grogram’ again a great while, they robbed me of those hours I could have dedicated to your grace.” Prunello was the woollen stuff then used for clerical gowns, grogram a coarse kind of taffety, a mixture of silk and mohair, applicable to feminine attire.