But it would appear that the large and valuable estates bequeathed by the Countess of Richmond and Dr. Hues do not include the whole of the “College Land” in Paddington.
Lysons in his Environs, and Chalmers in his History of the University of Oxford, tell us that the Manor of Malurees, “consisting of some houses and about one hundred and twenty acres of land,” situated in the parishes of Willesden, Paddington, Chelsea, and Fulham, was surrendered by Thomas Chichele to King Henry the sixth, who granted it to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College in Oxford; and this grant has not been wholly lost to this College, for I believe that down to the present day a rent is paid to All Souls for some portion of this land.
One of the most important preliminaries to the great Reformation was the institution of a new valuation of church property.
The King and people, saw how inefficiently Pope Nicholas’s taxation represented the value of church property in the sixteenth century, for if it had not progressed in value in the same proportion as other property, still the difference between the values in Edward and Henry’s time, was very considerable; and it required no conjuror to tell that the clergy had ceased to pay their fair quota towards the national expenditure.
Yet the difference between the Pope’s valuation and the reforming King’s, is far less than the actual value of church property in Queen Victoria’s reign and that which is entered on “the King’s books.” It is true that the clergy are now taxed differently from what they were before the Reformation; and that “the first fruits and tenths” no longer go into the national exchequer. But “the Queen’s bounty” would find the benefit of a valuation taken in our Queen’s reign; and if this payment of first fruits and tenths was anything like what it pretended to be, the whole of the first year’s income, and the tenth of all future years, those who dispense that bounty would not have to be so parsimonious in their assistance to the poorer clergy.
To the Record Commission we owe the publication of that valuation which was taken by King Henry the eighth, as well as that taken by Pope Nicholas the fourth.
In addition to the quotation I have already given from the former valuation, the following entries are to be found in it relative to Paddington:—
Officium SaccristiWestm’ | |||
| £ | s. | d. |
Rector’ de Padington | ,, | 46 | 8 |
OfficiumElemosinar’ Westm’ | |||
Valet in bosc’ apud Padington coibus annis | „ | 20 | „ |
OfficiumCustod’ Capelle Beate Marie | |||
Vendic’ bosc’ apud Padington coibs annis | ,, | 20 | ,, |
Novum OpusWestm’ | |||
Maneriu de Padington | „ | 19 | „ |
The year after this survey was taken, all monasteries, priories, and other religious houses, whose possessions did not amount to two hundred pounds per annum, were given by the twenty-seventh of Henry the eighth, chap. 28, with all their manors, lands, &c. to the King and his heirs for ever.
By this Act, the lands belonging to Kilbourn Priory became the property of the crown; and in the following year these lands were exchanged to Sir William Weston, the prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, for the manor of Paris Garden in Southwark. The twenty-eighth of Henry the eighth, chap. 21, which recites the indenture relative to this exchange, states that the demesne lands of the said priory were “in Kylbourne aforesaid, Hamstedd, Padyngton and Westbourn.” And besides these demesne lands, other lands and wood, with “one woode conteynying by estimation twenty-nine acres,” are also said to be “set and beynge in Kylborne and Padyngton aforsayde.” So that it would appear the nuns of Kilbourn as well as the monks of Westminster had possessions in this parish.