If, then, the districts now called Westbourn and Paddington, were included in the manor of Tybourn in the Conqueror’s survey, it is very evident that a rearrangement, both of these districts and the neighbouring manors, must have taken place when the Westminster monks established their claim to Paddington. And it is not improbable that the lords of Chelsea, Kensington, and Tybourn, insisted upon maintaining, for themselves and their tenants, commonable rights over the Westbourn district.
How the monks of Westminster, in the course of time, became both spiritual and temporal masters of the Westbourn district, can be readily conceived by those who know anything of the power engendered by the concentration of all knowledge into a few bodies, especially if those bodies have a perpetual existence.
As I have before said, the monks found that their forged charters would not sufficiently serve them legally to inherit Paddington. They were obliged therefore to purchase the interest in the soil from at least one of the families whose ancestors had made it valuable. This appears from a document which I have translated below, and which is to be found in Maddox’s Formulare Anglicanum, page 217, and which as appears by a note, at the foot of it, this learned and indefatigable antiquary discovered in the archives of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. The document is as follows:—
“A final Concord of Land between the Abbot of Westminster and Richard and William de Padinton.”
“This is the final agreement made in the Court of the Lord King at Westminster, on the Friday next after the ascension of our Lord, in the thirty-first year of the reign of King Henry the second, before J. Bishop of Norwich, Ralph de Granville the Lord King’s Justiciaries, and Richard the Treasurer, and Godfrey de Lucie, and Hubert Walter, and William Basset, and Nigel son of Alexander, and other faithful lieges of the King being then and there present; between Walter Abbot of Westminster, and Richard and William of Padinton, brothers, touching the entire tenement which they held in Padinton, of the Church of Westminster. Whereupon it was pleaded between them in the Court of the Lord King, namely, that the aforesaid Richard and William have quit-claimed (given up) for ever, for themselves and all their successors and heirs, all and the aforesaid tenement, and whatever right they had therein, without any reserve, to the aforesaid Church of Westminster and the Abbot, and have restored to him the land with all its appurtenances: and for this resignation, the Abbot aforesaid hath given to them forty marks of silver and four allowances or maintenances, “conrediæ,” in the Church of Westminster, two of which are for the service of the aforesaid Richard and William for the twelve following years, and the other two are for the service of the wives of the aforesaid Richard and William, together with gratuities, “caritatibus,” and pittances so long as the same women shall live.”
Maddox adds that this document “has at the top, the letters, Chiographum, very large ones, cut through indent-wise.”
We are not informed by this instrument what was “the extent of the entire tenement,” thus sold to the Abbot of Westminster. But it will be observed, that the land purchased of Richard and William is said to have been held by them “of the Church of Westminster.” From which we might imagine, that the lordship of the soil, had been already legally appropriated to St. Peter, did we not know that it is equally probable, that one of the tricks of the time had been played off, to lessen the risk of the purchased land being forfeited to the Crown.
Blackstone tells us that when a tenant—and all were tenants now, either of the King, or some other lord,—wished to alienate his lands to a religious house, he first conveyed them to the house, and instantly took them back again, “to hold as tenant to the monastery.” This instantaneous seisin, he further informs us, did not occasion forfeiture: and, this fact being accomplished, “by pretext of some other forfeiture, surrender, or escheat, the society entered into those lands in right of such their newly acquired signiory, as immediate lords of the fee.” [13]
Other documents, shewing the acquisition by the Convent of other lands in this place and Westbourn, at a later period, will be produced in the next chapter; but this is the only one dated before the end of the twelfth century, having any appearance of authenticity, which I have been able to discover relative to the Abbey lands in Paddington.
The Abbot who purchased the interest of the brothers of Paddington, in the Paddington soil, is called Walter of Winchester, to distinguish him from another Walter, called of Wenlock, who was also an Abbot of Westminster, but a century after this time. Of him also we shall have to speak in the next chapter in connexion with the further extension of the Abbey lands in Paddington.
Walter, the first, directed that the anniversary of the day on which he died should be kept as a feast day at the Convent: and we are told that he gave the manor of Paddington for its proper celebration. And as this story will well serve to illustrate the manner in which much of the property of the church was spent in those days, and, perhaps, serve also to shew how the neighbouring proprietors were quieted for the transfer of the lordship to this Abbot, I shall reproduce it as it was given to the Archæological Society, on the third of May, 1804, by Dr. Vincent, a former Dean of Westminster.