10 Jul Lordship Title of Bisham or Bustleham ID1383
Posted at 20:03h
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In the time of Edward the Confessor BISHAM was held by Bondi, and in 1086 formed part of the great possessions of Henry de Ferrers. In the reign of Stephen Robert de Ferrers Earl of Derby, grandson of Henry de Ferrers, granted the manor in free alms to the Knights Templars, who established a preceptory there. The overlordship remained with the Ferrers family until 1266, when, on the forfeiture of Robert de Ferrers Earl of Derby, his lands passed to the king, by whom the honour of Tutbury, of which Bisham formed a part, was granted to Edmund Crouchback Earl of Lancaster. The charter of King Stephen to the Knights Templars was con firmed by Henry II, together with a grant of 40 acres of assart land. A further grant of quittance of assart was made by King John in 1199. The manorial estate was well-wooded then as now. The liberties enjoyed by the Templars within the manor included pleas of namio vetito and assize of bread and ale and free chase in Bisham and the demesnes of Cookham. By an undated charter of Thomas de Sandford they were enfeoffed of his land at Sandford and the advowson of the church of Blewbury to maintain a chaplain in their house at Bisham. On the suppression of the order in 1307 Edward II granted the manor of Bisham to Robert de Hanstede, jun., during pleasure, and in 1311 to Roger de Winkfeld on the same terms. In 1307 an order was issued to the keeper of the manor to see that John de Upleden had his allowance of food, with a robe, and 5s. yearly for necessaries, and another to pay Adam de Char a corrody of 3d. a day for food, with 10s. for a robe, fodder for two horses (like the palfrey of the preceptor), and the keep of two grooms at the table of the esquires. While the manor was in the king's hands it was used as a place of confinement for Elizabeth wife of Robert Bruce, who in 1310 was there under the custody of John de Bentley, the king's yeoman. It was the residence of Edward Prince of Wales in 1313. In the latter year Edward II ordered the property of the Knights Templars in England to be transferred to the Knights Hospitallers, in accordance with the ordinance of Pope Clement V, 'under a protest for the preservation of the rights of himself and his subjects.' This order, however, was not carried out, and the Hospitallers did not obtain the Templars' lands until 1320, under a provision of Pope John XXII, who succeeded Pope Clement in 1316. In the meanwhile the manor had apparently been claimed by the overlord, Thomas Earl of Lancaster, who was holding it in 1316, and had it until his execution in 1322, when it was granted by the king to Hugh le Despenser the younger. In 1324 the Hospitallers, whether willingly or unwillingly, quitclaimed their right to Hugh le Despenser. He was executed in 1326 and the manor escheated to the Crown. In 1328 orders were sent to William de Langeford, the keeper, to repair the water-mills, broken down by floods, and in the following year there were again expenses for the repair of houses, mills, walls and ponds. At this date the king granted to his watchman, John de Hardyng, for his long service, a messuage, 30 acres of land, 1 acre of meadow and 3½ acres of woodland, worth 21s. yearly, out of the manorial estate, at a rent of 6s. per annum, while a previous grant of £10 per annum made out of the manor by the Earl of Lancaster to Michael le Armerer was confirmed. In January 1331 the king granted the manor to Queen Isabella, it being among the lands assigned to her on the surrender of her dower after the death of Mortimer; but in February following it was granted for life to Alice widow of the late Earl of Lancaster and wife of Ebulo Lestrange, and in 1334 the grant was enlarged to cover the term of Ebulo's life, the reversion after his death being granted in 1335 to William Lord Montagu (created Earl of Salisbury in 1337), one of the king's chief supporters and the instrument of Mortimer's capture. Lestrange died a few months later, and his widow, who survived until 1348, apparently quitclaimed her life interest in the manor, as the earl seems at once to have entered into possession of it, securing his title by a quitclaim from Sir Hugh son of Hugh le Despenser the younger. In March 1337 the Earl of Salisbury obtained licence to found a house of Austin Canons in the manor of Bisham and to grant the manor to them. The grant of the manor was made on 15 April 1337, and a royal charter was drawn up on the 22nd of the same month, granting the prior full liberties within his lands, including view of frankpledge and free warren, goods and chattels of felons and fugitives, fines from his tenants, waif and stray, exemption from suit at the courts of the shire and hundred, from all tolls, pavage, pontage, &c., from purveyance and prisage of wool and from aids and subsidies. A new charter of endowment was issued by the earl in June 1338, followed in 1339 by a royal charter containing an inspeximus of the liberties granted before and a further grant of return of writs, infangentheof and outfangentheof. In 1339 the king bestowed on Bisham Priory the rent from the messuage and land previously granted for life to his watchman John Hardyng and the reversion of the same. There seems to have been some uncertainty, as there had been in the times of the Templars, as to the boundaries of the manor on the Cookham side, between Wyntersgrove on the south and the Thames on the north, and in 1385 the Sheriff of Berkshire was ordered to have a perambulation made and to set up sufficient landmarks for the future. In 1392 William Earl of Salisbury made a further grant of land in Bisham to the prior and convent, who retained the manor until the Dissolution. The priory surrendered in 1536, but in 1537 the king founded a Benedictine abbey of Holy Trinity there, transferring to it the abbot and monks of the dissolved monastery of Chertsey and endowing it with the lands and revenues of its predecessor, including the manor of Bisham. This new foundation on a larger scale of a house already surrendered, the only instance of the kind that has been found, lasted however only six months, and surrendered to the king in June 1538. Sir Richard Riche, chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, was anxious to obtain a lease of the demesne lands of Bisham, which he claimed that the abbot had promised him 'when first moved to surrender,' and Margaret Vernon coveted Lady Salisbury's house there. Neither of these appears to have been gratified. In 1541 the king granted the manor for life to Anne of Cleves, and the reversion of it in 1544 to Thomas Persse for the sum of £138 6s. 8d. In 1552 Edward VI ordered Anne of Cleves to exchange the manor for some other of equal value, and sent a letter to Sir Richard Sackville, chancellor of the Augmentations, authorizing him to take it into the king's hands. Anne acceded to the king's request, but there was evidently some delay, as Sir Philip Hoby, to whom the manor and site of the monastery were later granted, wrote to Sir William Cecil asking his aid for the completion of the arrangements, 'as the Lady Anne was dissatisfied.' The transaction appears to have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion in the January of 1553, as at that date Anne wrote to the Princess Mary saying that the manor of Westropp (Westhorpe) in Suffolk had been granted to her in exchange for Bisham. In March 1553 Sir Philip Hoby, the last English legate to Rome, was granted the site of the monastery, with a close called le Covent Garden, a grange within the site then held with the demesne lands by Thomas Weldon, the manor of Bisham, lands called Warderobes and Barkefordes or Bekfordes and the capital messuage formerly parcel of the lands of Margaret Countess of Salisbury. He was succeeded on his death in 1558 by his brother Sir Thomas, ambassador to France at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. Sir Thomas died at Paris in 1566, being succeeded by his son Edward, who took a prominent part in the theological disputes of the day. He was a scholar and diplomatist and was sent on many confidential missions, but the favour shown him by James VI of Scotland so much incensed Elizabeth that he had to absent himself from court. In 1592, however, the queen and court were at Bisham. Hoby was in favour with James I, whom he often entertained at the abbey. He held the manor until his death in March 1618. He had made his illegitimate son Peregrine Hoby his heir, and Sir Thomas Posthumus Hoby, brother of Sir Edward Hoby, apparently quitclaimed the manor of Bisham to Peregrine in 1620. Edward son of Peregrine, who predeceased his father in 1675, was created a baronet in 1666, with special remainder, failing issue. to his brothers. John, his brother, succeeded to the title in 1675 and inherited Bisham at the death of Peregrine in 1679. He died in 1702 and was buried at Bisham. Thomas, his eldest surviving son and heir, suffered a recovery of the manor in 1708. His son Thomas, who succeeded in 1730, was M.P. for Great Marlow in three Parliaments. At his death in 1744 he left no issue, and his brother and heir, the Rev. Sir Philip Hoby, chancellor of St. Patrick's, Dublin, and Dean of Ardfert 1748–66, also died without issue in 1766, when the baronetcy became extinct. Sir Philip left Bisham to his maternal first cousin John Mill, second son of Sir Richard Mill, fifth baronet, on condition of his taking the name of Hoby. He succeeded his brother as seventh baronet in 1770 and died without issue in 1780, having bequeathed the manor to his wife Elizabeth, who in 1780 received a quitclaim from Sir Henry Mill of Woolbeding, co. Sussex, brother and heir of Sir John Hoby Mill. Elizabeth Hoby Mill sold the manor soon afterwards to George Vansittart, sixth son of Arthur Vansittart of Shottesbrook, for twenty-eight years M.P. for Berkshire. He was succeeded in 1824 by his grandson George Henry Vansittart, M.P. for Berkshire from 1852 to 1859. The latter dying without surviving issue, the property passed in 1885 to his cousin Edward Vansittart Neale, Christian socialist and founder of the first co-operative stores, whose son Sir Henry James Vansittart Neale is the present owner.
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Listed in the Domesday Book:
Yes