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duties; in 1370, he had license
to sell in England, in gross or in parcels, all crops of his own growth as
well as the tithe of his church.11 Whether or not that venture
proved profitable, he removed to Lancashire in 1378.12
Ash incumbents of the fifteenth century include the first
rector certainly known to have been buried in the church, Richard Galon,
alias Payreford, who died in 1464 and whose demi-effigy in brass
remains in the chancel.13 From about his time, the clergy seem
to have been moving around less. A near successor, Thomas Wele, is
credited by Fielding with an incumbency of thirty years, from 1474 to
1504 and the stay of one of the last of the pre-Reformation
rectors, John Prestall, had topped the quarter-century when he died in
1532. In later times, incumbencies of thirty years or more were to
become by no means uncommon.
If the early history of the church in Ash is not free from
obscurities, it is plain sailing as compared with the |
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contemporary manorial history of the
parish. That is indeed a tangled skein.
In the earlier part of Henry Ill's long reign, the great Hubert de
Burgh, Earl of Kent and Justiciar of England, was chief lord of the manor
of Ash. After his time, the tenant in chief was Roger de Mowbray, of that
famous family that later became Dukes of Norfolk. Of more immediate
importance so far as Ash was concerned was a lady named Mabel de Torpel,
the widow of John de Torpel, who held this manor from de Mowbray by the
service of a fourth part of a knight's fee and who was, for practical
purposes, the principal landowner of the parish. That is not to say that
she owned anything like all the lands of Ash. There were other manors
centering on the parish, while in some cases the lands of manors primarily
associated with other parishes extended into Ash. |