RECTORS OF ICKHAM.*
   (1) WALTER DE CHELECUMB is the first whose name we have been able to learn. In October 1283 he was appointed joint auditor of the accounts of Roger Burt, Treasurer of the Chamber (Archbp. Peckham's Register, 153b). He died in December 1284.
   (2) MARTIN DE HAMPTON, who succeeded Chelecumb, was instituted on 8 kal. Feb. 1284-5, and was inducted by Master Richard, the Rector of Adisham. Hampton, who was a Canon of Wingham, died in 1306, and was buried in the chancel of Ickham Church. The matrix of his monumental brass remains.
   (3) WILLIAM DE BRITALL may or may not have been Hampton's immediate successor. We only know that in 1322 he was "deprived" of his benefice by "definitive sentence."
   (4) ROBERT DE NORTON, a great ecclesiastical lawyer, held the benefice for a few months, from November 1322 to July 1323, when he was Rector of Ivychurch. In vacating this living, and that of Merstham, in Surrey, he made a written protest that if the rectory of Ivychurch involved him in litigation he would return to

his former benefices. He had been Rector of Woodchurch from 1314 to 1315; and was collated to Merstham in January 132 1/2 by Archbishop Reynolds, "intuitu caritatis;" he acted as Proctor at the Court of Rome, for that Archbishop in 1322.
   (5) THOMAS DE HOWE received the benefice "in commendam" in July 1323.
   (6) ROBERT DE SOLBURY, who obtained this preferment in April 1324, retained it during twenty-seven years. A special commission of jurisdiction here was granted to him in July 1326. He became Provost of Wingham College in July 1351; and he seems then to have exchanged this benefice for the rectory of Eynsford. He lived until 1358.
   * The income of the Rector of Ickham was valued, in A.D. 1292, at 45 marks per annum. In 1535, it was said to be £29 13s. 4d., mainly from tithes, but was bound to provide a priest to serve Well Chapel, at a stipend of £3 6s. 8d. per annum; and to pay 15s. at every visitation, for "proxies and synodes," the net value of the benefice was said to be £25 11s. 8d. in 1535. Fifty-three years later its annual value was £150; in 1640, it was £250; in 1800 it had increased to £450; and its tithes at the Commutation were converted into a rent charge of £997 per annum.