The Baldon estate descended in the male line of the de la Mare family for ten generations, from Geoffrey who held the land in Norman times, and his sons Henry and Robert (I). Thereafter the sequence of names was Peter (I), Robert (II), Peter (II), Robert (III), Peter (III), Robert IV), Peter (IV) and Robert (V). Some of these men featured in history at a national level.
Peter (II) was one of the rebels who sided with the French against King John in 1216, but he was pardoned in 1217 and given back ownership of Baldon and his Wiltshire manor. Peter (III) was the holder of Baldon in 1279 and a royal officer until his death in 1291. Robert (IV) inherited the property as a minor, coming of age in 1296. In 1306 he was in King Edward I’s retinue on his Scottish expedition.
Peter (IV) succeeded before 1318 to the Baldon property, as well as to lands in four other counties. Soon after, he forfeited his lands for his opposition to Edward II; they were restored in 1322, only to be again forfeited as a result of his joining a raid on the lands of John de Hadlow, a protegé of the king’s favourite, Hugh Despenser. Peter obtained a final pardon in 1324 and worked in royal service until his death in 1349.
Robert (V) followed his father as a royal official, being knighted in 1358. He died in 1382, and finally the male succession line was broken, when his daughter Willelma inherited, and on her death in 1410 the manor passed to her four-year-old grandson John Baynton.
In 1471 Sir Robert Baynton, probably John’s son, forfeited his estates, including Baldon, being charged with high treason after the Lancastrian defeat by King Edward IV at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Although the estate was granted successively by Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII, to their own loyalists, by 1503 John Baynton, son of Sir Robert, seems to have regained the property, as he sold it to Andrew Windsor. Windsor was one of the commanders of a successful expedition to France in 1523, and later became a counsellor to Cardinal Wolsey.
In 1558 Windsor’s son William granted the manor to Sir Thomas Pope and his wife Elizabeth, to pay off a debt incurred by his son.
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Danvers’s son and heir John died in 1616, aged only 30, but his widow Ann lived on at Baldon and took a second husband, Richard Goddard who was related to the Pollards, an old Devon family who held land in Little Baldon and Nuneham Courtenay. In 1635 Goddard’s stepdaughter Susan married John Pollard, and the Goddards transferred the manor to the newly-weds.
John died in 1670, and his son John, with his wife Elizabeth, succeeded to the property. In 1713 they sold the manor to their son-in-law Dr John Lane, a Bristol dealer in copper and lead, who had married their daughter Elizabeth.
Dr. Lane's bankruptcy in 1726 led to the conveyance of the
manor to William Jennens of Long Wittenham, to be held in trust for Mrs.
Elizabeth Lane (née Pollard). For 60 years she was lady of the manor. Her
husband died in 1740, but she lived on until 1771. Her friendship with Sir
Christopher Willoughby is recorded on a memorial tablet in the church, and her
work for the parish is commemorated by the school house and its endowment.
The Toot Baldon estates
The estate later known as the manor of Baldon St Lawrence originated in two Domesday estates. The first was owned by the Bishop of Bayeux and held by the d'Oilly and Burghfield families; by 1279 it was held by Robert de Louches. The second was also owned by the Bishop of Bayeux but held by Roger d’Ivry, who with Robert d’Oilly had come over with William I. It passed to the estate of St. Valery in France, who remained as overlords throughout the Middle Ages. Again, the local holders were the de Louches family.
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In 1316 Richard de Louches is listed as one of the three lords of Baldon, and it is clear that all the land held by d'Oilly and d'Ivry had been united as the manor of Baldon St. Lawrence. His property descended to his grandson Sir William de Louches, whose daughter and heir married Sir Thomas Camoys, the commander of the English left wing at Agincourt in 1415. Baldon St. Lawrence was listed among the Camoys’ manors at Sir Thomas's death in 1421. It was inherited by his grand-daughters, Margaret and Eleanor, Margaret being the wife of Ralph Radmylde of Great Milton. The estate was then approximately 350 acres, valued at £10. |
 Brass
rubbing of Sir Thomas Camoys from St George's Church, Trotton |
In 1492 the Radmyldes passed control of the estate to Thomas Danvers, a man of some importance in the county and country, with his chief seat at Waterstock. Though Danvers’s connection with Baldon St. Lawrence was very transitory, he was the reason the manor ultimately passed to the Queen's College. He had been a member of William Waynflete’s household when he was Bishop of Winchester, and later he was active in the bishop’s foundation of Magdalen College. His friendship with Waynflete and his interest in learning account for the sale in 1502 of the estate, for £200, to the executors of Thomas Langton, previously Bishop of Winchester and provost of Queen's.
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The executors included Langton's nephew Christopher Bainbridge, who in 1509, having become Archbishop of York as well as provost of Queen’s, gave the manor to the college, in return for masses to be said for his soul and that of his uncle Bishop Langton. John Pereson, provost of Queen’s in 1460-82, had already given the college his estates at Denton and Baldon St. Lawrence. |
Christopher Bainbridge |
Two other small estates mentioned in Domesday were sold to Bainbridge at around the same time. One was the manor of Toot Baldon, which then comprised no more than 100 acres. This estate had been in the hands of the Despenser, family, and later the Loveden family. In 1509 Thomas Loveden sold it to Christopher Bainbridge for £86. Another small estate was originally held by Count William of Evreux, a companion of William the Conqueror. The Count later bestowed it on a monastery at Noyon in France. By 1255 George de Louches was holding the land from the monks. The estate was evidently bought, along with other lands in Baldon St. Lawrence, by the executors of Bishop Langton in 1508. The manor of Toot Baldon, with appurtenances in Marsh Baldon, Denton, and Stanton St. John, when valued in 1535, was worth £10 6s. 8d. a year.
William Pope, 1st Earl of Downe, by Robert Peak
The Queen’s College in the sixteenth century
Acknowledgements
Trinity College, Oxford
The Queen’s College, Oxford
Victoria County History