Wroxton Manor, Oxfordshire, England

Introduction

Wroxton Abbey is a Jacobean house in Oxfordshire, with a 1727 garden partly converted to the serpentine style between 1731 and 1751. It is 2.5 miles (4 km) west of Banbury, off the A422 road in Wroxton. It is now the English campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

Wroxton Abbey is a modernised, 17th-century Jacobean manor house built on the foundations of a 13th-century Augustinian priory. The abbey boasts a great hall, minstrels' gallery, chapel, multi-room library, and royal bedrooms. In addition, there are 45 bedrooms (each with private bath), seminar rooms, offices, basement recreation rooms, and a reception area.

Wroxton Abbey, named for its 12th-century origins as a monastery that fell into disrepair after Henry VIII's 1536 Dissolution of the Monasteries. Remnants of that structure remain in the basement beams, though the building literally rose from the ruins when rebuilt by William Pope in the early 17th century, and added to for several centuries after that as the property passed from the Popes to the Norths in 1677.

The various Lords North and their families, including Frederick, Lord North and their royal, literary, and Presidential visitors — James I in 1605, Charles I on 13 July 1643, George IV in 1805, 06 and 08, William IV, Theodore Roosevelt in 1887 where he slept in William IV the Duke of Clarence's bed, Horace Walpole, Henry James, Frederick, Prince of Wales as well as the structure itself, led to the Abbey's designation as a Grade One Listed Building.

The grounds comprise 56 acres (23 ha) of lawns, lakes, and woodlands, and include a serpentine lake, a cascade, a rill and a number of follies: the Gothic Dovecote attributed to Sanderson Miller and his Temple-on-the-Mount; the Drayton Arch was built by David Hiorn in 1771. William Andrews Nesfield advised on a formal flower garden on the south side of the house. A knot garden has been added in the 20th century and was illustrated by Blomfield as an example of a "modern garden". He wrote that "Nothing can be more beautiful than some of the walks under the apple trees in the gardens of Penshurst".

Wroxton College

The lease for Wroxton Abbey was given to Trinity College, Oxford, by the North and Pope families in 1932. It was sold to New Jersey-based Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1964. Since 1965, Wroxton Abbey has been Fairleigh Dickinson University's Wroxton College. This campus serves American students from Fairleigh Dickinson's New Jersey campuses and international students from Fairleigh Dickinson's Vancouver (Canada) Campus and other American students studying under the British tutorial system. Students study a rigorous curriculum in a variety of courses including several political science, English, art, and other social science courses. In addition to Wroxton's own lecturers, guest lecturers from other British universities will often supplement the academic experience. Wroxton College is accredited by Accreditation Service of International Colleges and was awarded ASIC Premier College Status by that same organization.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson II, was scheduled to speak at the official dedication of Wroxton College but died after suffering a heart attack near the US Embassy in London on July 14th, 1965.

Wroxton Manor

In 1089 Wroxton, assessed at 17 hides, was held in chief by Guy de Reinbeudcurt, lord of Chipping Warden (Northants.). His son Ingram was holding of him, but neither at Wroxton nor elsewhere is anything further heard of this son and by 1120–30 Wroxton had passed with the barony of Chipping Warden to Richard, another son. WROXTON MANOR followed the descent of the barony of Chipping Warden, known also as the honor of Rockingham.Held as 1 fee of the lordship in the late 13th century and probably before, it made payment for castle-guard at Rockingham. The overlordship passed from Richard to his daughter and heir, Margery, and to her husband Robert Foliot. In 1173–4 Foliot became a monk at Old Warden (Beds.) and was succeeded by his son Richard who came of age c. 1177 and died in 1203. Through his marriage with Richard's daughter and heir, Margaret, Wischard Ledet (d. 1221) then inherited the barony. His daughter Christine took it to her first and second husbands, Henry de Braybrooke (d. 1234) and Gerard de Furnival (d. 1241–2), and so probably to her third husband Thomas de Grelley (d. 1262), lord of Pyrton. Both in 1235 and 1242, however, for some unknown reason, Wroxton was said to be held by Wischard (II) Ledet, Christine's son by her first marriage, who died on crusade in 1241–2. Christine died in 1271, seised of the barony, including Wroxton. Her heirs were Christine and Agnes, grand-daughters of Wischard (II) Ledet; Christine, to whose share of the barony Wroxton belonged, married Sir William Latimer. The overlordship of Wroxton descended from Christine to her son Thomas Latimer (d. 1334). In 1335 his wife Laura was given dower of a third of the rent of Wroxton. The connexion between Wroxton and the overlords probably became increasingly tenuous, but 6s. 8d. quit rent for Rockingham castle-guard was still being paid to the king in 1536.

From at least the early 12th century the Belets were under-tenants at Wroxton. Hervey Belet, the first recorded member of the family to hold Wroxton, was excused payment of danegeld for his Oxfordshire lands in 1136. His son Michael, hereditary butler to Henry II and a prominent judge, held Oxfordshire lands in 1155, and Wroxton was probably included in his 1166 return of 4 fees of the old enfeoffment held under Robert Foliot. He was holding the Oxfordshire fee in 1199 but was probably dead by 1201. In the office of royal butler and in his Oxfordshire lands at least he was succeeded by his son Master Michael Belet, civil lawyer and canonist. Michael's rights in the property of his grandfather were confirmed by King John in 1205. Like his father he too had a successful career as a royal servant, although he temporarily incurred the king's displeasure in 1211 and his property was confiscated for a few months. The Belet family were pious benefactors of religious houses and c. 1217 Michael founded a house of Augustinian canons at Wroxton and endowed it, among other properties, with his Wroxton manorhouse and demesne. His heirs, his sister Annora and her husband, Walter de Verdun, disputed the grant, but apparently became reconciled to it later, for Annora herself endowed the priory with a mill and 6½ yardlands in Wroxton in 1263. ) The priory was returned as under-tenant of Wroxton, holding of the honor of Rockingham in 1242 and 1271. Wroxton Priory retained the fee throughout the Middle Ages and gradually extended its holding in the parish, acquiring the Clements' estate in 1242 and other small parcels of land. In 1411 the priory was given a grant of free warren in all its Wroxton demesne lands, and by 1536, when it surrendered to the Crown, it held nearly all the land in the parish.

In 1536 the Crown granted a 21-year lease of the site and demesne of the two manors of Wroxton and Balscott to William Raynesford of Wroxton. In 1537 Thomas Pope, the Treasurer of the Court, obtained a reversion of Raynesford's lease in return for an exchange of land and some money, and a grant in fee of the two manors in exchange for Clapton manor (Northants.). In November Pope bought out the remainder of Raynesford's lease for £200 and thus acquired full possession of the manors and demesnes.

In 1551 he gave his brother and heir John a 99year lease of the manors.Shortly afterwards Thomas Pope conceived the idea of founding Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1554 he conveyed the manors for ever to the new foundation. Pope's arrangements, however, were singularly unbusinesslike for so able and astute an administrator. He agreed with his brother John that his own steward should hold the manorial court, while John took the profits and signed the copies, a wholly illegal arrangement which caused much trouble for Trinity when it took over from Thomas Pope. Worse still, the day after he transferred the property to Trinity he is alleged to have settled it in tail male on his brother John.

The conveyance attesting the settlement has not survived, but the fact that John Pope's son William proceeded to spend £6,000 in the early years of the 17th century in erecting the existing mansion suggests that it was a reality. Some such arrangement for the manor house of Fyfield (Berks.) was certainly made at about the same time by Thomas Pope's old friend Thomas White in his foundation of St. John's College, Oxford, and it is therefore probable that the Wroxton property was so entailed and that Trinity accepted the obligation to renew the lease to the heirs male. Created Earl of Downe in 1628, William Pope died 3 years later, by which time the remarkable situation had arisen of a great English land-owner whose main residence was held on lease. On the first earl's death his younger son Sir Thomas Pope seized Wroxton and Balscott, the evidences to the property, and the personal estate of the late earl, claiming it on the strength of a death-bed will. The heir to the title was the first earl's grandson, Thomas, aged 8, the child of his eldest son William who had died in 1624. It was alleged on the minor's behalf that Trinity College had made a 'confidence or agreement' with the first Sir Thomas Pope that the lease was to be renewed only to the heir male of the family, this document having been seized by Sir Thomas Pope. The President of Trinity College denied all knowledge of any such agreement and 9 years later took a surrender of the old lease from Sir Thomas Pope and issued a new one for 21 years. Thus Thomas, Earl of Downe (d. 1660), never possessed Wroxton; on his death without issue in 1660 his uncle Sir Thomas (d. 1668) succeeded to the title. When the latter's son also died in 1668 there was a failure of the male line, and the property, including the Wroxton leases, was divided between 3 daughters. The second daughter Frances married the rising lawyer Francis North, later Lord Guilford, who in 1681 bought out the shares of the other two in the leases of manors and rectories for £5,100. By this means the property, still held on 21-year leases from Trinity, passed into the hands of the Norths, Barons and later Earls of Guilford, where it remained until the failure of the male line in 1827. It then passed to Maria, Marchioness of Bute, the eldest daughter of George Augustus, Earl of Guilford (d. 1802), until her death in 1841, when it descended to the second daughter, Susan (d. 1884), who inherited the title of Baroness North. She married Colonel J. S. Doyle (d. 1894), who changed his name to North, and their son William, Lord North, continued to hold the estate on lease until his death in 1932. In that year the family found itself in financial difficulties, the lease was surrendered to Trinity, and the long connexion of the Popes and Norths with Wroxton manor ended.

The Wroxton and Balscott manors, when given to Trinity in 1554, formed a very substantial portion of the college endowment, being £80 out of a total of £191 8s. 4d. The lease was surrendered in 1640 and from then onward was issued for 21 years at a time, at a rent of £24, 24 qr. of barley malt and 18 qr. of wheat, a fine being paid for each renewal. After 1680 the lease was regularly renewed every 4 years. The fine was set at £120 from 1684 to 1752, and rose to a peak of £1,162 in 1812. The rent, with its substantial proportion fixed to the price of malt and wheat, also rose greatly in the late 18th century, reaching £248 in 1817. In 1860 a new agreement was entered into, providing for a rack rent to begin in 1881. In that year a new lease was granted but in 1894 the agricultural depression obliged William, Lord North, to return to the college the 403 a. of agricultural land which he had rented at £725, leaving himself only the mansion and park at a rent of £510. In 1921 he took a 14year lease of the mansion and park at a rent of £742, the unexpired portion being surrendered at his death in 1932.

In 1086 BALSCOTT, assessed at 5 hides, was a part of the fief of Bishop Odo of Bayeux and was held by Wadard, one of his most influential and wealthy tenants. Like other of Wadard's lands Balscott afterwards formed part of the barony of Arsic, of which Cogges was the head. The later manor, not recorded until the 16th century, descended from the knight's fee for which Balscott was held under this barony, and as late as 1535 the Prior of Wroxton owed suit of castle-guard at Dover, part of the service for which the barony was held. The overlordship was held by the Arsic family in the 12th and 13th centuries. After the death in 1230 of Robert Arsic it formed part of the inheritance of Joan, one of his two daughters and coheirs, and was returned as held of her in 1242. In fact Joan had granted her rights in Cogges to Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York, in 1241, and in 1244 she and her second husband granted the homage and services of tenants, identifiable as tenants in Balscott, to Walter son of Robert de Grey, the Archbishop's nephew, who obtained the barony and the knight's fees in Oxfordshire and elsewhere. The overlordship is not recorded again until 1536.

An under-tenant, William Leuke, perhaps the son of the Robert Leuke who held land in Balscott in 1200, was mentioned in 1204. He claimed to hold 1 carucate in Balscott by service of ½ fee of John le Pahier. John le Pahier's connexion has not been traced further but from later evidence his land was clearly part of the Arsic fee. William Leuke granted it in 1206 to Walter of Sarsden (Cerceden) and his wife Gillian,but the Leuke family had other land for in 1241 William Leuke's son William acknowledged the customs and services he owed for a ¼ fee in Balscott to Joan Arsic and acknowledged the payment of a due for castle-guard at Dover. He was recorded as one of 4 co-parceners in the fee in 1242, and a Roger Leuke was one of the Arsic tenants in 1244. The connexion of the family with the fee is not recorded further and in 1306 a William Leuke of Balscott, presumably the man who was accused of a killing in 1299, paid a very small tax.

The Sarsdens, who were granted the ½ fee in 1206, had a longer connexion. The family seems to have already had land in Balscott, for a Richard of Sarsden was accused of unlawful disseisin there in 1204. Walter of Sarsden, either the original grantee or his son, was a verderer of Wychwood in 1232, and a Robert of Sarsden was a co-parcener in the Arsic fee in 1242 and 1244; John of Sarsden contributed to the tax levied in 1306, and was returned as one of the lords of the village in 1316. By 1346 a John atte Halle held the ½ fee, said to have been formerly held by the heirs of Walter of Sarsden, but by 1428 it was again in the possession of the Sarsden family, as Thomas of Sarsden was lord.There is no later record of his family's connexion with the ½ fee.

Another under-tenant of the fee was Master Simon of Walton, who held 1 yardland in Balscott in 1228 and 6 yardlands in Balscott and Tysoe (Warws.) in 1239–40, and was a co-parcener in 1242. He was later Bishop of Norwich, and became lord in 1247 of an Alkerton manor also, with which his Balscott lands must have descended. His successors at Alkerton in 1277 held 4 yardlands and rent in Balscott. No later reference to this family's holding at Balscott has been found.

The Prior of Wroxton was the fourth co-parcener in 1242 under Joan Arsic. He was joint lord in 1316, and it is likely that the abbey obtained the other holdings in the course of the Middle Ages. In 1536 the abbey held Balscott grange, 5 yardlands, and the mill. The manor, if manor it was, descended with Wroxton to the Popes. It seems likely that there was no medieval manor in the strict sense. By the time the records begin in the early 16th century there was certainly no manorial court.

In 1086 2 hides in Wroxton were evidently included in Miles Crispin's holding assessed under Alkerton. The overlordship of this part of Wroxton followed the descent of the overlordship of Alkerton and was included in the 2 fees held under the honor of Wallingford.

Richard Fitz Reinfrid, the mesne tenant of Alkerton, likewise held these 2 hides and before his death in 1115 or 1116 promised them to Abindgon Abbey, a gift which was confirmed by his son Hugh in the presence of the overlord Brian Fitz Count and his wife Maud. Hugh presumably promised to do the foreign service for the holding, for although his immediate successors are not recorded as having any connexion with Wroxton, the manor was included in the 2 fees of Wallingford honor held in 1297 by Master Robert de Stokes, who had possession of this estate by 1293.

Abingdon Abbey appears only to have drawn rent from its Wroxton holding and the undertenant of Wroxton in 1115, William Clement, continued in possession. He was probably followed by Ingram Clement (fl. 1154–61), lord of Dunchurch (Warws.), and by his grandson William (II) Clement, lord of Balscott and of Dunchurch. Until at least 1244 this estate followed the descent of the Clements' estate in North Newington. It may then have passed to Wroxton Priory which certainly before 1256 bought 3½ yardlands formerly held by Alice Clement. About the same time Alice Clement, called of Wroxton, granted 15s. rent from 2 yardlands held of her in Wroxton to Abingdon Abbey. The abbey's rights were acknowledged by Wroxton Priory who agreed to give 3s. a year to the abbey. The estate thus acquired by Wroxton Priory was merged with its main manor, and the payment due to Abingdon Abbey was probably included in the annual pension paid to it by Wroxton Priory in 1536.

Before 1219 Michael Belet granted the rectory estate to Wroxton Priory. It then followed the descent of Wroxton manor until in 1544 Thomas Pope made a 99-year lease to his mother, Margaret Bustard, and her heirs of all the tithes of Wroxton and Balscott except those of the manor and demesne. He then professed himself dissatisfied with the Crown auditor's valuation of the rent for the rectory and in 1545 sold the tithes back to the Crown, less the tithes of manor and demesne, although he himself remained the reversionary lessee as inheritor of the Bustard lease. Eighteen months later Henry VIII granted the estate to the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford, who thereupon became the lessors of Margaret Bustard.Margaret died in 1557 and the lease passed to Thomas Pope's heir, John, who assigned it in 1560 and again in 1583. In 1623 Christ Church challenged Sir William Pope to show his title, and took the case to Chancery. For 2 years he prevaricated, said he had lost the lease, launched a counter-suit against Christ Church accusing them of stealing it, and then finally produced it. The court upheld the lease in view of the long time it had passed unchallenged, but decreed that the property should return to Christ Church on its expiry. In 1631 the lease was surrendered and a new one granted to Sir Thomas Pope for 21 years; it was renewed to the lessee of the manors for 21 years in 1649, 1659, 1667, and thereafter every 7 years until the inclosure award of 1805. After inclosure the property was leased to the North family as before.

Before the Dissolution the rectorial tithes of Wroxton were valued at £10. From 1631 the rent of the estate consisted of £10 old rent taken twothirds in cash and one-third in kind in the form of 4 qr. of best wheat and 8 qr. of malt at current Oxford market prices. ) This relative fixity of rent was compensated for by a fine at will for renewal of the lease. Starting at £40 in 1667 it rose to £100 in 1729 and by 1799 had reached £383. In 1813 it reached a peak of £772, which was not surpassed until 1841; between 1848 and 1864 it was over £1,000. At the same time the rent fluctuated with the corn prices, reaching a maximum of £77 17s. in 1799. In 1805 Christ Church and its lessee, Lord Guilford, were awarded 326½ a. for rectorial tithes.

The grant of the church to Thomas Pope in 1537 included glebe, which probably belonged to the rectory. In 1623 William Pope was holding a house called the Parsonage, with a garden or orchard and a close. In 1625 Chancery ordered that a search should be made for any glebe or parsonagehouse which the Popes might have absorbed. No further reference to rectorial glebe is known.