St Mary and St Michael's Churchwardens' Accounts

• clere adj and adv clear, without encumbrance, liability, debt, etc; net profit [OEDO clear adj, adv, and n 16.a]; cleare; clearely; clearlie; clearly; cleere; cleerelye; cleerlye; cler; clerely; clerelye; clerly; clerlye
• kinge n in phr kinge ale, kingal, kingale, kingalle, kingeale, kyng ale, kyngale, kyngalle, kynge ale, kyngeale king ale, an inversion of order event in which a king — typically a local young man or farmer — was appointed to preside over the festival; kyng game, kynges game, king play, kynges play, kyng play synonymous with king ale; in phr king halle, kyng halle king hall, likely a bower built for the king of the king ale

Record title: St Mary and St Michael's Churchwardens' Accounts
Repository: Corpus Christi College Archives
Shelfmark: F/11/19/4
Repository location: Oxford

Stoke Charity is a small village six miles north-east of Winchester. The manor was held by William Waller in the second half of the sixteenth century (VCH: Hampshire, vol 3, pp 447–51, British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol3/pp447-451, accessed 8 July 2018). The president and fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, had the presentation of the living, which explains why the manuscript is in the college archives (Williams, Early Churchwardens Accounts, p 76). The many shelfmarks on the cover of the manuscript are due to the fact that it was originally held in the college library, then was deposited in the Bodleian Library in the 1890s, returned to Corpus Christi in 1984, and then transferred from the college library to the college archives. Henry Coxe (comp), Catalogus Codicum MSS. qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie Adservantur, vol 2 (Oxford, 1852), 183, lists the manuscript as Corpus Christi College MS CCCLXXVI. The manuscript has been a good deal damaged and repaired. Some leaves survive intact, some only damaged at edges, not affecting the written text, but some are very extensively damaged so that only a half to a third of the leaf remains. The receipts are often dominated by the sale of one tod of wool. The accounts survive in a fairly orderly chronological run from 1541 to 1607, though the accounts for 1553 to 1555 are missing. Then there is a gap until 1619 and from that point the accounts are summary only to 1656. At the end of the manuscript is a list of rates for the Holy Loaf in a late sixteenth-century hand. This manuscript was formerly identified by the shelfmark 376.

1541–1656; English; paper; i + 58 + i; 307mm x 194mm; modern pencil foliation; 19th-c. binding of brown leather-covered boards, title on spine: 'CHURCH | BOOK | OF | STOKE | CHARITY,' label with shelfmark crossed out on spine: 'Arch J 2,' shelfmark in pencil on inside front cover: 'F/11/19/4,' label with shelfmark crossed out on inside front cover: '1 D. 6. 15,' and ink on flyleaf: 'C.C.C. 1 X. D. III. 19. 376' with 'X' scribbled out in pencil, a 'W' written in front of it, and whole line crossed out, with the exception of the '376.'