The boundaries of the manor of Merdon, including Cranbury, and up to the brook at Chandler’s Ford, have been kept up by “progresses” round them. Probably the “gang” or Rogation procession was discontinued by either Sir Philip Hobby or Richard Maijor; but on the borders between Hursley and Baddesley, at a spot called High Trees Corner, near the railway, is marked in the old map, “Here stode Gospell Oke.” It is not far from Wool’s Grave, the next corner towards the Baddesley road. There, no doubt, the procession halted for the reading of the Gospel for Rogation week. There are two curious entries in the old accounts:— Chirurchets {67} vi Hennes and Cockes as apereth in the old 44 customary which I had from John Seymour. And in the old book of Fines written in 1577— The Reve doth gather by his scores £37 18 2. The Bedell gathers the escheats. The Reve the rents and eggs and is keeper of the West heth. A small farm near the church was held by Corpus Christi College, Oxford, having probably been granted by Bishop Richard Fox, the founder, who held the See of Winchester from 1500 to 1528. The bearing in his coat of arms was a “pelican in her piety,” and the Pelican was the name of the public house and of the farm that succeeded it down to the present day. The title as well as that of the college are of course connected with the emblem of the Pelican feeding her young from her own breast. Little pelicans, alternately with Tudor portcullises, profusely adorn Fox’s chantry in Winchester Cathedral. CHAPTER VI CRANBURY AND BRAMBRIDGE GREAT changes began at the Restoration. Robert Maunder became vicar of Hursley in 1660, on whose presentation is unknown; but that he or his curate were scholars is probable, since the entries in the parish registers both of Hursley and Otterbourne begin to be in Latin. Cranbury had passed from Dean Young to his brother Major General Young, and from him to his daughter, the wife or Sir Charles Wyndham, son of Sir Edmund Wyndham, Knight Marshall of England and a zealous cavalier. Brambridge, closely bordering on Otterbourne, on the opposite side of the Itchen, though in Twyford Parish, was in the possession of the Welles family. Brambridge and Otterbourne are divided from one another by the river Itchen, a clear and beautiful trout stream, much esteemed by fishermen. In the early years of Charles II. a canal was dug, beside the Itchen, for the conveyance of coal from Southampton. It was one of the first formed in England, and for two hundred years was constantly used by barges. The irrigation of the meadows was also much benefited, broad ditches being formed—“water carriages” as they are locally called—which conduct the streams in turn over the grass, so that even a dry season causes no drought, but they always lie green and fresh while the hills above are burnt brown.