Edlington was one of the 222 parishes in the county which had churches before the Norman conquest, but as the number of priests serving these churches was only 131, it is doubtful whether it had a resident minister, it being more probably that it was served by a Monk of Bardney Abbey, to which (according to Liber Regis) it was attached. Here again we have a trace of Gilbert de Gaunt being Lord of the Manor of Edlington, as well as of the subdivision of Poolham. The Monastery of Bardney was originally one of the few Saxon foundations, and established before the year 697. It was however reduced to great poverty by the Danes, under Inguar and Hubba, in 870, 300 monks being slain. It remained in ruins some 200 years, when it was restored by Gilbert de Gaunt, who succeeded to some of the property of Ulf, the Saxon Thane, already named. Gilbert de Gaunt had 54 Manors conferred upon him; being nephew of the Conqueror, and among the several which he bestowed on Bardney, was Edlington. At the dissolution, it would revert to the King, and (as we are here reduced to conjecture), we may well suppose that it was one of the many Manors in this district conferred by Henry VIII., on Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, among whose descendants these vast possessions were subsequently divided. In Dr. Oliver’s learned book on the “Religious Houses on the Witham,” it is stated that Bardney had land in Edlington, that the abbot had the advowson of the benefice, and that before the King’s Justices, in the reign of Ed. I., the abbot proved his right, by act of Henry I., confirmed by Henry III. to the exercise of “Infangthef, pit, and gallows at Bardney.” In “Placito de Warranto,” p. 409, he claimed, and proved his right, also to a gallows at Edlington (as well as at Hagworthingham, and Steeping, and Candlesby); and in connection with this, it is interesting to note that, as at Bardney, there is a field called “Coney Garth” (Konig Garth), or King enclosure, where the abbot’s gallows stood; so at Edlington there is a field (the grass field, in the angle, as you pass from the village road to the high road, leading northward), which is still called “Coney Green,” which name moderns of small education, suppose to be derived from the numbers of conies, _i.e._ rabbits, which abound there; but in which the antiquarian sees the old Konig-field, the King’s enclosure; and in that field, doubtless, stood the abbot of Bardney’s gallows; {41} just as the Abbots of Kirkstead had a gallows in Thimbleby. On this Edlington Coney Green, I have found bricks of an early style, with various mounds and hollows, indicating buildings of some extent, and probably belonging to the King.