know about it is that Bishop Edyngton
joined it to Hursley. William de Edyngton was Bishop of Winchester in
the middle part of the reign of Edward III, from 1357 to 1366. Bishop de
Pontissara founded a College at Winchester called St. Elizabeth's, and to
assist in providing for the expenses, he decreed that the greater tithes
of Hursley, those of the corn fields, should be paid to the Dean and
Chapter, and that the rest of the tithe should go to the Vicar. Then,
lest the Vicar should be too poor, Otterbourne was to be joined with
Hursley, and held by the same parish priest, and this arrangement lasted
for five hundred years. It was made in times when there was little heed
taken to the real good of country places. The arrangement was confirmed
by his successor, Bishop Edyngton, who lies buried in the nave of
Winchester Cathedral, not far from where lies the much greater man who
succeeded him. William of Wykeham went on with the work Edyngton had
begun, and built the pillars of the Cathedral nave as we now see them. He
also founded the two Colleges of St. Mary, one at Winchester for 70 boys,
one at Oxford to receive the scholars as they grew older, meaning that
they should be trained up to become priests. It seems that the old name
of the field where the college stands was Otterbourne meadow, and that it
was bought of a Master Dummer. Bishop Wykeham's College at Oxford is
still called New College, though there are now many much newer. One
small estate at Otterbourne was given by him to help to endow Winchester
College, to which it still belongs.

Good men had come to think that founding colleges was the very best thing
they could do for the benefit of the Church, and William of Waynflete,
who was made Bishop of Winchester in 1447, founded another college at
Oxford in honour of St. Mary Magdalen. To this College he gave large
estates for its maintenance, and in especial a very large portion of our
long, narrow parish of Otterbourne. Ever since his time, two of the
Fellows of Magdalen, if not the President himself, have come with the
Steward, on a progress through the estates every year to hold their Court
and give audit to all who hold lands of them Till quite recently the
Court was always held at the Manor House, the old Moat House, which must
once have been the principal house in the parish, though now it is so
much gone to decay. Old Dr. Plank, the President of Magdalen, used to
come thither in Farmer Colso