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4
Charter, preserved in the British Museum, Mr. Walcott
gives an interesting extract. The Domesday Book (1086)
describes Westminster as a village, in the Hundred of
Ossulstone, and as containing xiij½ hides (about 945 acres)
of land held by the Abbot. In addition there were viiij
hides and j virgate (in all about 660 acres) belonging to the
demesne of the Church of St. Peter, upwards of 100 acres
let to the villeins (or tenants), pasture for the cattle of the
village, meadow for xj ploughs, and pannage for C hogs. The
measurements by hides and virgates give an area of upwards
of 1,700 acres, but the omission of the superficial equivalent
of the pasture, the meadow, and the pannage leaves
the total dimensions of the parish at this time in obscurity.
In the 6 Henry III. (1222), a decree of Cardinal Archbishop
Langton and certain Bishops and Priors, who appear to
have sat in arbitration on some difference which had arisen
on the question, curtails from the east side of the parish
all the precinct of the Savoy, the entire area of St.Mary-leStrand
and St. Clement-Danes, and such parts of St. Giles
and St. Andrew, Holborn, as had been included in the
Charter of Edgar. St. Margaret, Westminster, as thus left,
comprised the present parishes of St. Paul, Covent Garden.
St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. James, Piccadilly, St. Anne,
Soho, St. George, Hanover Square, and St. John the
Evangelist., Westminster; and, as if in compensation for
the detachment on the east side, three manors were added
to the parish on the west and north-west. Paddington had
also been confirmed as an appendage of Westminster by
Stephen (1135), and Henry II. (1154). By a charter of 17
Richard II. (1393) the parishes of St. Mary-le-Strand and
St. Clement Danes, together with that of St. Martin-in-theFields.
then newly formed, were declared to be possessed
by the Abbot as part of the Manor of Westminster.
Further changes were also made by Letters Patent in the
reigns of Henry VIII. (1534) and James I. (1604).
Through the good offices of Mr. T. C. Noble, who is