Lords in and out of favour
The FitzWarins kept Wantage through a turbulent century, though not always easily. In 1330, a year of violent political upheaval, Fulk FitzWarin was attainted (condemned for treason) and his lands were seized. His wife was granted a rent of 40 marks from Wantage and the use of his house in the town, which shows the lords still kept a residence here. Fulk was restored the following year and died holding the manor in 1349, leaving a young heir.
The run of child heirs brought the Crown into Wantage’s affairs. When the next Fulk died in 1371–2, Edward III gave custody of the manor to his mistress Alice Perrers until the heir came of age. After her downfall it was granted to Fulk Corbet and Philip FitzWarin. The heir came of age in 1383 and died in 1391, having given the manor for life to Philip. Because his son was only three, the king took custody once again.
A market town
Wantage was by now well established as a market town. In the lay subsidy of 1334, a national tax on movable goods, it was assessed at about £75, a respectable sum for a small Berkshire town. The weekly market, the two fairs in July and October, and the trades that served the farms of the vale were the basis of its living.
The Black Death reached England in 1348–9, and the plague returned in 1361–2. No figures survive for deaths in Wantage, but the record of Sir William FitzWarin’s death in 1361 has been read by some local historians as a death from the second outbreak.
The church and its chapels
The nave of St Peter and St Paul was rebuilt in this century with arcades of four bays on round columns, and the chancel may have been lengthened. The ten-sided font is 14th-century, and a fine half-length brass of a priest in mass vestments dates from about 1330. In 1351 the pope granted an indulgence to people who visited the Norman chapel of St Mary in the churchyard on the Virgin’s feast days and gave money for its fabric.
In the same year William FitzWarin, lord of the smaller manor of Brians, obtained a licence to endow three chaplains to say daily services in the parish church. He later cut the grant by two-thirds, and the chantry was probably never founded. His son Ives instead left money for a daily service at the altar of St John the Baptist. Sir William, a Knight of the Garter, lies with his wife Amice under an alabaster tomb against the north wall of the chancel. His effigy shows the Garter on his left leg.
Charlton and Tullwick
Outside the town, the Carew family of Beddington in Surrey built up land in Charlton and Tullwick. David Martin, Bishop of St Davids, bought land in Charlton in 1324 and died holding rents there in 1328; his nephew Thomas de Carew inherited. Nicholas Carew consolidated the Tullwick holding in 1374. Most people, in town and hamlets alike, still made their living from the open fields, the downland sheep runs and the market.