New patrons at Windsor
Wantage church had been run from the Norman abbey of Bec through its English priory at Ogbourne. During the wars with France the Crown took over such ‘alien’ priories, and under Henry V they were dissolved. The priory’s churches passed to John, Duke of Bedford, who in 1422 gave them to the College of St George at Windsor. The Dean and Canons of Windsor have been patrons of Wantage ever since and still appoint its vicar.
The church takes its present form
Much of what visitors see in St Peter and St Paul today is 15th-century work. Early in the century the end of the north transept was rebuilt with a small chapel beside it. Later the chancel was largely rebuilt, with a vestry and chapels on both sides, and another chapel was added east of the south transept. Towards the end of the century porches were built and a clerestory added to the nave. Its windows let in light under a hammer-beam roof with carved faces and shields.
The oak choir stalls, with poppy-head bench ends and misericords, and the parclose screens between chancel and chapels are also of this period. The church’s brasses record the families of the time: a full-length armoured figure of Sir Ives FitzWarin (1414) and an inscription to Roger Merlawe and his wife Katherine (1459).
The manor changes families
The FitzWarin line struggled to produce adult heirs. Fulk FitzWarin died in 1407 before coming of age, and his infant son lived only until 1420. The barony and manor then passed to his sister Elizabeth and her husband Richard Hankeford. Their daughter Thomasina married Sir William Bourchier, who was summoned to Parliament as Lord FitzWarin in her right in 1448–9. The Bourchiers kept Wantage for the next two centuries. Their grandson John was created Earl of Bath in 1536.
The smaller manor of Brians also changed hands, passing to Robert Andrew of Wiltshire in 1418 and to William York in 1457.
Cloth, charity and schooling
The Victoria County History thought Wantage’s cloth industry probably flourished in this century, before a slow decline in the 17th. Wealthier townspeople and landholders were also beginning to leave property for the common good. Houses and lands given under Henry VI and Henry VII for the poor, the roads and a schoolmaster were the start of the endowment that the Town Lands Act of 1597 later put on a firm footing. Ives FitzWarin’s will of 1412 left gifts to his poor tenants. Some local accounts date the foundation of a school to 1434, but the evidence is disputed.
The century ended with the Tudors on the throne. For Wantage, as for most small market towns, the change of dynasty in 1485 made little immediate difference. The market, the fairs, the tanners and weavers, and the rhythm of the farming year carried on.