CLEEVE PRIOR. 89

vicar of Cleeve presented to the Prior a pea-hen as a New Year's gift, and some of the tenants furnished the monastery with a boar, honey,.&c. "Cleeve" is from "cliff," a part of the land projecting on a beautiful eminence overlooking the Avon and a delightful portion of the celebrated Vale of Evesham. The inhabitants are exclusively engaged in agricultural labour - women as well as men. The principal landowners are Miss Webb, T. B. Tomes, Esq., Mr. Smith, Mr. Rock, and Mr. Bayliss; and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are lords of the manor, in succession to the Dean and Chapter of Worcester. There were eighteen families here in the time of Queen Elizabeth; in 1861 the population numbered 340; acreage, 1,145. The common fields were enclosed in 1775.

Cleeve is a vicarage, value £225; incumbent, Rev, J. Morton; patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Worcester; church accommodation, 141; free seats, 58. In the church is a Norman doorway (north), some Early English work, with windows of every succeeding style, and a good lofty Perpendicular tower. Three or four years ago the chancel was re-built in the Decorated style by Mr. Christian, the architect for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the old windows being reinserted. About the same time a painted window was inserted in the north side of the chancel to the memory of the Rev. R. D. Stillingfleet, the late vicar, by his widow; and an unsightly gallery at the west end of the church had been previously removed.

An ancient manor-house stands not far from the church. It has stone mullioned windows, hiding closets, and an extraordinary avenue of yew, a dozen feet high, put into architectural shapes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this was the residence of the Bushells, who afterwards took the name of Fettiplace, and were the chief tenants of the manor under the Dean and Chapter. A portrait of one of them, dated 1616, still remains in the house.

Thos. Bushell was one of those gentlemen whom, in 1631,