Not one of the churches in Southampton is
of any great beauty or interest, but it is astonishing to find that the
mother church is not in the town at all, but at least half a mile
outside it upon the north. Leland, as I have already said, was told,
when he was in Southampton in 1546, that the first town did not occupy
the site of that we see but was further to the north, where St Mary's
stands. The fact that St Mary's is the mother church would seen to
confirm this. Moreover, there is no mention in the Domesday Survey of
any church at all within the borough of "Hantune," and though we may
think that the church of St John then existed, St John's was never the
mother church; this was St Mary's which possessed all the tithes of the
town. In the time of Henry II. we find the King granting to the Priory
of St Denys, founded in 1124 by Henry I., a Priory of Austin Canons,
his "chapels" of St Michael, the Holy Rood, St Laurence and All Saints,
that is all the churches save St John's already granted to the Abbey of
St Mary of Lire, in Southampton. But that these chapels had some
relation to the mother church of St Mary might seem certain.
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