Pleshey

"PLESHEY, a parish in the hundred of DUNMOW, county of ESSEX, 6½ miles (N. N. W.) from Chelmsford, containing 289 inhabitants. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the jurisdiction of the Commissary of Essex and Herts, concurrently with the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of London, endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £400 royal bounty. W. Tuffnell, Esq. was patron in 1811. The church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was rebuilt of brick in 1708, chiefly by the munificence of Bishop Compton; the tower, which rose from the intersection" of the ancient cruciform structure, still remaining in decay, until renovated by the late Samuel Tuffnel, Esq., who also added a handsome chancel. To the southward of the church a college was founded, about 1394, in honour of the Holy Trinity, by Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of Edward III., for a master, warden, eight chaplains, two clerks, and two choristers, whose revenue, at the dissolution, was estimated at £143. 12. 7. Pleshey, though now an obscure village, was once a place of considerable importance, having been the seat of the high constables of England, from the first institution of their office till nearly four centuries after the Norman Conquest. From discoveries made here it seems to have been the site either of a Roman station, or a villa. The village is surrounded by an intrenchment, enclosing also the keep mount of the Norman fortress, of which there only remains the stone bridge, of singular construction, across the moat to the keep. The treacherous. arrest of the Duke of Gloucester by Richard II. was planned while the former lay at this castle, to which the king himself came, and decoyed him from it under the pretence of a friendly invitation to London." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]