EWELME, a parish in the hundred of EWELME,
county of OXFORD, 3 miles (N.E. by E.) from Wallingford,
containing 573 inhabitants. The living is a
rectory annexed to the Regius Professorship of Divinity,
in the University of Oxford, in the archdeaconry
and diocese of Oxford, rated in the king's books at
£21. 10. 5. At this place, called from the elms
Ewelme (vulgarly Newelme), William de la Pole, Duke
of Suffolk, erected, in 1487, a mansion, a neat hospital,
and a handsome church, dedicated to St. Mary, in which
his lady was buried; her tomb is remarkably elegant,
having no less than fifty alabaster figures of angels
about it. The hospital, called God's House, for two
priests and thirteen poor men, under the control of the
Regius Professor of divinity at Oxford, was valued, in the
26th of Henry VIII., at £20 per annum; it still exists,
with an endowment for a reader and twelve poor men:
There is also a free school. The church and hospital
stand on the west side of a hill, but the mansion is in
a low situation. An urn full of Roman coins was found
on Ewelme common, near the Roman Iknield-street, and
another on Harcourt hill, two miles from the village.
The Earl of Macclesfield has the title of Viscount Parker,
of Ewelme.