Terry Foreman on 14 Jun 2010  •  Link

The Abbot of Crowland was the head of Crowland Abbey, an English monastery built up around the shrine of Saint Guthlac by King Æthelbald of Mercia, and refounded as a Benedictine house circa 948. The last abbot was John Wells (also called John Bridges), who handed the monastery over to royal control and dissolution in 1539. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbo…
The "most prominent of several prosperous peasant families were the Pepyses, established in the village by the 1320s, (fn. 53) who acquired the lease of the Crowlands demesne c. 1520. (fn. 54) A Pepys was worth £50 in Cottenham in 1522, when another resident was worth £100. (fn. 55) By the 1540s William Pepys styled himself gentleman, and he and his son John Pepys were active in the land market, (fn. 56) John buying a manor in Impington in 1579 (fn. 57) and at his death in 1589 endowing each of his five sons handsomely. (fn. 58) ” http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…