already have been, as it was later, a market town on the main Bristol-London road, with 114 households and a church. 74 or more households were held almost outright by burghal tenure (as citizens of a borough), and the lordship of its large outlying land was divided between the king (of whom 45 burgesses were tenants) and the church.

In the Middle Ages the king's successor as the lord of Calne manor