ony Stratford to Buckingham passed through Wicken on Tuesdays and Sundays, and there were buses to Wolverton on Friday and Saturday evenings. (fn. 350) The first of these services had been increased to three days a week by 1940. (fn. 351)
No muniments survive to illustrate the working of the two manor courts in Wicken in the Middle Ages. In the years immediately following the establishment of the honor of Grafton in 1542, to which all Crown lands in Wicken were annexed, (fn. 352) the constables of Wick Dive and Wick Hamon did suit at the honor court held at Grafton twice a year, paid a certainty of 13s. 0½d., and reported that all was well. (fn. 353) Charles Hosier, who purchased the Wicken Park estate in 1716, was said a few years later to owe suit and service to the duke of Grafton's court at Grafton Regis. (fn. 354) In the mid 18th century the Wicken constables' expenses included the cost of 'going to Grafton court' each year (fn. 355) to deliver a payment representing 1d. from every male householder in the parish (widows, spinsters, the rector and the patron of the living being exempt), together with a suit roll listing those from whom the payment was due. Mrs. Prowse believed that this was an acknowledgment of the right each parishioner had to turn cattle into the forest between Old St. George's Day (4 May) and Old Holy Rood Day (25 September). In addition, the Wicken Park estate was still paying 13s. 0½d. (plus 4d. for an acquittance), which she described in 1783 as a 'certainty, or assart money' due to the duke of Grafton, and which she understood gave the owner of the estate and the tenants the right to put cattle in Whittlewood at the proper seasons and free them from paying any other tax to the honor. (fn. 356) The final volume of Grafton manor court minutes (1764- 1801) (fn. 357) make no reference to the presence of the Wicken constable, and in 1802 Mrs. Prowse noted that one of her tenants had only paid the 1d. levy once or twice since he was married 21 years before. Another informant told her that no payment had been made for the last ten years. (fn. 358) Wicken had certainly ceased to do suit to the honor by the 1830s. (fn. 359)
In the late 16th century and early 17th the Spencers were holding two courts a year for the combined manor of Wick Dive and Wick Hamon, at which transfers of freehold land were recorded, orders made for the management of the common fields, and various officers appointed, including two constables, presumably one for each of the medieval townships. There is no sign of copyhold tenure. (fn. 360) Much the same picture emerges from rolls of 1661 and 1699-1707 for what was then simply called the manor of Wicken. (fn. 361) Charles Hosier may have given up holding courts as soon as he acquired the lordship, since by the 1740s (ten years before inclosure would have made the court largely redundant) the (single) constable was clearly an official of the vestry, rather than the manor. (fn. 362)
The Vestry and Parish Council.
Overseers' accounts from 1773 to 1820 indicate that the poor of the parish were being maintained entirely by out relief, although at the beginning of that period a small amount was received each year from the sale of lace, presumably made by some of the paupers. (fn. 363) The highways were maintained by a combination of statute duty and the employment of contractors. (fn. 364)
Wicken was included in Potterspury poor law union after 1834 but neither the guardians, nor after 1894 the rural district council, were much concerned with the affairs of what remained very much an estate village. Lord Penrhyn installed piped water in 1896-7 but Wicken lacked a waterborne sewerage system until well into the 20th century. (fn. 365) Mains electricity reached the village in 1930 (fn. 366) and by 1954 the parish council, a seven-member body established in 1894, had adopted the Lighting & Watching Act. (fn. 367) In 1948 Towcester R.D.C., to which Wicken was transferred in 1935 when Potterspury R.D.C. was abolished, completed the first group of council houses in the parish and took over (as