Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/274

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266


NOTES AND QUERIES, p* s. VIIL SEPT. 28, iwi.


mention whatever of the Abbey of Barking, the patent of 13 Edward I. (10 June, 1285) expressly states that the manor was held in capite. The following is the English sum- mary as given in the 'Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward I.,' p. 173 :

"Promise to Robert de yeer, Earl of Oxford, and Alice his wife, who with the king's licence* have granted to William de Warrenne, the king's kinsman, Joan his wife, and the heirs of the same Joan, the manors of Medmeham, Tybourne, Pritel- well, Wfhamston, Muchampstead, Gynges, and IQl. in land in the manor of Cestresham, all held in chief as by the charter more fully appears, that in case the said William and Joan die leaving an heir within age, the custody of the land and heir shall accrue to the said earl and his wife."

This contingency actually occurred, and after the death of the earl and during the minority of the young John de Warrenne the manor of Tyburn was let to Ralph de Cobham for the joint lives of himself and his wife, with the reservation of the rent-charge to the Abbess of Barking, as pointed out by ME. HARBEN.t There is also a fine of later date ('Calendar of Inquisitions p.m. Henry VII.,' i. 331) which I will quote :

" By fine in the octave of St. Martin, 5 Hen. VII., between Edward Willoughby and John Skyll, querents, and the said marquess (Berkeley) defor- ciant, the under-mentioned manor is settled on the said marquess in tail, with remainder to the king in tail male, with remainder in default to the mar- quess's right heirs.

"He died without issue 14 Feb., 7 Hen. VII. Maurice Berkeley, esquire, aged 56 and more, is his brother and heir.

"Midd*. A fourth part of a moiety of the manor of Tyborn, worth 2(k, held of the king in chief, service unknown."

Had the manor of Tyburn been in posses- sion of the Abbey of Barking at the time of the suppression of that house, it would cer- tainly have been included amongst its be- longings in the MS. Boll in the Augmentation Office which is cited by MR. HARBEN ; but while that roll enumerates the manors of Barking with subordinate manors, and eigh- teen or nineteen other manors in Essex Buckinghamshire, and Cambridgeshire it only specifies a rent-charge "in Maribone" thirty shillings. With this evidence before

had been given by the king under charter to his wife s ancestor, he only possessed the " view of frankpledge," or, in other words, the right of hold- ing Courts Leet, which in feudal times was more of the nature of an obligation than of a privilege argument ltah ize " the l )orti ns bearing on my t On the death of Ralh eator


me, I must adhere to the opinion that the Abbess of Barking had lost possession of the manor before it was granted by the king to the Sanford family.

I will avail myself of this opportunity to offer a few remarks on a point of some interest in connexion with this manor. In my former paper (9 th S. vii. 383) I alluded to the story given by Morant ('History of Essex,' i. 167), on the authority of Rot. Pip., 33 Henry III., that

"Alice, daughter and heir of Gilbert de Sanford, being in ward to Fulk Basset, Bishop of London, for which wardship the bishop had given the king 1,000 marks : he, in 1248, sold the wardship and marriage of the said Alice to Hugh de Vere, the fourth Earl of Oxford, for five years, whether she lived or died. And he gave her to his eldest son."

As neither Lysons nor any of the historians of Tyburn who have copied from him made any allusion to the connexion between the families of Sanford and Basset, and I was therefore puzzled to understand the locus standi of the bishop in the matter, I made some further inquiries, and I trust incident- ally may have done something to clear the bishop's good name. In the ' Dictionary of National Biography' there are memoirs of two archbishops of Dublin, Fulk de San- ford, otherwise Basset (1256-71), and John de Sanford, who is said to have been brother of Fulk de Sanford (1284/5-94). Both these prelates played a considerable part in the politics of their day, both are said to have been illegitimate, and it is suggested by the writer in the ' Dictionary ' that they may have been sons either of Gilbert Basset, d. 1241, or of his brother Fulk, Bishop of London. But in that case why should they have assumed the name of Sanford 1 The pedigree of Sanford does not seem to have been worked out by any competent genea- logist, nor is that of Basset very much better known. The latter family seems to have been descended from Osmund Basset, whose great-grandson Thomas married Alicia de Dunstariville, and was the father of three sons Gilbert Basset, Lord of Compton; Alan Basset, who obtained the manor of Wycombe from King John ; and Thomas Basset. Alan Basset, who died 1232-3, had also three sons Gilbert, who died in 1241, and left a son Gilbert, who died s.p. in the same year' Fulk, who became Bishop of London, and succeeded on his brother's death to the barony of Basset of Wycombe; and Philip, Justiciary of England, who also succeeded to the barony on Fulk's death in 1259, and him- self died in 1271, leaving only one daughter. According to Lipscomb (* History of Bucking- hamshire,' iii. 32), Alan Basset had also a