Baldwin de Gisnes (1216), held the manor of Benefield, on condition of finding one soldier to keep guard at Rockingham castle[1].
Berengarius le Moygne (1276), builder of Barnewell castle, was bound to pay twenty pence yearly towards the ward of Rockingham castle[2].
Edward the Third took fealty (1338) of Hugh Doseville for lands at Medbourn, in Leicestershire, on condition of rendering to the king, as often as he came here to hunt in the adjacent forest, a barbed arrow[3]. The manors of Lanton, Upanry, and Hole, were held on the same conditions[4].
The permission to hunt was seldom yielded to the subject, and so highly valued, that even when the Crown granted a manor to one of its vassals, the monarch reserved this privilege to himself[5]. And with such strictness was the forest preserved that, in 1256, (Oct. 11,) four men are returned as being contined in Rockingham castle, and fined two marks for trespassing[6], and in 1218, Richard Trussel was fined for merely taking his dogs through the forest[7].
In 1219, Henry the Third orders the constable to permit Walter Preston to catch forty deer for the royal larder, in the forests of Rockingham, Cliff, and Geddington[8].
As a great favour the feudatories of the Crown were however sometimes allowed to catch deer on the borders of the forest[9]. Such minuteness prevails in these early notices, and with such extreme care was the royal chace preserved, that not even a single oak could be felled here without first obtaining the king's sanction[10].
The castle was also used as a State prison, for on August 20, 1347, a writ was addressed to John Darcy, constable of the Tower of London, ordering two Scotch prisoners to be sent to John Vardon, constable of Rockingham, or to his locum tenens, Thomas Stone[11].
Among the sources of information on the military antiquities of this early period, the Operation Rolls, as I shall venture to call them, hold an important place. The entries on these unpublished documents are generally the counterpart of each
