A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE Derbyshire) valuable manor of Melbourne. 1 In the borough of Derby Earl ./Elfgar had held eight messuages with sac and soc, which had also passed to the king. The king's property in the shire was still further increased by a number of manors which, before the Conquest, had belonged to various holders. These are usually found in the north of the county. To the west of the Derwent come Eyam and Stony Middleton, while Beeley, 4 Langelcie ' and Chatsworth and Walton connect the king's estates along that river with the wide-spreading manor of Newbold, the pre-Conquest owner of which, curiously enough, is not given in Domesday. Further south come Tibshelf, close to the Nottinghamshire border, and Mapperley. It looks almost as if the addition of the first five of these manors to the royal demesne marks a deliberate attempt on the part of the king to round off his possessions in the north of the county. Of the two ecclesiastical tenants-in-chicf in the county, the bishop of the diocese in which Derbyshire was situated comes first in order. This was Peter, a Norman ecclesiastic, who had removed the seat of the Mercian diocese from the insignificant village of Lichfield to the great city and port of Chester, in accordance with the continental usage by which a bishop would generally reside in the chief town of the district under his spiritual care. In Derbyshire he only held Sawley and its adjacent 4 soke ' of Long Eaton in the south-east corner of the county, and the manor of Bupton in its centre, which long continued to be held of his successors. The only religious house which held in chief in Derbyshire was the abbey of Burton-on-Trent, and it is interesting to note that most of its possessions in this county had been acquired since the Conquest, a fact which is especially remarkable, as its English abbot, Leofric, seems to have held his office until his death in 1085. This was the case with the great manor of Mickleover, which had belonged to Edward the Confessor, and the gift of which was therefore probably the act of the Conqueror himself." It was also undoubtedly the case with Caldwell, of which it is said that 4 King William gave this manor to the monks 4C pro beneficio suo." The word 4 bcneficium ' is rare in Domesday, but probably in this case it has no specially ecclesiastical meaning, and on page 335 the phrase is simply translated * for their own advantage.' A more interesting grant is the manor of 'Cotes/ now Coton-in-the-Elms. In Domesday this manor merely appears as a former possession of Earl Elfgar ;' but from an entry in the Burton Cbartulary we gather that it had been given to the abbey in the Confessor's time by Earl Morcar, that at the Conquest it had fallen into the hands of the king, and that finally the Conqueror, when 1 The account of Melbourne contains the curioui itatement that ' In King Edward's time it was worth 10, now it ii worth 6, but nevertheless it render* 10' It ii by no meant unknown eltewhere in Domesday for a manor to pay, under the Normans, a sum of money in excess of its estimated value.
- The grant of Mickleover is assigned to William I. in the A***h tfB*rtt*, and also in the bull of
Pope Lucius III., confirming the abbey's pottessioni in 1 185. See Dugdale, MM. iii. 41. 1 It so happens that in this entry the earl appears without his comital style. 298
