Page:VCH Derbyshire 1.djvu/387

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

DOMESDAY SURVEY actually present at Burton, restored the manor to the church. But the king's writ is appended in which the grant is made dc navo, without any reference to Morcar's gift, and the abbey is to hold the manor ' as the mother of Earl Morcar best held it.' 1 This must refer to the Countess iElfgifu, the wife of Earl /Elfgar, and the statement that she had been herself the former owner of ' Cotes ' is noteworthy, for although she figures in a list of those who had exercised rights of sac and soc before the Conquest, 8 she does not appear in the body of the Survey as having held land in her own right in either of those counties. Of the other possessions of the monastery Winshill, Stapenhill, and Appleby had been left to the abbey in the will of its founder Wulfric ' Spot,' s together with many other estates in the counties of Derby and Stafford which failed to reach their destination. Highest in rank among the lay tenants-in-chief of Derbyshire was Earl Hugh of Chester, who held Markeaton, and appears in the introduction to the County Survey as exercising rights of sac and soc over that manor, which had formerly belonged to Earl Siward of Northumbria. Belonging to Markeaton were the three waste ' berewicks,' Kniveton, Mackworth, and Allestree. The entry relating to these appendages displays one of those strange inconsistencies which every now and then occur in Domesday. They were assessed at four carucates, of which it is said, * one carucate of these four belongs to Ednaston, a manor of Henry de Ferrers. Gozelin holds it of the earl, and Colle renders IQJ. 8</. for it to Gozelin.' Similarly, in the above-mentioned introduction, Henry de Ferrers is entered as enjoying sac and soc over Ednaston, and yet this manor appears on page 348 as belonging, not to him, but to Geoffrey Alselin, and as having belonged to his regular predecessor, Tochi. As the statement that Ednaston belonged to Henry de Ferrers occurs twice over in the Survey, it cannot be explained away as a scribal error, and indeed remains inex- plicable. In any case the conflict of rights between Earl Hugh, Gozelin, Colle, and the owner of Ednaston must have been sufficiently complicated. By far the greatest landholder in Derbyshire was Henry de Ferrers, the lord of Longueville in Normandy, whose son became in 1136 the first Earl of Derby. Although he possessed in this county over ninety manors, the head of his barony lay just outside the border of Derbyshire at Tutbury,* where was his castle and where the priory which he founded must have been already in being in 1086. The description of his estates occupies more than five folios of Domesday Book, and their general distri- bution will be gathered from the map. Vast as is their extent it will be noticed that, with the exception of some ten manors to the south of the Trent adjoining his Leicestershire property, they are almost confined to the west of the Derwent. Moreover they are concentrated to a very remarkable degree in the modern wapentake of Appletree, the whole of i Burtm Cbrtoitry (Coll. for Hist of Stafis. Salt Soc.), i. Fol. 8o-6, page 317 s Kemble, CtJtx Diph**tic*s, it 80.

  • King William had granted him Tutbnry and its castle which had previously been held by

Earl Hugh of Chester. Ordericus Vitalitis, Hut. EccL (Soc. de 1'hist. de France), ii. 221. 299