Page:VCH Lancaster 1.djvu/372

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A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE

Montbegon, who occurs several times in the survey of Roger's Lincolnshire manors as 'Roger the man of Roger the Poitevin' (f. 352), and was perhaps the predecessor of Robert de Molyneux, lord of Sefton in the time of Henry I.[1]

'William,' holding a hide and a half, was undoubtedly William fitz Nigel, constable of Chester and lord of Halton, whose Cheshire fee under the earl of Chester is enumerated in the survey on fol. 266, and his Lincolnshire fee under the same earl on fol. 349, col. 2. His Domesday fee in Lancashire probably consisted of Roby, Knowsley,[2] and Little Crosby, 1½ hide in West Derby hundred, which 'Ughtred' had held before the conquest, and Sutton, Eccleston, Rainhill, Cronton, Appleton, Widnes, and Astley, 2 hides and 4 carucates in Warrington hundred. Subsequently other manors which 'Ughtred' had held in Maghull, Kirkby, and Little Woolton (4½ carucates) with Dot's manors of Huyton and Tarbock, Ulbert's manor of 'Wibaldeslei' and two manors in Woolton, and the manor of Cuerdley in Prescot parish, were added to the fee created before 1086 to complete the well-known 'barony of the Constable within the Lyme.'[3]

Another manor which 'Ughtred' had held, viz., half a hide in Kirkdale, may perhaps be identified with the half hide which 'Warin' held in 1086. Of this Warin we shall have something to say hereafter. The greater part of 'Tetbald's' fee of 1½ hide in West Derby hundred was probably included in the fee subsequently held in the hundred by Pain de Vilers, lord of Warrington, viz., Ince Blundell 3 carucates, two-thirds of Thornton 2 carucates, Halsall 1 carucate, Lydiate and Egergarth 1 carucate, a moiety of Barton a half-carucate, making 7½ carucates. In Warrington hundred 'Tetbald' had 1½ carucate.

It seems most probable that Henry I. enfeoffed Pain de Vilers of the demesne lands of Warrington, with numerous vills in the parishes of Warrington, Prescot, and Leigh, and of the escheated fee of 'Tetbald,' between 1102 and 1118, when the king created the honour of Lancaster by incorporating various escheated manors in the counties of Notts, Derby, and Lincoln, with the forfeited lands of Roger of Poitou—except in Essex—and adding thereto some manors of royal demesne, all which he bestowed upon his nephew Stephen, count of Mortain, between the years 1115—18. 'Adelard's' holding of 1 hide and half a carucate in Warrington hundred may perhaps be identified as a fee comprising Whiston and the church of Prescot (to which the half-carucate probably belonged), which afterwards escheated and under Henry I. became the nucleus of the fee held by serjeanty by the family of Gernet, who were hereditary foresters of all the forest lands between Ribble and Mersey and in Lancaster.[4] 'Ralph,' holding 5 carucates, cannot be identified. Perhaps his fee was afterwards absorbed in the barony of Warrington. Newton hundred long continued in the demesne of Count Stephen. Here 'Roger the Poitevin' gave the church of Wynequic [Winwick] to the canons of St. Oswold of Nostell with 2 carucates of land,[5] and before 1121 Stephen, count of Mortain, either confirmed this gift or re-granted the church to the priory of Nostell.[6] Two knights

  1. Farrer, Lancs. Pipe Rolls, pp. 427-9; Record Soc., Lanc. and Ches., vol. 48, pp. xvi. and 12.
  2. Which the thegn of Lathom held under his successors by knight's service.
  3. Testa de Nevill (Record Com.), p. 403b.
  4. Record Soc., Lanc. and Ches., vol. 48, pp. 43-4.
  5. Testa de Nevill (Record Com.), p. 405b.
  6. Farrer, Lancs. Pipe Rolls, p. 310.