The antiquities of Nottinghamshire extracted out of records, original evidences, leiger books, other manuscripts, and authentick authorities : beautified with maps, prospects, and portraictures / by Robert Thoroton ...

THE PREFACE.

THE Art of Physick, which I have professed (with competent suc∣cess) in this County, not being able for any long time to con∣tinue the people living in it, I have charitably attempted, not∣withstanding the difficulty and almost contrariety of the study, to practise upon the dead; intending thereby to keep, all which is, or can be left of them, to wit, the shadow of their Names, (better than precious Oyntment for the body,) to preserve their memory, as long as may be in the World: Though for this lat∣ter undertaking, I expect no more Glory than I have gotten Riches by the former, well knowing this place not to be the best chosen for either; and the times such, that too few are much concerned, either for what is past, or to come. But seeing that by the especial favour and Providence of God, I have lived happily in it, beyond my own reasonable hopes, or the opinions of my wisest Friends, who would have set me on a better Stage; I have thought my self bound to my Country to make it this further return of gratitude, (however it may re∣lish or please) which no body else of better abilities and qualifications, hath hitherto per∣formed; and I have put it in the form of an Olla Podrida, which any of them, who shall be half so fond as I, may the more easily augment or new model, when they shall think fit; and every Reader, or rather looker on it (for it cannot expect many more thorough Readers than a Dictionary) may by the help of the Indexes pick out only those names of Places, or Persons which he desires, without being obliged to read very much of the rest, which may be thought impertinent enough, especially by those who will not consider, that I present not here what I would have chosen, but what I could find, and that for the most part will be judged too little by any concerned, and too much by others. Yet the time this Work can pretend to is very little above six hundred years; in the first third part whereof, there is not too much to be found, the oldest general Authentick Record we have, being that most fa∣mous Survey made by King William the first, in the latter part of his Reign, which still re∣mains in the Treasury of the Exchequer, and is called Doomsday Book, and was finished near about two hundred years after the first perfect Division of England into Shires or Counties, or of them into Hundreds and Tythings, by King Alured or Alfred (as is said) but hath respect also to the several Lands and their owners in the time of King Edward the Confessour. This most noble light of those times, as far as concerns this County of Nottingham, I have therefore exhibited at large, as plainly as I well could; yet because the Phrase or Language of it is not suitable to this present Age, I conceive it not amiss briefly in this place to observe and explicate some few things, which may render it, and some other things in this Book,

more easie to be understood. To begin then with Shire, as the Saxons called it, or County, as now more frequently is used, we may know it to be one of those Shares, Portions, or Provinces, whereinto this Kingdom, for the better Government and Administration of Justice thereof, was nigh, or a little before the time fore-mentioned, divided, by some of the Saxon Monarchs, who to that purpose did usually invest some great Man with the power and management of it, together with the third part of the profits, thereby ac∣crewing to the Crown, for his Fee or Reward; who was then Stiled Eolderman, but shortly after by the Danes (to whose Laws this place amongst many others was subject) Earl, being a Norvegian word, as Resenius shows, which still remains a Title of Ho∣nour, though not of Office, amongst us to this day; for several of those Kings, and all since the Norman Conquest, have prudently thought fit instead of the Earl to depute or substitute a Shire Reeve for the most part (especially since the Reign of King Edward the third) annually, who is well enough known, but very much lessened in profit and dignity at this time. The Hundreds or Wapentaks whereof these Shires consist, are as unequal as they, and so are the Tythings, Towns, or Villages which make up them, however they were in the time of the Saxons, by whom 'tis evident enough they were all made; for besides the Faith of History, we have this further Argument for our County, that there remains not in it the name of any Field, Hamlet, Village, Town, or Place, that I could note, which is not originally of their Language (or perhaps of the Danes, not so very much differing) except the Rivers, which seem still to retain the British; but they made the Hundreds not of an hundred Towns, for such have we none (though we have one very large one), but more likely of that number at least of free Sureties or Frank-pledges for the Peace, or else of able Souldiers for the War, which number in some places ex∣ceeded more, in others less, as we may well suppose, and in process of time (if no∣thing else did) made the inequality. Amongst these good men two were appointed by the Statute of Winchester, 13 E. 1. to be Constables for conservation of the Peace, and View of Armour, which latter perhaps hath more proper relation to the old name of Wapentak, which certainly contained ten Tythings at the least, and no doubt very often more. As one of them might contain no less (but often more) than ten House∣holders, sufficient Pledges, and as it were incorporated, for keeping the Kings Peace, the chief whereof was called Tythingman, and Friborgh, now corrupted into Thirdbo∣rough. These ten men did not alwaies dwell in one Town or Hamlet, but sometimes in two or more, which for that reason at this day have but one Constable, which Of∣ficer, it seems, about the beginning of King Edward the thirds Reign, grew out of this of Headborough, and by multiplication of Statutes, since then providing him further em∣ployment, hath very much obscured it. Now some Towns have two (or perhaps more) Constables, which may therefore be concluded to be so great or large in old time, as to contain two or more such Tythings, at present almost only known by Consta∣bleries, and so confounded with the Towns, Hamlets, Mannors, Lordships, or Parishes, whereof they consist, or wherein they are (as all they are also one with another) that it cannot but be necessary a little more plainly to distinguish them. By a Town then or Village we may understand, an uncertain number of dwelling Houses, scituate not far asunder, together with a certain competent circuit of Ground, or Territory, long since by our Saxon Ancestors comprehended in one name, wherein is contained one or more Mannors, or part thereof, whose owners being formerly and now called Lords, the whole Content is most constantly termed the Lordship, but only properly so, when it is all one Mannor or one mans; for this word Lordship, in this case, arising only from such an ownership of a Mannor, can be strictly and truly no further applied than the particular extent of that, which sometimes is not the whole of any one, but only part of one, or of two, or three, or more, Villages or Hamlets. This word Hamlet must intimate to us a little Town or Village, or a smaller number of dwelling Houses, with a certain Territory and proper name, wherein there was seldom either Mannor or Church, as in Towns most ordinarily were, and it commonly belonged to, or was a kind of a member of some other Village, and some have happened to be divided amongst several Constableries, Mannors, and Parishes: yet some there are which we are forced to call Hamlets, in respect of the great Mannors to which they belong, and whereof they are Berews or Berewics▪ which are as big as the middle sort of Towns, and some perhaps bigger, and have in them both Mannor and Church, or else a large Chapel, not much inferiour in appearance. The word Mannor is not older amongst us than the time of King Edward the Confessour who brought it from Normandy, in which he was so

well seconded by his Kinsman King William, that all the Mannors we have, which may be legally called so, are said to be specified in his fore-named Survey, wherein we may observe some to be so great as to contain several considerable Townships, and some so little, that several Mannors are often seen to be comprehended within the bounds of some one little Town. The greatest doubtless in older times were the Kings, and exam∣ples to the rest, whereof the next size most likely the great Earls and Bishops had, and the others according to their several degrees were possessed by the Taines, who were of three Ranks, viz. the Kings Thaine, who was equal to, or the same with our Parliamenta∣ry Baron, or Peer of the Realm. The Middle Theine, who bore proportion to our greater Gentry, and the less Thegne to our smaller Gentry, or best sort of Yeomen, who were certainly enough of the middle sort or condition of men, whereof the Saxons had but three, to wit, Noble, Free, and Servile. We may conceive then a Mannor to have been a certain place with a competent share or portion of ground and people thereupon for the King, or one of his Nobles, or Freemen, to remain or dwell at, for some time more or less, wherein the King for his own, we must think, had alwaies some fit person to take care of and govern these Lands and people for himself, according to the Laws then in use, both to do Right, and keep the Peace, whom we now commonly call Steward, in imitation whereof others obtained the like Priviledge from the King to be exercised for themselves in theirs, which from his own using or grant hath now ob∣tained the name of Royalty. The most common and necessary free Customs which I think the owner of the least Mannor could not well want, are those which the Saxons called Soc, and Sac; the first whereof imports a Power, Authority, or Liberty to ad∣minister Justice, and execute Laws, as well as the Circuit or Territory wherein such power is or might be exercised; the latter, a Priviledge to hear and judge Causes, and levy Forfeitures and Amercements, arising amongst the people resident within such Circuit or Territory, part whereof was ever as well by the King in his, as other Lords in theirs, kept in his or their own respective hands or Tenencies, for the sustenance or support of his or their particular Family there, which is now called the Demesne; the rest is well known by the name of Tenements, being held by others. Of which one part by the Saxons were called Boke Lands, because the King, or other Lord, gave them to some Thaines or Freemen by Charter, to inherit either for their Services in the Wars or Contribution thereto, or else for finding a competent proportion of Corn or other provisions for the Kings, or other Lords use, which latter Tenure we understand now by Free Socage, as we do the other by Knights or Military Service.

These men, however for such their Lands in any Mannor or Soke of the Kings, or of another mans, were named Socmen (especially in Doomsday Book where they are most often mentioned,) as they have been Thaines, Men, Barons, Knights, and Free-holders, and are indeed the very Barons, whereof (as the Lawyers say) there must be two at the least, to make that we now call a Court Baron, in the reason of which name it seems divers most Learned men have been mistaken, calling it from some insufficient Authority, A Barons Court, or Court of a Baron, as is manifest in that the King himself (not to be cal∣led a Baron sure in any sense, except only the Masculine,) had a Court of the Barons of his Mannor, as suitable and necessary for the Affairs of that, as the great ones were for the business of his Kingdom, after the Model whereof this was partly governed: which Court, in old time, had the name of Hallmote; the Kings, as all others were, being most usually kept in the Capital Messuage, or Mannor House, then and still called the Hall, whereunto these Sokemen, or Barons, Men, Knights, Thaines or Free-holders, were once in three Weeks to attend. Some of the Kings Socmen were great, as were also some of those of the larger sort of other great mens, and had Mannors within the Soc, which sort we now call Mesne Lords, being in the middle as it were, between their own Socmen, who held of them, and the supreme or Paramount Lord, of whom they held themselves; but the most generall sort of them were such as the Saxons called Less Thaines, the Danes Young-men, and we still Yeomen, and were, as I guess, made most ordinari∣ly of the younger sons or brothers of the Lords of the less sort of Mannors, being cer∣tainly Free of Blood, and fit for honourable Service; some marks whereof yet remain in the Kings Houshold, and divers other places. These Sokemen of the Kings Mannors, now known by the name of Free-holders by Charter in Antient Demesne, are free from all manner of Toll, for any thing concerning their own Provisions or Husbandry, and from many other payments which others are liable to; neither can they be drawn into Plea

for any thing concerning their Lands out of their own Court, wherein from the very first beginning, without doubt, was exercised all manner of Law requisite for the Kings Tenants, as well concerning right as peace: as likewise 'tis probable there was in all or most other very great Mannors or Sokes, which contained several Tythings or Town∣ships; whence arose also the Court-Leet, as we now call it, wherein chiefly all those Saxon Customs distinguished by several names, or Laws concerning the Peace, were executed, which by many Lords in their several Sokes was claimed by prescription, and since the Conquest hath been granted to others by the name of View of Frank-pledge. The other part of the Tenements of a Mannor by the Saxons called Folk-Lands, were occupied or held, for the most part, by the people bred and born in the Villages, and of Servile condition, called in Doomsday Book, Villains, and since Natives, or Bondmen, being such as our Husbandmen or Farmers are now; for those who were like our Cottagers, held very little or no Land, and in that Record are called Bordars, most likely because they had their meat where they did their work, which Custom remains amongst us in some places still: However all these men and all they had went with the Lands of their respective Mannors wherein they lived, and were (saving their lives) as much and intirely at the will and disposition of their several Lords, who finding no great profit in keeping alive many such Lazy Families as they were bound to do, grew more willing to Manumit and make them Free, or else to suffer them to hold their Lands under such Rents and Services, as they thought fit to impose; which being en∣tred in their Court Rolls, they made little other use of their Authority over them; so that Copyholders also now have almost utterly worn out the memory of any such con∣dition, as well as any of that formerly most numerous Servile sort of people, whereof for the greater part of these last two hundred years, there have scarcely been any who would not have despised those who should not have esteemed them as Free-born English men as the best, as the late times have more especially shown.

The last thing which should be distinguished a little more clearly from a Mannor or Soke, Constablery or Tything, Town, Village, or Hamlet, is a Parish, which amongst us signifies a certain portion of Land or Territory within the particular charge of a Priest, who is to Administer the Holy Sacraments, and other Divine Offices, to the Inhabi∣tants thereof, the Precinct or bounds of which are commonly best known by those of the Mannor, or Mannors, the Tythes whereof belong to that Church, though some por∣tion of them may have been given to some other; for it frequently happens that a Township, Hamlet, or Constablery, is in several Parishes; the Church Founded in it, alwaies having the Tythes of it, (except a Portion was by chance given to some Religious House) and we see a Parish (as before was said of a Mannor) may con∣tain one or more Townships or Hamlets, or only part of one or more. Nay in some places we have two Parishes in one Town, and but one Church, which must needs arise from several Mannors, the Lords whereof joyned in Founding or Building, but not in endowing the Church, each keeping apart his Tythes, and what else he would give for the sustenance of his own Clark, whom he intended to present to the Bishop for the Mi∣nisterial care and Government of his own Tenants, who with the Lands they occupied made up one Parish, as the others did another, yet both had use of the same Church. These are ordinarily called Medieties, perhaps because the use of the Church may be equal, though the Parishes or profits be not. The Kings Mannors, before the coming of the Normans, were furnished with Churches, and Chapels in the Hamlets also, not far short of Parochial Churches, and so were most other great Mannors, and some lit∣tle ones too; but some have no mention in Doomsday Book of any Church in them at that time, which yet manifestly had not very long after; so that, it seems, the Norman Lords built Churches presently, and fixed their Tythes within their own Mannors, which before were paid to uncertain places; the Dedications or Consecrations of most of which Churches or Chapels by the Bishop, are still remembred in these parts by the respective Parishioners, in celebrating a certain yearly Feast commonly called the Wakes.

But we must further consider that the great Root and Measure of all was Agriculture, Husbandry, or Tillage, which necessarily imployes, supports, and multiplies People, as they must Houses and Mannors, whereof consist Towns, Hundreds, and Counties, and of them a Kingdom, so that the King in his Political capacity, as well as his natural, is fed by the Husbandman; concerning whom our Laws are so old, natural, and funda∣mental,

that the certain original of them appears not to the deepest searcher, supposing nothing before them but a King to give, and People to receive them; for the Learned Selden, who went as far as he, or any one else could in that particular, in his Ian. Anglorum is fain to cite out of Authors whom he judged of little or no credit in the point, that Donuallo Molmutius, and his son Belinus after him, who Reigned four or five hundred years before our Saviour Christs time (when certainly the Inhabitants of this place were not much civilized) Ordained

That Plows, Temples, and Wayes leading to Cities, should have the priviledge of Sanctuary. And furthermore, lest the Land should wax empty, or lest the People should be frequently pressed with want of Corn, or be diminished, if only Cattel should occupy the Fields, which ought to be Tilled by men, He (the said Belinus) constituted how many Plowes each County (as we now call them) should have, and appointed a Punishment for them, by whom the number should be diminished. And forbad the Beasts which should serve the Plow to be taken away by the Magistrates, or assigned for debt of money to Creditors, if other Goods of the Debtor were sufficient besides.

However these Laws and Customs have been antient and certain enough, whoever made or begun them, and all Measures of the Country have been taken from the Plow as long as any memorials of such things are extant: for a Family, or Manse, or Hide with the Saxons; or Carucat with the Normans, are of the same signification, which is that we call a Plow-land, and was as much Arable, as with one Plow and Beasts sufficient belonging to it could be Tilled and ordered the whole year about, having also Medow and Pasture for the Cattel, and Houses also for them, and for the Men and their Housholds, who managed it. This is the great Measure so often repeated in Doomsday Book in most Counties by the name of Hide, but in ours, Darbyshire, and Lincolnshire, only Carucats are found, which are the very same with the other, and esteemed to contain an hundred Acres, (viz. sixscore to the hundred) but assuredly were more or less according to the lightness or stiffness of the Soyl, whereof one Plow might dispatch more or less accordingly. Thus unequal al∣so were the Virgats whereof four made a Carucat, and so were the Bovats, or as we call them Oxgangs, of which most commonly eight went to a Carucat or Plow-land, one of them being defined to be as much Land as one Ox might Till through the year; which for the reason before, could not be equal in all places, but in some places was twelve, in some sixteen, in some eighteen or more Acres: Nay the Acres were not equal, for some had sixteen, some eighteen, some twenty, and some more Feet to the Perch, of which forty make a Rode, and four of them an Acre; but the Foot it self was also customary in some places twelve Inches, in some eighteen more or less, so that we must not too peremptorily determine the quantity of a Leuc or Quarenten in Dooms∣day, wherewith the Pasture or other Woods were measured, and perhaps sometimes Me∣dow, though 'tis sure enough the first meant our Mile, and the other a Furlong, viz. forty Perches, which yet cannot be precisely judged to an Inch. By these kind of Measures though, were the ancient Surveys made of every Mannor, and part thereof; and by these were regulated all manner of Taxes, as well before the Conquest as after: for though the Knights Fees then first brought in with their incidents, Ward and Marriage, &c. became a Measure for divers Aids or Taxes afterward; yet even they consisted or were made up of five, or eight Carucats or Plow-lands apiece, and the re∣spective Tenants paid for so many whole Fees, or parts of one, or more, as they agreed with them who first enfeoffed them, according to such proportions of Carucats or Bovats as were the subject or ground of such agreements: so that still the Plow upheld all, as the Laws did it indifferently well, till that stupendous Act, which swept away the Mo∣nasteries, whose Lands and Tythes being presently after made the Possessions and Inheri∣tances of private men, gave more frequent encouragement and opportunities to such men as had got competent shares of them, further to improve and augment their own Revenues by greater loss to the Common-wealth, viz. by enclosing and converting Arable to Pa∣sture, which as certainly diminisheth the yearly fruits, as it doth the people, for we may observe that a Lordship in Tillage, every year affords more than double the profits which it can in Pasture, and yet the latter way the Land-lord may perhaps have double the Rent he had before; the reason whereof is, that in Pasture he hath the whole profit, there being required neither men nor charge worth speaking of; whereas in Tillage the people and their Families necessarily imployed upon it, (which surely in respect of God or Man, Church or King, make a more considerable part of the Common-wealth, than a little unlawful increase of a private persons Rent) must be maintained, and their pub∣lick

duties discharged, before the Land-lords Rent can be raised or ascertained. But this Improvement of Rent certainly caused the decay of Tillage, and that Depopulation, which hath much impaired our County, and some of our Neighbours; and which di∣vers Laws and Statutes have in vain attempted to hinder. I shall only take notice of the thirty ninth year of Queen Elizabeth, when one Statute was made against the decaying of Towns and Houses of Husbandry; and another for maintenance of Husbandry and Til∣lage: in the Preamble of the first is mentioned thus, —And where of late yeares more than in times past, there have sundry Townes, Parishes, and Houses of Husbandry bene destroyed and become desolate, &c. —the second is after this manner, Whereas the strength and flourishing estate of this Kingdome hath bene alwayes, and is greatly upheld and advanced by the maintenance of the Plough and Tillage, being the occasion of the increase and multiplying of people both for service in the Wars, and in times of Peace, being also a principall meane that people are set on worke, and thereby withdrawn from Idlenes, Drunken∣nes, unlawfull Games, and all other leud practises, and conditions of life. And whereas by the same meanes of Tillage and Husbandry, the greater part of the Subjects are preserved from extreame poverty in a competent estate of maintenance and means to live, and the wealth of the Realme is kept, dis∣persed and distributed in many hands, where it is more ready to answer all necessary charges for the service of the Realme; and whereas also the said Husbandry and Tillage is a cause that the Realme doth more stand upon it self, without depending upon forreigne Countreyes, either for bringing in of Corne in time of scarcity, or for vent and utterance of our own Commodityes being in over great abundance: and whereas from the 27th. yere of King Hen∣ry the eighth, of famous memory, untill the 35. yere of her Majesties most hap∣py Reigne, there was alwayes in force some Law which did ordeine a conver∣sion and continuance of a certaine quantity and proportion of Land in Tillage not to be altered: And that in the last Parliament held in the said 35. yere of her Majesties Reigne, partly by reason of the great plenty and cheapnes of graine at that time within this Realme, and partly by reason of the imperfection and obscurity of the Law made in that case, the same was discontinued: Since which time there have growne many more Depopulations, by turneing Tillage into Pasture, than at any time for the like number of yeres heretofore. Be it enacted, &c.— These Acts are both expired, but if they had not, they would have been repealed as divers of like sort have been, so that we cannot expect a stop for this great evil till it stay it self, that is, till depopulating a Lordship will not improve or encrease the owners Rent; some examples whereof I have seen already, and more may do, because Pasture already begins to exceed the vent for the Commodities which it yields; but other restraint, till the Lords, and such Gentlemen as are usually members of the House of Commons, who have been the chief, and almost only Authors of, and gainers by this false-named improvement of their Lands amongst us, think fit to make a Self-denying Act in this par∣ticular, would be as vain to think of, as that any Law which hinders the profit of a powerful man should be effectually executed. This prevailing mischief in some parts of this Shire, hath taken away and destroyed more private Families of good account, than time it self within the compass of my observations; yet some very few have escaped, where this devouring Pestilence hath raged, and amongst them (through Gods great mercy) my own, which surely should not be envyed being for the most part

—procul negotiis Ut prisca gens mortalium Paterna rura bobus exercens suis.

I should here have ended, but that it may be pertinent for the encouragement of any who may be disposed further to enlarge this work, or make any Appendix to it, to let him know that here is little out of the Arch-bishop of Yorkes Registry, from whence one of my Agents only brought me the Titles of certain Records, and another a Cata∣logue of the Livings-Spiritual in the Arch-deaconry of Nottingham, with their Values, Incumbents and Patrons, as they then were; out of which I only transcribed the values in the Kings Books, and last Patrons. And also, that here is omitted by mischance and over-sight, many Notes which I had by me and intended to insert, as some concerning

Trewthales Mannor in Colston Basset, and a certain Chapel near the Bridge there Founded by the last Lord Basset; and several particular Inscriptions of Monuments, and other things in divers other places, which I beg their pardon for, who may be concerned. And that though I was a Commissioner for the Royal Aid and Subsidy, and since that a Justice of Peace, I could never get an exact account of all the present owners in a great part of the County, but am forced to end in many places with one I have, which was made about the year 1612. The great helps I had for elder times were chiefly these, viz. my best Copy of Doomsday Book, taken by my Father-in-law Serjeant Bounes own hand from that in the Exchequer. What other use I have made of any of his Collections is mark∣ed in the Margent with B. but where the Printer over-looked it. The Copy of the Red Book in the Exchequer, and Chartae Antiq. and some other things I had from Mr. Dug∣dale; the most excellent Collections from the Pipe Rolls; and some other Records by Mr. Roger Dodsworth of Yorkshire, I had from my Lord Fairfax, by the procurement of my honoured friend Doctor Vere Harcourt our Arch-deacon; several Collections of the industrious Mr. St. Lo Kniveton, were given me by my Lord Chaworth; the Leiger Books of Lenton and Dale; and divers abstracts from the Plea Rolls, and other Re∣cords, were lent me by Mr. Samuel Roper; the Book of Rufford by my Lord Hallifax; that of Newstede, and some other things, by my Lord Byron; that of Blyth by Sir Gervas Clifton; and the Register of Thurgarton by Mr. Cecill Cooper, &c. The rest may be observed as these may also from the Margent.