Part 4

In 1297, on the death of Edmund earl of Lancaster, the KingaEuro(TM)s Escheator held an inquisition at Tutbury for the county of Lancaster, to ascertain what knightaEuro(TM)s fees were due to the earl; the jury found _inter alia_ that Hugh le Despencer held one knightaEuro(TM)s fee in the manor of Altonesfelt (Alstonefield) worth yearly in homages etc. AL10. "Nomina Villarum" 1316 gives Hugh le Despencer and Nicholas de Audeleye as owners of Alstonefield, a vill in the liberty of the earl of Lancaster, who had the return of all writs.

In 1322 the estates of le Despencer were forfeited to the crown and subsequently bestowed by Edward III on Henry earl of Lancaster, grandfather of Blanche the wife of John of Gaunt.

It may be helpful here to recall how John of Gaunt was created duke of Lancaster and became possessed of the Lancastrian estates, extending into Cheshire, Staffordshire and other counties.

The first earl of Lancaster was Edmund called Crouchback second son of Henry III; in addition to his Lancastrian estates, his father bestowed on him the earldoms of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Salisbury and Chester.

These passed on his death in 1296 to his eldest son Thomas earl of Lancaster, who was beheaded at Pontefract in 1322 when his estates were forfeited to the crown.[A] His widow was allowed to retain the Salisbury estate; and the other four earldoms were bestowed on his brother Henry earl of Lancaster, to whom one third share of Alstonefield manor was also given, so that he possessed not only the Lancastrian estates but also the earldoms of Derby (including the honour of Tutbury), Leicester, Lincoln, Chester and the territorial interest of a third of the manor of Alstonefield, including Malbanc Forest; of which Highe Frith was waste of the manor.

Henry earl of Lancaster was succeeded by his son Henry, afterwards first duke of Lancaster, who had no son; of his two daughters, Maud married William of Bavaria and Blanche married John of Gaunt. Maud died without issue, whereupon the whole of the Lancastrian estates devolved on Blanche; and, in right of his wife, on her husband John of Gaunt, who was in 1362 created duke of Lancaster.

It will be remembered that the seal attached to the deed of gift of the 15th May 1399 bears a hunting horn; and in order to find some explanation of this seal it may be necessary to glance for a moment at the history of the honour of Tutbury, which as we have seen was included in the earldom of Derby and passed to John of Gaunt with that earldom.

About the end of the 13th century, the important office of escheator and coroner throughout the whole honour of Tutbury within the county of Stafford, was claimed by Walter Agard who demanded to hold office by right of inheritance; but he was unable to produce any written evidence in support of his claim; and in lieu of charters or writings, he produced a white hunting horn garnished with silver-gilt in the middle and at both ends, to which was affixed a girdle of black silk adorned with buckles of silver, on which was placed the _insignia_ of Edmund earl of Lancaster; this horn was offered and accepted as the charter and evidence of title to the office of escheator and coroner, to which he made claim.

It is not necessary to follow the devolution of the Tutbury Horn from Walter Agard; but in the 17th century, on the marriage of an heiress of Agard, it passed to the Stanhopes, who sold it with its offices in 1753 to Samuel Foxlow of Staveley Hall, from him it ultimately passed to Henry Marwood Greaves of Banner Cross, Sheffield, and Ford Hall, Derbyshire, who once only exercised the right of appointment; and on his death in 1859 his eldest son William Henry Greaves, who had assumed the surname of Greaves-Bagshawe in 1853, succeeded to the horn by inheritance, and appointed the next succeeding coroner. We shall have to consider whether the pendent seal of the alleged deed of gift can in any way be accounted for by the fact, that the honour of Tutbury was part of the duchy of Lancaster prior to John of GauntaEuro(TM)s death.

Let us now turn to the other party to the deed of gift, Sir Edward Mundy.

In BurkeaEuro's "Commoners of England" 1836, it is suggested that the Mundy family derived its name from Mondaye Abbey in the dukedom of Normandy; and it may be, that Sir Edward Mundy or his father fought with John of Gaunt in the wars with France and Spain.

It seems probable, from what we find in the earlier deed, that the duke and Sir Edward were close personal friends; and it may possibly have been through the influence of John of Gaunt, that Sir Edward Mundy or his father settled near Derby. However that may be, we are told that Sir Edward entertained the duke at Markeaton and returned with him to Lancaster Castle.

Vincent Mundy of Markeaton was a justice of the peace for the county of Derby in 1558 and his son Edward died in 1607.

Burke also tells us that "from old deeds in existence it appears that the family held lands in the year 1399"; it may be and seems highly probable that he was referring to the deed of gift and the grant above described, to which he presumably had access and gave credence.

On the other hand the two Lysons, in their work on Derbyshire, say that the Mundys did not buy the Markeaton property until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Perhaps at that date they added to their original holding?

We now have some idea of how matters stood in 1399 and 1568; we are therefore in a better position to consider whether the deeds of Richard II and Elizabeth can be relied on as giving the origin and early history of the place-name Hawksyard.

Assuming for the moment that the two deeds were prepared at the same time and by the same hand, it is necessary to consider the position as it presented itself to the attorney, who in 1568 was instructed to carry out the sale of Hawksyard to John Weston. He possibly may have acted for both vendor and purchaser and been anxious to do his best for both his clients. He would, on receiving his instructions, ask the vendor for his title deeds; the answer would presumably be that there were no such deeds; but it was probably well known in the vendoraEuro(TM)s family and possibly also to John Weston, that Hawksyard had been given to Sir Edward Mundy by John of Gaunt shortly before his death, after enjoying a dayaEuro(TM)s hawking in Highe Frith, the tradition of which would hang round The Moorlands for centuries; perhaps letters or diaries would be produced with sufficient detail to satisfy the purchaser of the truth of the tradition.

The attorney would perhaps be in doubt, whether this traditional gift was a grant of the fee simple or a mere sporting right over certain waste lands belonging to the manor of Alstonefield, part of the duchy; which right would be what is known as a right of common in gross. The vendors were doubtless in actual possession and their ancestors had held it for nearly two hundred years; under circumstances such as these the Courts of Common Law, in the absence of the tradition, would have assumed a lost grant, made prior to the reign of Richard I, which is supposed to be equivalent to immemorial user; but the family tradition as to John of Gaunt fixes the lost grant in the reign of Richard II, which would not support a claim by immemorial user. Under these circumstances and in the absence of any title deeds, the attorney seems to have taken upon himself the responsibility of creating a root of title, based on the tradition and possibly what he considered satisfactory recorded evidence; in doing this he exercised neither artfulness nor skill. He hesitated whether to make it an agreement or a grant, he neglected to use the 14th century common form of such a document, he blundered sadly in the dates, and he referred in the deed, which he dated in the reign of Richard II, to a reign which had not then begun. There would be a difficulty as to the witnesses, and it may be that those named were taken from some deed of 1399 to which he had access, notwithstanding the fact that these five witnesses were not suitable or likely witnesses for the sealing by John of Gaunt; there was also the difficulty of the seal, and as probably no seal of John of Gaunt was available, a forest seal, perhaps of the honour of Tutbury, was used; Alstonefield manor being within that honour, and the deed of the 15th May 1399 was the result; which did well enough to hand to the purchaser, as the root of title to Hawksyard, along with his conveyance from Vincent Mundy and his son. Even if the parties to the transaction knew of what was being done they would doubtless be well pleased to have the John of Gaunt tradition put on record; and the enterprising attorney would probably be thanked and well paid for his trouble and resource. There does not appear to have been any fraudulent intention to improperly acquire any land or other benefit, though such a counterfeit in these days would be fraught with risk to all parties concerned; but in the time of Elizabeth, the law of real property rested less on statute and more on the unwritten law; which was interpreted and applied loosely and without supervision.[B] The effect of this _ex post facto_ apograph was twofold and benefited both sides. The vendors put on permanent record their treasured family tradition and the purchaser got a root of title, which might be of value to him in case of re-sale. It would be interesting to know why the Mundys barred the entail and sold Hawksyard, with its sporting tradition; it may have been that the chancellor of the duchy had, at a then recent date, raised the question as to whether the Mundy family originally had an estate in fee simple or a right of common in gross; and that they as owners thought they would act wisely in selling to a purchaser for value.

Whatever the reason may have been for the sale of Hawksyard in 1568, it passed by the deed of Elizabeth from the Mundy family to John Weston of Mackworth, and is now held and enjoyed under prescriptive right, which makes its past history of little consequence, so far as the present owner, Mr Robert Shirley of Waterhouse Farm, near Longnor, is concerned.

His numerous deeds and papers relating to Hawksyard include an abstract of title beginning in the 14th year of Elizabeth (10th July 1572), when John Weston and Katherine his wife sold Hawksyard to Ralph Bradbury who, as appears from the grant to John Weston, was in 1568 the tenant of Hawksyard; so that John Weston owned the property for less than four years and then sold it to his tenant Ralph Bradbury, who in May 1573 settled it on his younger son Otwell.

Forty-two years later, on the 11th May 1615, Otwell Bradbury and Ralph his son and heir sold Hawksyard to Henry Cock for AL400. For many years the estate remained in the possession of the Cock family, who sold it to Ralph Wood of Leek Abbey, the Cistercian monastery Dieu-la-Cresse, and on the 5th April 1800 Hawksyard passed into the possession of John Shirley of Rewlach, the great grandfather of the present owner.

In 1850 some closes, part of Hawksyard, lying on the west side of the road leading from Newtown to Warslow, were exchanged for adjacent closes, part of the late Sir John Harpur CreweaEuro(TM)s estates. With this exception, the Hawksyard estate seems to follow the boundaries set forth in the deed of 1399, and HarrisonaEuro(TM)s Intake, Low Meadow, Rye Meadow, Kiln Croft and Spout Field of that date still exist and appear in the description of the lands in the 19th century title deeds. On the front of the house are two dates, one above the other, the lower one is "H C 1620" and the upper one is "H C 1784"; both these dates occur during the ownership of the Cock family, and the initials "H C" probably indicate Henry Cock.

Hawksyard of to-day is a substantial farmstead of eighty acres, with a good house and farm buildings occupied by Mr ShirleyaEuro(TM)s son Edwin Leslie Shirley; it is bounded on every side by lands of Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe of Calke Abbey and Warslow Hall, but it has never formed part of the encircling Harpur estate, which we may assume was crown property; and the grant to the Harpurs of these surrounding lands may have given rise to a discussion as to the Hawksyard title, and possibly suggested to the Mundys the desirability of the sale to Weston. If the surrounding lands were granted by the crown, leaving Hawksyard an isolated and independent holding, there seems to have been a recognition of the Mundy title and a strong vindication of the Hawksyard tradition.

Of the places referred to in the deeds, Boothesley (now spelt Boosley) Grange still stands; Bank or Over Boothesley is now Bank House and the "pearle of water" is Boosley Brook. Highe Frith and Malbanc Forest are not on the ordnance map and are almost forgotten in the district; but Lady Edge is still in daily use, and the existence to-day of these medieval place-names seems to strengthen the probability of the story of John of GauntaEuro(TM)s visit to the Highe Frith.

If ramblers on foot and on wheels, when passing the east end of the church and the adjoining school of Newtown, will stop for a moment to glance down on Hawksyard, two fields to the east and up to Lady Edge half a mile to the south-west; it will not be difficult to reconstruct the scene of the hawking, when

"Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster"

visited Highe Frith of Malbanc Forest more than five centuries ago and first gave the name Hawksyard.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] It may be of interest to mention, that in 1867 while ridging potatoes in a field at Boosley Grange, known as Boosley Folly Meadow, a number of silver medieval coins were found, which had presumably been lost or hidden in the difficult times through which The Moorlands passed, during the fierce struggle between Edward II and his cousin Thomas the great earl of Lancaster; who in his headlong flight from Tutbury Castle up the valley of the Dove lost a military chest containing over 100,000 similar coins, English, Scotch and Flemish, in the river, which was found in 1831, embedded deep in the mud at the ford below the castle.

[B] The reverend Joseph Hunter, in a Memoir on the ancient family of Wilson of Broomhead Hall, Bradfield, published in _The Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal_ volume v. calls attention to what he describes as a surreptitious Bradfield deed, dated in the feast of saint Martin in winter (11th November) 22 Richard II and anno domini 1399; whereas the feast of saint Martin 1399 was not in the reign of Richard II but in the first year of Henry IV; he further points out that even if the news of the accession of Henry had not reached the wilds of Bradfield by the 11th November, the feast of saint Martin 1399 would have fallen in the 23rd year of Richard II and not the 22nd, as stated in the deed.

TRANSCRIBERSaEuro(TM) NOTES

General: No attempt has been made to standardise spelling within the charters; they are rendered as in the original text.

Page 28: Hawsksyard corrected to Hawksyard after "In 1850 some closes, part of"