FEUDAL BARONAGE
vested in an establishment called the Chancellor and Council of the Duchy.'[1] Henry IV. added no new possessions to the Duchy as enjoyed by his father, but Henry V., by a statutory charter granted in Parliament in the second year of his reign, annexed and incorporated the inheritance of the house of Bohun, which he had derived by hereditary right from his mother, with the inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster, which had descended to him from his father. By this measure the Bohun possessions were absorbed in the greater estate and thenceforth clothed in like manner with all the prerogatives of the king, but in administration distinct from other lands of the crown. From the reign of Henry V. to that of our present sovereign, King Edward VII., the rulers of this realm have enjoyed the splendid inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster, both out of and within the county Palatine, as an estate with sovereign prerogatives entirely distinct and separate from the crown of England.[2]
In dealing with the feudal baronage of this county those fees have been selected for notice which at some period or another were described as baronies, and the holders of them as tenants by barony, who paid for their relief, not the knight's customary relief of five pounds for each fee, but an arbitrary sum. Not included in this category are the half knight's fee of the Molyneux family at Sefton; the fee held in this county by the Marsey family, with three knights' fees in co. Nottingham; the extensive fee held by the family of Gernet, chief foresters of Lancashire; and the fee comprising the south-eastern half of Furness, which was held by the Fleming family, and was long known as Micheland, from Michel le Fleming, the first grantee. These may possibly have ranked as baronies at one time or another during the first century after Domesday, but of this there is no evidence, nor can the enjoyment of special franchises, nor inclusion amongst the 'barones comitatus' of the holders of these fees, be considered as sufficient justification to include their fees among the Lancashire baronies.[3]
THE BARONY OF THE CONSTABLE OF CHESTER WITHIN THE LYME[4]
The earliest infeudation within the district afterwards known as Lancashire of which there is any indication was that by which four hides and one carucate of land between Ribble and Mersey were conferred upon the constable of Hugh Lupus, earl of Chester,[5] but whether by the Conqueror himself or by Roger of Poitou, after he had received his English fief, and whether to Nigel, the first constable, or to William, his son and successor, it is not possible to determine.[6] The inclusion among the barons of Roger of Poitou of a great Cheshire feudatory—who also held lands in distant parts of England under the earl of Chester—was probably due to the dictates of
297
- ↑ Dep. Keeper's 30th Rep. p. vi.
- ↑ Ibid. W. Hardy, Charters of the Duchy of Lanc, in which volume all the charters and acts of Parliament affecting the Duchy from 1342 to 1558 are set forth in full.
- ↑ Cf. Tait, Mediæval Manchester, pp. 182-197.
- ↑ Dugdale, Baronage, i. 100; Cotton MSS. Cleop. C. iii. f. 332b (Mon. Ang. vi. 315).
- ↑ See the chapter on Dom. Bk. p. 280 above.
- ↑ The statement which originated with Dr. Kuerden that William fitz Nigel acquired Widnes by marriage with the heiress of Yarfrith, a supposed pre-Conquest baron of Widnes, obtains no confirmation from Domesday nor from any other known record, and may well be discredited.
