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1898.]

Mr. Hunter on English Topography.

or any toki μsyaλn xai rúdaipora of Xenophon. Neither has poetry yet

thrown her charm over our native hills

and streamlets, and exalted every little village that arose upon our plains. Still, to Englishmen, England is their native country; and to the ingenuous mind that word patria atones for a thousand defects, and gives her charms above really fairer regions. For my own part I may say, with the elegantminded Evelyn, "it is the country of my birth and delight."

Dear country! oh, how dearly dear Ought thy remembrance and perpetual band Be to thy foster-child, that from thy hand Did common breath and nouriture receive.

F. Q. ii. 10. 69.

What may be regarded as the prima stamina of a topographical work, is a personal survey of every place mentioned in it, and every object described in it, making notes upon the place, and trusting as little as possible to recollection. The churches, which in many places are the sole objects of curiosity, are to be examined with close attention. The monumental inscriptions, often the only record of persons eminent and useful in their day, are to be copied, and all which are in any respect remarkable presented to the world; while of others the material circumstance may be exhibited, as such notice may be useful to some inquirer when, perhaps, the original itself may have perished.

In those topographical tours much information is to be collected from intelligent inhabitants of the several villages; and I am bound to acknowledge the courteous attention which I have received from many persons in these inquiries, but more particularly from the clergy.

The history of a district is very much the history of the property of that district; and this divides itself into two parts, the ecclesiastical and the lay property. Again, the lay property lies for the most part in a lord paramount, as he is often called, that is, the person holding immediately of the crown; in a subsidiary lord, sometimes in a lord removed one step further from the crown; and in freeholders or copyholders, tenants to the lord. To attempt to give an account of the descent of mere freeholds or copyholds would be useless and impracticable; but of the course which the feudal superiority

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has taken, from its origin to the present day, an account is indispensible in a book which pretends to give an historical view of any district, especially since whatever there may be in a village to excite curiosity, or to invite at tention, is usually connected with the line of its lords; and whatever changes have taken place in the condition of the villagers, have for the most part originated with them.

And for the accomplishment of this portion of his task the topographer has the assistance of the Domesday-book. The present arrangement of property is to be referred for its origin to the times just preceding the preparation of that famous record. We have there the various townships which form, little changed, the present villare of England, arranged under the names of their feudal superiors, or those who in after times were called, as to all which they did not keep in demesne, the lords paramount; that is, lords who held their lands of no other but the king. This record shows us in a most lucid manner the original distribution. of property throughout this region. Whatever difficulties there may occasionally be in the descriptions given of the various townships, in that there are no difficulties; all is simple, clear, and easy.

Sometimes we find in the pages of Domesday the name of some person who held single townships of the tenant in chief, and so became the founder of the sub-fees. The Liber Niger lends some little assistance; and a very early list of tenants is preserved in the Testa de Nevil. It is, however, too well known to all who have attended to inquiries such as these, that the reigns of the sons, grandson, and great-grandson of the Conqueror are times of darkness, and that it is not till the reign of Henry III. that we have much direct and regular information respecting the descent of properties, however great. In the dark period before that reign we are obliged to collect our information, in the best manner we can, from the records or the charters of the religious houses, most of which were founded during that pe riod, and had most of the lords of the subsidiary fees amongst their benefactors; or from pleadings exhibited in later times, when it was necessary to set forth a title from an early period; or from solitary and casual notices in

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Mr. Hunter on English Topography.

record, chronicle, or charter; under which head may be placed the occasional notices in the Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer.

So little remains of the transactions in the first century and a half after the conquest, that it is only in the tenancies in chief, or the paramount lordships, that we are to expect an unbroken chain of descent. These tenancies were for the most part in the hands of the most eminent persons of the time, those whose actions were the subject of the general historian, and whose deaths were of sufficient consequence to claim a place in the public chronicles of the age.

With respect to the sub-lords, excepting some whose fees were so extensive that they rivalled the overlords in power and consequence, and forced themselves on the attention of the general historian, it rarely happens that a continued series can be given through that century and a half, though it also often happens that we may show persons holding the property in one age, which, in the next, is held by persons who use the same name of addition, and who may therefore be presumed to be the sons of the former.

But from the reign of king Henry III. the aspect of affairs is different. From that time we have various surveys of the lands held by the overlords, in which the names of those who held the sub-fees are given, and in some instances the names of various lords who held the lands at different periods. Kirkby's Inquest is one of these; this was taken in 1277, the fifth of Edward I. The record called the Nomina Villarum, which belongs to the 9 Edward II. is another. Domesday Book, the Liber Niger, and the Testa de Nevil, have been printed. Kirkby's Inquest and the Nomina Vil. larum seem to claim the earliest attention of the Commissioners of the Public Records. I speak my own experience when I say, that no single records have afforded more useful and more extended information than these have done. The Pipe Rolls only, on account of their high antiquity, and their closer bearing on the public transactions of the realm, can be said to surpass them in their claims on the attention of those Commissioners. But, besides these records, we have several surveys of the honours and the tenancies under the lords of Hallamshire, of

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the reign of Henry VI. and later periods. The printed works are of easy access, and much is due from the persons engaged in the topographic illus tration of our country to the wisdom and liberality of Parliament in having caused so many valuable records to be printed, and distributed in public libraries throughout the kingdom.

Surveys or extents present the outline; it is filled up, for the most part, by the aid of inquisitions post mortem. When any one died holding lands, the king's writ issued to the escheator to summon an inquest to determine of what lands he died possessed, the tenure of those lands, and who was the heir. These are the leading subjects of the inquisitions, and it is manifest at once how important they must be for carrying down the descent of property, and how certain mast be the record of that descent which is supported by evidence such as this. But they sometimes contain more than this. Collateral circumstances, such as settlements and provisions for younger children, are occasionally found; and it is no unusual circumstance to find the last wills of the deceased party recited at full in them. These inquisitions begin in the reign of Henry III. and are continued to the middle of the seventeenth century. Most of the original records are in the Tower.

The account given of the descent of manors from extents and inquisitions is aided by charter evidence. As charters merely related to private intercourse between man and man, there was no public registration of them, no common depositary, but they remained in the archives of the families by whom they were executed, or accompanied the property to which they related. To the fines passed of lands, and to wills, I have been greatly indebted. This species of evidence is the most curious and interesting of all, as any one may satisfy himself who shall peruse the Testamenta Vetusta of Mr. Nicolas.

*"Of these," remarks Mr. Hunter, "I may with truth say, that, for the purposes of the present work, I have perused and abstracted more than three thousand; but it is remarkable how few of them throw any valuable light upon the state of the country, relating chiefly, as those which I have seen do, to the smaller properties. Neither do they afford matter for any curious general conclusions. Some of them, however, are

1828.]

Mr. Hunter on English Topography. When the course of descent of a manor is shown, the next thing is to discover transactions of its lords respecting it, or transactions which throw light upon the character of those who held it. Here it will not be expected that much can be discovered. Grants of free warren, markets, and fairs, notices in the Hundred rolls of usurpations, patent grants for particular purposes, with occasional summonses to assist in military affairs, these form for the most part all that can now be reco vered of the men of consideration in the middle ages, except what may be collected from their private charters. For all these, the volumes published under the Record Commission have been of singular advantage.

Sometimes, however, we have more to relate; and pleas on trials or petitions to Parliament exhibit interesting facts. For the former I have been chiefly indebted to Dodsworth and Hopkinson; for the latter to the Rolls of Parliament, a work which, owing in a great measure to the want of an index, has not been used as it ought to have been by the topographical inquirer.

In preparing the accounts of the descents of the feudal interests, assistance has also been derived from the labours of industrious and ingenious persons who have applied themselves to the investigation of the gentilitial antiquities of the English nation. The superior fees have been for the most part in the hands of persons who ranked among the baronage of England, and some of the fees of the second class were also held by families in whom there were hereditary claims to distinctions. Concerning all families of those ranks much information has been collected, and much has been published. On the house of Warren, to whom Coningsborough and the Level of Hatfield belonged, we have a work in two quarto volumes; and of the Lacis, the Mauleys, and other families, the pages of Sir William Dugdale's Baronage afford ample information. I have used, how

of a higher character, and it will be seen, particularly in the second volume, of what use evidence of this kind may be made."

* An Index to the Rolls of Parliament was for many years the employment of the late Rev. John Pridden, F.S.A. (See vol. xcv. i. 468. Edward Upham, esq. F.S.A. is now engaged on the same task.-EDIT.

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ever, such information sparingly. I have wished as much as possible to avoid the repetition of that which was already before the public, and have preferred, rather than to transcribe from printed works which are equally the property of every one of my read ers as of myself, to offer a few remarks upon the accounts of these great houses given by my predecessors, as supple mentary to their labours, though conscious that the work might thereby incur the imputation of being meagre where it ought to be full. Our topographical works must, after all the compression that can be applied to them, be sufficiently large, and a topographer cannot, in my opinion, be too sparing in his use of that information which has long ago been made publici juris by some industrious predecessor.

In families of a rank below the ba ronage in whom these feudal interests have been vested, a different course has been adopted. Where the account of them was to be derived from manuscript authority, and not from printed books, I have ventured to consider myself in the light of one who is the first to write upon the subject, and the genealogical details which follow may be hereafter to others what the works of previous inquirers into the history of the baronage of England have been to

me.

And here I must acknowledge the great assistance which I have derived from the labours of some of the old officers of the College of Arms, whose visitation books contain a vast body of genealogical information.

But though these books must undoubtedly be regarded as containing the best and most authentic information in respect of our gentilitial antiquities, I must add that very valuable information has been obtained from other collections.

The pedigrees which, within the last century, have been from time to time entered in the records of the College of Arms have afforded valuable information in this department; and I may take leave to say that some have been either wholly compiled or continued by myself from original evidence, personal knowledge, or the information of the families themselves or of their friends; and that there is scarcely a pedigree throughout the work which has not been compared in respect of some of its statements with documentary evidence.

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Mr. Hunter on English Topography.

In a few instances I have likewise had the benefit of particular histories of particular families. Thus, when the head of the house of Wentworth was made a peer, he employed his relation, William Gascoign, to collect a genealogical account of his family, not confined to the line of Wentworth only, but embracing other of the allodial families of this district, of which the Lord Wentworth and Earl of Strafford was at that time the representative. The history of the house of Fitz-William, compiled by Hugh Fitz-William, early in the reign of Elizabeth, a manuscript of singular interest and beauty, is among the treasures at Milton, and the use of it has been permitted for the purposes of this work. A genealogical account of the house of Wortley, compiled in the time of Sir Richard Wortley, with some useful biographical notices, has enabled me to present a better account of that great family, than could have been prepared only from the documentary evidence which exists; a cus rious history of the family of Rokeby has been lent to me by Mr. Rokeby, of Northamptonshire; and, lastly, the history of the family of Foljambe, compiled by Dr. Nathaniel Johnston, now among Gough's manuscripts at the Bodleian, has left little to be collected in that line of descent, and but little to be done to continue it to the present generation.

The deduction of families necessarily forms a part of topographical works; but I must intreat the reader to bear in mind, that they only find a place there as they serve to illustrate and to exhibit the descent of properties. In works strictly genealogical, the history of manors and advowsons is properly made subservient to the history of some stirps which had connected itself with those manors. But in a work professedly topographical the history of the stirps is only subsidiary to the history of the manor. Hence, till a family allied itself with a particular property, any history of that family appears to be irrelevant. What can be more destructive of unity of design in a work of this nature, than to give a history from perhaps the reign of Henry III. of a family whose deposit was in Norfolk, in a work devoted to the topography of Devonshire, because late in the reign of George III. they might

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have become possessed of a manor in that county? Or what would be more out of place than, in this work, a his tory of the whole house of Lumley, peculiarly attractive as it is to the genealogist, because, in the person of Sir Thomas Lumley, they became possess ed about a century ago of a seat and fine estate in this deanery? The bulky appearance of some of our books of topography is principally to be attri buted to a neglect of this propriety. Nevertheless it is a propriety which may be observed with some excep tions. It seems proper to show from whence came the first of a family who acquired an establishment in the county on which the topographer is engaged. If it was a family indige nous, or which had long resided in the county before it had acquired one of the great interests within it, then also it may seem not improper to waive the observance of the rule; and it is at least an interesting subject of inquiry, where has vested in later times the re presentation of persons who once held high and commanding stations among the gentry of the county.

In some few instances, however, there are genealogical notices of families who do not appear to have allied themselves with any of the feudal interests within the district, and are only connected with it by residence or considerable estates, and having been by the heralds classed among the gentry.

The difficulty is great of obtaining accurate information of the descent which even considerable interests have taken in the period since the inquisitions ceased. A topographer cannot ask for the sight of documents which are still important to the sustaining of a title. Still, transactions of which these great interests are the subject, are for the most part too ostensible not to be matter of public notoriety. In some instances the most authentic and valuable information has been received from gentlemen in possession of these interests. And it has happened, perhaps fortunately for the topographer of this district, that a large proportion of the greater interests have not been unstable during the last century and a half, but have descended in the families of those who held them while still inquisitions were in use.

(To be continued.)

QUVALORD TIBKVBA

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