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 Doctor of PHYSICK .

LONDON , Printed by Robert White , for Henry Mortlock , at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard , and at the White-Hart in Westminster-Hall , 1677.

THE Art of Physick , which I have professed ( with competent success ) in this County , not being able for any long time to continue the people living in it , I have charitably attempted , notwithstanding 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 latter 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 relish or please ) which no body else of better abilities and qualifications , hath hitherto performed ; 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 famous Survey made by King William the first , in the latter part of his Reign , which still remains 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 accrewing 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 Honour , 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 't is 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 exceeded more , in others less , as we may well suppose , and in process of time ( if nothing 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 Householders , sufficient Pledges , and as it were incorporated , for keeping the Kings Peace , the chief whereof was called Tythingman , and Friborgh , now corrupted into Thirdborough . 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 Officer , 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 employment , 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 Constableries , 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 examples 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 Parliamentary 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 obtained 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 administer 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 called 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 ordinarily of the younger sons or brothers of the Lords of the less sort of Mannors , being certainly 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 't is probable there was in all or most other very great Mannors or Sokes , which contained several Tythings or Townships ; 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 entred 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 condition , 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 Inhabitants 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 portion 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 contain 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 Ministerial 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 little 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 fundamental , 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 also 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 Medow , though 't is 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 respective 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 Monasteries , whose Lands and Tythes being presently after made the Possessions and Inheritances 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 Pasture , 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 publick 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 divers 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 Tillage : 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 , Drunkennes , 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 , dispersed 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 27 th . yere of King Henry the eighth , of famous memory , untill the 35. yere of her Majesties most happy Reigne , there was alwayes in force some Law which did ordeine a conversion 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 particular , 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 Catalogue 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 marked 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. Dugdale ; 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 Records , 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 .