210 ANTIQUITIES OF OKEHAMPTON. 



The arms bom by De Brionys and his descendants — they are 

 seen in this hall — are, in the language of heralds, cheeky, or 

 and azure, over all two bars, argent. 



Few boroughs of equal antiquity with Okehampton can trace 

 with more clearness the origin and progress of their liberties. 

 We have seen that Baldwin, the Viscount, as he is termed in 

 Doomsday book, held this town on the tenure of knight's service : 

 there was also a fine or quit rent to the crown of four shillings 

 yearly. Robert de Courtenay, in time of Henry III. made this 

 place a free burg ; but the rights of the burgesses were not merely 

 nominal at a date yet earlier. We learn this from the preamble 

 of the charter itself : it proposes to confirm to them all the lib- 

 erties and privileges they held in the time of Richard (Fitz Bald- 

 win) and of Robert the son of Reginald, Maude Abarenges his 

 wife, and of Ilawise, mother of the granter.* 



t Hawise, as well as I can trace the descent, was the grand- 

 child of De Brionys' youngest daughter, the Lady Emma, by her 

 second husband, William Averinches. Their heiress, the Maude 

 Abarenges of the deed, married Reginald natural son of King 

 Henry I., and earl of Cornwall. 



By this charter the rights of the burgesses are established " in 

 woods and in uplands, in ways and in paths, in common of pas- 

 tures, in waters and in mills." 



They might turn their swine to graze in the Lord Courtenay *s 

 forest. 



They were to be free from all manner of toll, and are en pow- 

 ered to elect their own portreeve and a beadle. 



Other rights not strictly authorized by this grant, in time grew 

 prescriptive here ; and the citizens seem to have acted in all res- 

 pects as a body corporate long before they obtained the royal 

 sanction. In the 4th. James 1st. the liberties of this place were 

 formally recognized by the crown. His charter was confirmed 

 and the privileges of the town enlarged by Charles II. in 1671. 

 (query 1684) This was done, as is stated in the preamble, in 

 gratitude for services rendered by Robert Rattenbury, Mayor of 

 Okehampton, to his father of blessed memory. It occurred 

 after the surrender of the royalist army to Sir Thomas Fairfax, at 

 Bodmin, in 1646. 



• Sir William Pole's genealogy of the Courtenays is mentioned as having 

 been " taken from the leiger book of Okehampton, fortified by extract, from 

 old deeds." 



tMr. L}sons should have consulted that oldest yet most faithful of anti«i".a- 

 ries Brown Willis. 



I 



