126 DUFFIELD CASTLE. 



(Horsley), Derbyshire, reciting that it was granted to him for the 

 purpose of placing his wife there. * The wife of William, Earl 

 Ferrers, was Agnes de Bohun, daughter of Hugh, Earl of Chester, 

 and sister and co-heiress of Ralph de Blundeville ; she brought to 

 her husband the manor and castle of Chartley, as well as the 

 seigniory of all the lands between the rivers Ribble and Mersey. 

 The reason for this assignment of his wife to the stronghold of 

 Horsley (not noticed by any previous chronicler of the Ferrers 

 family), seems to us to have been from his desire, in those troublous 

 times, of leaving his wife in a place of special security during his 

 absence in the Holy Land, for which he was then preparing in order 

 to accompany the king. But an armed rising of the barons prevented 

 their departure, and then William de Ferrers, putting himself at 

 the head of the royalist forces, wrested the castles of Peak and 

 Bolsover, by assault, from the rebels, and was thereupon (1216) 

 made governor of both of those royal fortresses,t so that he then 

 held every Derbyshire stronghold of any importance. 



When Henry III. came to the throne, a few months after these 

 grants, William Earl Ferrers was for a third time present at a 

 coronation, the ceremony taking place at Gloucester, on the eve 

 of SS. Simon and Jude. He was immediately engaged under his 

 new monarch in suppressing rebellious barons in Leicestershire 

 and Lincoln, and received new patents for the custody of the 

 castles of Bolsover and the Peak, holding the government of them 

 for six years.J He was again made governor of Bolsover later on 

 in the same reign. § Throughout the first half of Henry III.'s 

 reign, there is not a single State document of importance for which 

 this sturdy zealous Earl Ferrers was not either a witness or a 

 bondsman ; but his loyalty was not indiscriminating, for in the 

 nth year of Henry he threatened, and with success, to take up 



* Rotuli Lit. Pat. 16 John, memb. 2. 



t Rotuli Lit. Pat. 18 John, memb. 5. John, a Canon of Beauchief, was 

 sent by the king with letters patent to Gerald de Furnivall, to whom he had 

 granted a temporary tenancy of Bolsover caslle for the security of his wife and 

 children, ordering that he should at once make way for the Earl of Ferrers. 



X Rot. Lit. Pat. I Henry I IT., m. 6 and 15. 



§ Rot. Lit. Pat. 19 Henry III., m. 13. 



