300 Evlestoke and its Manor Lords. 
also a chapelry of Melksham, is spoken of in Testa de Nevill + (cirea 
1242) as a member of the manor of Melksham, and was held of 
the King by John de Cherbourgh’; and in the same record Erlestoke 
and Seend are classed together, apparently by a printer’s error, at 
the end of a list of fees of the Abbot of Malmesbury.* In the 
description of Melkshain, whose name occurs twice in Domesday 
Book, there is nothing by which Erlestoke can be separately 
identified, nor does the description contain any name of which 
even an echo remains in any of the local place-names, and the 
only statement that can be applied directly is that it was in the 
hands of the King, and had been held by Earl Harold in the time 
of Edward the Confessor. It is proved by records of a later time 
that Erlestoke remained a royal manor until the reign of Henry L, 
but this is all that is known positively of it until the reign of 
Stephen, Henry’s nephew, who usurped the throne in the place of 
of Maud, Henry’s only surviving child and his acknowledged heir, 
the wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. 
After Domesday Book the most valuable source of information 
in regard to the early history of manors is found in the cartularies 
of religious houses, in which were preserved copies of the charters 
by which their lands and other property had been granted to them, 
for these charters often contained important details as to the 
family and property of the benefactor. 
THE DE MANDEVILLES, 1100—1200. 
Thus it is in the case of Erlestoke, for (from the cartulary 
of the Cluniac Priory of Montacute (Somerset) we learn that 
one Roger, the son of Stephen de Mandeville, held the manor 
of Erlestoke, of the King in chief, at the middle of the twelfth 
century. The information comes from a charter of Roger de 
Mandeville by which he granted to the Priory: “for the soul of 

1p. 154, b. 
2p. 142. 
3p. 157, b. 
