377 
Erlestoke and its Manor Lords. 
By Joun Watson-Taytor. 
(Continued from page 309). 
THE PLACE-NAME. 
SHE earliest mention of Erlestoke is found in the Pipe Roll 
of 1198, where it is referred to as “ terre de Stokes,” and 
the same form is used in a Close Roll of the year 1220. In the 
Red Book of the Exchequer and in the Book of Fees it is called 
Stoke, and when Richard, Bishop of Salisbury, 1217—1228, granted 
the Church of Melksham to the resident canons, he included in 
the gift “the chapel of Stoke.”! In the chartulary of Montacute 
Priory the place-name occurs twice in one folio, in one place as 
_“Erlestokes” and in the other as “Stoches.” The date of the 
original grant of the mill of Erlestoke to that priory was about 
1155, but the chartulary is a transcript of the time of Stephen 
Rawlin,? who was appointed Prior in July, 1297.3 In 1227 the 
name first appears in the public records as Erlestoke, and is found 
thus spelt, with a few exceptions, in seventy-two separate docu- 
ments relating to the following three hundred years. The first 
exception occurs in a post mortem inquisition taken at “Eorlestoke” 
in the year 1340, and the “o” is introduced again four or five times 
in the next fifty years, but not after that time. Isolated mis- 
spellings such as Erlestone, Ellerstoke, and Erlescote occur at the 
same period, but in the same documents the correct spelling is 
given, and on three other occasions the first syllable is spelt Herle, 
Erly, and Ewell. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the 
spelling begins to get very erratic, especially in wills, in one of 

















1 B.M. Add. Ch. 37666. 2 Coxe, Catalogus Codicum. 
; 3 Somerset Record Society, viii., p. lxix. 
VOL. XXXIII.—NO. CII. 2c 
