382 Erlestoke and its Manor Lords. 
place-names, or substituted for other identifications. In Wiltshire 
we have the example of Winterbourne Earls, called after the Earl 
of Sarum, but as a rule the title was a prefix. In Shropshire Earls 
Ditton took its name from the Earl of March, seigneur of the 
lordship of Mortimer, to which it belonged; in Yorkshire Earls 
Heaton from William, Earl of Warren, Earls Sterndale from 
William Ferrers, Earl of Derby, and Earlesburgh from Allan, Earl 
‘of Richmond; in Worcestershire Earls Cromb from Thomas.de 
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in Norfolk Earl Soham, formerly 
Soham Barres, was re-named after Roger de Bigod, Earl of Norfolk ; 
and in Essex Earls Bury, part of the manor of Fernham, was 
separately named after Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, and 
Earls Colne took its name from the De Veres, Earls of Oxford, 
who also gave the name Earls Court to their residence in the manor 
of Kensington. 
At the time when the prefix was first added to Erlestoke the — 
manor was in the hands of the family of Fitz-Herbert, to whom it 
had come by marriage with the De Mandeville family.!. It is not 
clear how the De Mandevilles acquired the manor for no charter 
containing or referring to the grant has been found, and the only _ 
reference to the transaction by which it passed from the hands of 
the King is contained in the Curia Regis roll of the reign of Hen. — 
IIL.,? recording the suit instituted by the King for a restoration of 
the manor on the ground that it was ancient demesne of the crown 
wrongfully alienated during the reign of Henry I. If the alienation 
was the act of the King it might be supposed that having granted 



it to some Earl who had afterwards incurred his displeasure, he 
had escheated it and re-granted it to the De Mandeville family, _ 
who had always been in his favour.. In such a case William, Earl — 
of Morton, who had many properties in the west of England, may _ 
have been the first tenant of Erlestoke and have lost it with 
his other lands when he was banished in 1104, but an act of © 
: . 

1This name suggests a connection with the Earls of Essex, of which, how- 
ever, there is as yet no evidence. 
2 No. 151, 37 and 38, Hen. ITI. n. 16. 
