54 Erlestokc and its Manor Lords. 



for in 1199 he appeared in the King's Court on behalf of his wife 

 to answer to a claim put forward by the monks of Stanley con- 

 cerning the advowson of the church of Stokenham (Devon), which 

 they said had been granted to them by Mabilia Patric, Joan's mother. 

 Matthew told the court that before replying to the claim he must 

 first hear what his mother-in-law had to say about the charter 

 which the monks produced, and the court thereupon sent four 

 knights as a commission to take the evidence of Mabilia, who 

 eventually i-eported that she repudiated the charter on the ground 

 that it had been executed after Matthew Fitz-Herbert had married 

 her daughter and had had livery from the King of the lands to 

 which the church belonged.^ 



From the sixth year of John's reign Matthew's name occurs 

 frequently as a witness to royal charters issuing from so many 

 diiferent places as to show that he was, like his brother Peter, 

 attached in some capacity to the court, and in 1205 the first of the 

 many favours he received at the hands of the King is recorded, in 

 the grant of forty pounds' worth of land in Kinnemersdon and 

 Wufrinton (Somerset).- At the same time, he received for the 

 term of his life two-thirds of the manor of Warblington, lately 

 held by Robert de Courcy and forfeited into the hands of the 

 King because he had given his adhesion to the King of France 

 against the King of England, in exchange for the lands in Normandy 

 (the fee of Olonde), which Matthew had lost as a result of the 



» Palgrave, Hot. Cur. Reg., i., 239, 313, 397, ii., 53, 226 ; Ahb. P/ac, p. 25. 

 The name of the Church is given in these records as Stoke twice, as Hurdestoke 

 twice, and once as Hurdestan, but in each case as occurring in Devon. Mr. 

 Stapleton identified it as Erlestoke (Rut. Scacc. Norm., ii., p. clxxxix.), but 

 in Charter Roll (83), 23 Hen. III., m. 4, No. 35, where the estates of Matthew's 

 descendant are grouped under the counties of Hants, Wilts, and Devon, 

 Erlestoke is mentioned in the second group and Hurdestoke in the third in 

 such a position as to make it clear that it is an early name for Stokenham. 

 Herdestoke occurs in the Red Book of the Exchequer (p. 243), where John 

 of that place is given as a knight of Humphrey de Bohun sharing half a fee 

 with William Fitz-Roger, but in the Liber Niger the name is given as 

 Erdecote, a form of Hurdecot, and a fee of the Bohun family, cf. Testa de 

 Nevill, p. 136, 156i. JVforeover Erlestoke is known to have been from the 

 earliest times a chapelry of the parish of Melksham. 



- Rot. Lilt. Glaus, l, lib, 48 ; Gal. Pat. Rolls, p. 8J. ; Rot. de Finibus, p. 275. 



