By John Watson-Tajilor. 57 



Oxfordsliire,^ in which capacity he was present at Westminster on 

 June 20th, 1219, when a final concord was made between Bishop 

 Poore and William Fitz-Alan concerning lands in Potterne.- In 

 1223, as Sheriff of Sussex and Keeper of Chichester Forest, he had 

 orders to make forty ships' gangways (cleias), measuring seven by 

 five feet, and to send them with all haste to Porchester, where, it 

 is probable, the King was fitting out his expedition for the defence 

 of Poitou against Louis of France, and in the next year he was 

 instructed to take measures for the protection of the Cinque Ports 

 against possible attacks by foreigners.^ In 1225 he was in at- 

 tendance at court, and was a witness to two royal charters of which 

 one was the celebrated forest charter by which Henry III. sur- 

 rendered the forest rights that had been created since the accession 

 of Henry II.,* and in 1227 he was evidently a justice itinerant in 

 the eastern counties.^ Other entries in the Close Polls seem to 

 suggest that towards the end of his life Matthew Fitz-Herbert had 

 made Erlestoke his place of residence, for in 1220 he received a 

 gift of ten oaks from the Forest of Chippenham for the purpose of 

 re-building his houses there, and four years later the King granted 

 him thirty rafters from Melksham Forest, while in 1227 he bought 

 from the daughters of a tenant who had lately died, their interest 

 in eighty-four acres which they held of the manor.** In the winter 

 of 1229 he had a grant of four old and dry oak trees from Melksham 

 Forest, which must have been intended for use as fuel, though the 

 words ad focum sunm, which generally accompany such a grant, 

 are not present in this case, and it is thus evident that some one 

 of the family was resident at Erlestoke at this time, though it may 

 have been one of his younger sons, for it was the custom for one 

 of a family to engage in agriculture on his father's property, and 

 the purchase of land noticed above may have been for his benefit. 



' Foss., Judges of England, ii., 327. 



- Register of S. Osmund, ed. W. H. Eich Jones, sub A.D. 1219. 



« Bot. Litt. Glaus, i., 557, 614 



< B.M., Add. Chart. 24712; Hail. Chart., 43, D, 6. 



'" Rot. Litt. Claus, ii., 213. 



" lb., i. 423, 597 ; Feet of Fines, Wilts, File 6, No. 55. 



