EARLY HISTORY TO A.D. 1300. 25 
possessions, which lay close to his hands. The Abbot, too, was 
over the sea, and his representatives—probably only a few monks 
and lay brethren—could offer but little resistance, and so Robert, 
his son, seized Lewisham and Greenwich and held them in spite of 
Abbot and King. 
Naturally the Abbot carried the matter before Henry I, and 
Robert de Baunton was summoned to appear and answer for his 
claim. This, however, he disdained to do, and in default King 
Henry adjudged the Manors to be the property of the Abbot of 
Ghent, and forbad Robert to molest him. King Stephen also gave 
the Abbot a further Charter, declaring that the pretensions advanced 
by Robert de Baunton were ill-founded, and Bulls were obtained 
from Popes Eugenius III and Alexander III, excommunicating all 
who should presume to interfere with the Abbot’s possessions in 
Lewisham and Greenwich. 
From proceedings which took place later, we learn that Robert 
and his friends murmured so loudly against these decrees, and held 
the King and Abbot in such ill-will*—by which we may presume 
that no artifice within the law, or indeed without, which those 
troublous times allowed, went untried—that the Abbot, for the 
sake of peace, granted the Manors to Robert and his heirs, for a 
yearly rent of £25. 
Robert’s daughter and heir, Juliana, married William Paganell, 
who founded the Priory of Drax, in Yorkshire, and the Manors 
appear to have remained in their hands and those of their son, 
Fulke Paganell. The Abbot’s Charter had been taken to Uffeculme 
in Devonshire, for greater security, but in the wars betw een 
Stephen and the Empress Maud, the Manor House there, with the 
Charter, was burnt. Whether the Abbot became aware of this, or 
merely regarded his arrangement with Robert de Baunton as a 
lease, it is impossible to say ; anyway, he obtained a confirmation 
from King John in 1208, and in 1222 he commenced an action in 
the King’s Courts to recover possession from William Paganell, 
the son of Fulke. 
William produced his two freemen, Simon, son of Humphrey 
de Grenewiche, and Michael, son of William de Silverton, in 
Devonshire, who offered to prove by their bodies in combat, if the 
Court should so decide, that their fathers had seen the Charter of 
the Abbot, granting Lewisham to Robert de Baunton, and had 
ordered them to come-forward with their testimony if ever they 
heard talk of it, and they asserted that Robert de Baunton held 
Lewisham and Greenwich when Henry | died. 
The Abbot was represented by Friars Arn and John, and the 
2ist of April was fixed for the trial. The case was, however, 
settled peaceably. The Abbot undertook to pay 1o1 silver marks 
to William Paganell, who on his part renounced all rights in the 
* Drake's Hasted, page 238, from the Coram Rege Roll, Henry III, 
No. 2, m. 7, Kent. 
