A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



ancestor in the male line of that family of Shirley by whom it has been 

 held ever since. 1 It is doubtful whether in all England there exists 

 another case of an under-tenant's manor so demonstrably descending in a 

 male line unbroken. That this descent can be established is partly due 

 to the fact that the holder of Eatington was an under-tenant on a very 

 considerable scale. He held of Ferrers in Derbyshire, in Northampton- 

 shire, and in Lincolnshire as well as here, and his holdings were repre- 

 sented in 1 1 66 by nine knight's fees. 1 As there has been some miscon- 

 ception with regard to the origin of ' Saswalo,' one may here explain that 

 there were certainly two (and possibly four) bearers of the name in 

 Domesday. The one who held in Oxfordshire and Berkshire under 

 Geoffrey de Mandeville was represented by Sewale s de Oseville in 1 1 66 and 

 probably bore that surname. Our Warwickshire ' Saswalo ' was then 

 represented by ' Sewaldus.' 4 It is clear, therefore, that Saswalo was only 

 a Latinization of a name represented now by ' Sewell.' That its bearers 

 were foreigners, not Englishmen, is shown by their having as predecessors 

 several different men and by the absence of the name in England before 

 the Conquest. 



The other Warwickshire under-tenant who appears to have been 

 the ancestor of a still existing family is ' Rannulf,' who held at Kinwar- 

 ton under the abbot of Evesham. The researches of General Wrottesley 

 have left little doubt that ' Rannulf was the brother of Walter then 

 abbot, and that he was ancestor in the male line of the house of Wrot- 

 tesley. 6 This he has established by Evesham evidences, and his researches 

 have incidentally illustrated other points in the survey of the shire, as is 

 seen in this introduction. 



At length we may approach the question of the native landowners 

 and their fate. Great obscurity still surrounds the process by which the 

 English holders were dispossessed by the strangers. The magnates, no 

 doubt, were dispossessed either at the opening of William's reign or, on 

 various pretexts, in the course of it. As a typical example we may take 

 the case of an English noble who has not yet been properly identified in 

 Domesday. Three at least of the Warwickshire manors that had passed 

 to Henry de Ferrers had been held by Siward Barn, who may also have 

 held the rest, for all we know to the contrary. In Gloucestershire Henry's 

 only estate, the valuable manor of Lechlade,* had been held by the same 

 man. Far away in Lincolnshire, in its north-west corner, Henry's only 

 manor in the county, where his tenant was the Warwickshire 'Saswalo,' 

 had been held by the same man, oddly disguised as 'Seubar' (fo. 353), 

 and he was claiming other land as having been his at Amcotts. 7 Now 



1 This was demonstrated by Mr. Evelyn Shirley in his own history of his family. 



1 Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 336. 



Or 'Sewalus' (Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 345). Cf. Geoffi-ey de Mandeville, p. 231. 



Or ' Sawaldus ' (Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 336). 



See A History of the Family of Wrottesley of Wrottesley. By Major-General Wrottesley (re- 

 printed from the Genealogist, 1903). 



'Siward bar tenuit' (169). 



7 Henricus de ferrariis clamat super ipsum Goisfridum iij bov' terrac, hoc et terram Siwardbar 

 in Amecotes' (376b). 



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