A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



Hugh's fief was subsequently known as the Honour of Haughley or of 

 ' the Constabulary,' we ought to be able to trace this manor among the 

 fees which owed castle ward at Dover, several lists of which are pre- 

 served. 1 From one of these we fortunately learn that Robert de Scales 

 held of the Honour of Haughley one fee ' in Bedenestede in Essexa.' 2 

 Morant alleged, somewhat vaguely, that the manor lay in West Hanning- 

 field and Rettendon, and that its name was preserved in ' Bensted 

 Common ' (ii. 38-9), which is no longer found on the map. But the 

 above entry leads us to look for some manor in Chelmsford Hundred 

 held by the Scales family ; and this we find in Sandon. Moreover 

 Sandon is known to have been held as one fee ' of the castle of Dover.' 3 

 and to have paid ten shillings to its castle-guard : in both these respects it 

 answers to ' Bedenesteda.' Therefore although ' there is no mention of 

 it,' according to Morant, 'in Domesday' (ii. 26), I cannot hesitate to 

 see it in the ' Bedenesteda ' of the Survey. Hugh's manor however was 

 only one portion of it ; another manor is entered in Domesday (although 

 Morant ignored the entry) as in ' Bedenesteda,' and as held of Robert 

 son of Corbutio, the devolution of whose fief is somewhat obscure. It 

 is probable that there were two distinct manors, which Morant, as in 

 another instance, has confused. 



The student has also to be warned against a strange liberty which 

 Morant took with his records. The returns of knights' fees in 1166 

 record the names of knights who held of a tenant-in-chief, but not the 

 names of the places in which their lands were held. Morant supplied 

 the latter out of his own imagination. Kewton or Cuton Hall, for in- 

 stance, is an ancient manor in Springfield, of which the name would lead 

 us to look for it in Domesday. There is a ' Keuentuna ' in its own 

 Hundred of Chelmsford, and when Kewton Hall first appears in 1372, 

 we find it held of the heir of Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Domesday 

 lord of ' Keuentuna.' Morant however tells us that this Domesday 

 manor was Camseys in Felsted, and was so called because, in the reign 

 of Henry II., ' it was holden by Henry de Camse, as a knight's fee,' of 

 Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville (ii. 418). We turn to his authority only 

 to find that it names no locality, and that Henry's fee might as well have 

 been, and probably was, in East Tilbury, where on his own showing the 

 Camsey family held, under the heirs of Mandeville, one knight's fee 

 (i. 233). Felsted, one may add, is just beyond the border of Chelms- 

 ford Hundred, nor is there anything in Domesday or in any subsequent 

 record to connect Geoffrey or his heirs with any land in the parish. 



Kewton in Springfield adjoins Boreham, which affords us another 

 example of a modern parish representing more than one of the ancient 



1 No fewer than four such lists are contained in the Red Book of the Exchequer, and they all name 

 this manor (pp. 614, 706, 718, 742). In one, which is cited in the next note, the editor places it (as 

 ' Bensted ') in Essex ; in the other three he assigns it, in inexplicable error, to Kent (compare Arch. 

 Journ. lix. 155). 



2 Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 742. 



3 See Inquisitions of 10 Hen. V. and 1 1 Hen. VI. cited by Morant under Sandon, and that of 23 

 Sept. 25 Hen. VIII. (1533) on Thomas Tamworth. 



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