DOMESDAY SURVEY 



This last very remarkable case undoubtedly suggests partition between 

 co-heirs. 



First in order among the holders of land in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, 

 stands the king, whose possessions in our county were derived from three 

 sources. He had succeeded his predecessor King Edward in a very 

 remarkable group of manors stretching almost without a break across the 

 county from Ashbourne to the Yorkshire border. These are the manors 

 of Ashbourne, Parwich, Wirksworth, ' Mestesforde,' Darley Dale, Bake- 

 well, Ashford, and Hope, which with their dependent villages form such 

 a noticeable feature of the Domesday map. The structure of these manors 

 will be discussed later, 1 but it is important to note that they had been 

 ' farmed ' together before the Conquest, as at the time of the Survey, in 

 two groups, one consisting of the three northern manors of Bakewell, 

 Ashford, and Hope, the other consisting of the five western manors. The 

 payments made by these manors are interesting. In King Edward's time 

 the former group paid >C3> 5} ' sestiers ' of honey, and 5 cart-loads of 

 lead, consisting of 50 slabs ; the latter group, including Wirksworth, 

 which long continued the centre of the lead-mining industry, rendering 

 32 and 6j 'sestiers' of honey. It will be noted that the total of the 

 honey rendered amounted to twelve ' sestiers,' a fact which shows that the 

 honey payment from the Derbyshire manors was arranged on a plan 

 similar to that which prevailed in Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and else- 

 where, 2 namely, according to a unit of six ' sestiers.' At the time of the 

 Survey the Ashbourne group paid 40 ' of pure silver,' a phrase which 

 seems to be unique in Domesday, while the payments from the three 

 northern manors had shrunk to 10 6s. Of these last manors it is said 

 that 'William Peverel has charge of them' (custodit), a phrase which 

 probably means that he acted as the king's bailiff, paying over to him 

 the full profits of these estates. But they must have come into his 

 personal possession soon after Domesday, as between iioo and 1108 he 

 and his men granted tithes from them to his new foundation of Lenton 

 Priory, Notts. 8 



The second division of the king's land consisted of the forfeited 

 estates of the late earl of the shire, Edwin, the grandson of Earl Leofric 

 of Mercia. But it is curious that in Derbyshire, as in Staffordshire, 

 the former holder of these manors is given, not as Edwin, but as his 

 father, Earl ^Elfgar, although the latter had died in 1065. Earl Edwin 

 himself appears as a former landholder at Doveridge and Edlaston, which 

 had passed to Henry de Ferrers. Earl ./Elfgar's manors lie along the 

 Trent in the south of the shire, and include Walton-on-Trent, Repton, 

 famous in earlier Mercian history, (King's) Newton, and Weston-on-Trent. 

 Close to King's Newton Edward the Confessor had himself held the (for 



1 See below, page 312. See V. C. H. Wano. i. 272. 



s See his foundation charter, Dugdale, Mon. v. in. It is witnessed by Archbp. Gerard, of 

 York (i 100-1108). That it was Henry I. who made the final grant of these estates to Wm. Peverel 

 is proved by an interesting writ printed in the Monasticm (viii. 1272), in which that king directs that 

 Robert, Bishop of ' Chester,' is to re-obtain possession of his churches in the Peak as he had held them 

 ' ea die qua Willelmo Peyerell dominium meam de Pecco dedi.' 



I 297 38 



