A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



Derbyshire) valuable manor of Melbourne. 1 In the borough of Derby 

 Earl ./Elfgar had held eight messuages with sac and soc, which had also 

 passed to the king. 



The king's property in the shire was still further increased by a 

 number of manors which, before the Conquest, had belonged to various 

 holders. These are usually found in the north of the county. To the 

 west of the Derwent come Eyam and Stony Middleton, while Beeley, 

 4 Langelcie ' and Chatsworth and Walton connect the king's estates along 

 that river with the wide-spreading manor of Newbold, the pre-Conquest 

 owner of which, curiously enough, is not given in Domesday. Further 

 south come Tibshelf, close to the Nottinghamshire border, and Mapperley. 

 It looks almost as if the addition of the first five of these manors to the 

 royal demesne marks a deliberate attempt on the part of the king to round 

 off his possessions in the north of the county. 



Of the two ecclesiastical tenants-in-chicf in the county, the bishop 

 of the diocese in which Derbyshire was situated comes first in order. 

 This was Peter, a Norman ecclesiastic, who had removed the seat of the 

 Mercian diocese from the insignificant village of Lichfield to the great 

 city and port of Chester, in accordance with the continental usage by 

 which a bishop would generally reside in the chief town of the district 

 under his spiritual care. In Derbyshire he only held Sawley and its 

 adjacent 4 soke ' of Long Eaton in the south-east corner of the county, 

 and the manor of Bupton in its centre, which long continued to be held 

 of his successors. 



The only religious house which held in chief in Derbyshire was the 

 abbey of Burton-on-Trent, and it is interesting to note that most of its 

 possessions in this county had been acquired since the Conquest, a fact 

 which is especially remarkable, as its English abbot, Leofric, seems to 

 have held his office until his death in 1085. This was the case with the 

 great manor of Mickleover, which had belonged to Edward the Confessor, 

 and the gift of which was therefore probably the act of the Conqueror 

 himself." It was also undoubtedly the case with Caldwell, of which it is 

 said that 4 King William gave this manor to the monks 4C pro beneficio 

 suo." The word 4 bcneficium ' is rare in Domesday, but probably in this 

 case it has no specially ecclesiastical meaning, and on page 335 the phrase 

 is simply translated * for their own advantage.' A more interesting grant 

 is the manor of 'Cotes/ now Coton-in-the-Elms. In Domesday this 

 manor merely appears as a former possession of Earl Elfgar ;' but from an 

 entry in the Burton Cbartulary we gather that it had been given to the 

 abbey in the Confessor's time by Earl Morcar, that at the Conquest it had 

 fallen into the hands of the king, and that finally the Conqueror, when 



1 The account of Melbourne contains the curioui itatement that ' In King Edward's time it was 

 worth 10, now it ii worth 6, but nevertheless it render* 10' It ii by no meant unknown 

 eltewhere in Domesday for a manor to pay, under the Normans, a sum of money in excess of its estimated 

 value. 



* The grant of Mickleover is assigned to William I. in the A***h tfB*rtt*, and also in the bull of 

 Pope Lucius III., confirming the abbey's pottessioni in 1 185. See Dugdale, MM. iii. 41. 



1 It so happens that in this entry the earl appears without his comital style. 



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