DOMESDAY SURVEY 



granted after Henry de Ferrers had come to an agreement with King 

 William II. at Marlborough, although four later Latin verses added to the 

 document as there printed ascribe the foundation to the year 1080. Here 

 then, as in other cases, the monastery would seem to have been in being 

 before it received a formal confirmation of its possessions. The original 

 endowment in the county consisted of Marston on Dove, which was 

 given by Henry, and Doveridge, a former estate of Earl Edwin which was 

 the gift of Bertha, Henry's wife. Together they bestowed Little Brough- 

 ton or West Broughton in Doveridge, which is not mentioned in Domes- 

 day and must be distinguished from Church Broughton, which the monks 

 obtained later in part exchange for Stanford. 1 They also obtained by the 

 foundation charter the tithes of many of Henry's Derbyshire manors, and 

 we have seen the extent to which the new foundation was supported by 

 his undertenants. 



Following Henry de Ferrers in the Derby Survey comes William 

 Peverel. His estates in Derbyshire were less extensive than might have 

 been expected in view of the immortality which his name has gained 

 in connexion with the Peak. Nothing certain is known of his origin, 

 although a seventeenth-century antiquary 2 started the very improbable 

 theory that he was an illegitimate son of the Conqueror himself. The 

 possessions entered under his own name fall into two groups, one consist- 

 ing of a number of manors scattered down the eastern border of the 

 county from Bolsover to Codnor, the other making a compact block 

 of territory on the edge of Peak Forest. It is to this second group that 

 special interest attaches as it includes Peak Castle, 8 the site of which 

 is described vaguely as ' the land of William Peverel's castle in Peak 

 Forest,' the structure being evidently too recent a creation in 1086 to have 

 given rise at that date to the modern name, Castleton, of the village 

 in which it stands. It is one of a class of fortresses which at the time of 

 the Survey was somewhat rare in England proper, those namely which 

 were wholly in private hands. In many castles, especially those situated 

 in boroughs, the lord appears at this time rather as the king's lieutenant 

 than as a private owner ; others again were the personal property of the 

 king. But even before the death of the Conqueror many castles had 

 arisen which were simply the residence of their lord and the head of his 

 fief, and Peak Castle, like those of Tutbury and Berkhamstead, belongs 

 to this class. It was moreover situated very conveniently for a castle 

 which was to be the centre of the royal manors of north-west 

 Derbyshire. We have seen already that William Peverel held these 

 manors in 1086 simply on the king's behalf as his representative or bailiff, 

 and that they had become part of his own property before 1 108. The 

 foundation charter of Lenton Priory, 4 from which we obtain a limit of 

 date for the change, gives us other information about his possessions 

 in north Derbyshire. From it we gather that they extended to the 



1 In Leic. Glover the Herald. See V. C. H. Northants, i. 289. 



3 For a description of Peak Castle, see Engl. Hist. Rev. Ixxv. and Mr. St. John Hope's paper 

 in Arcb<eologcal Journal, be. 88. 4 Dugdale, Mm. v. ill. 



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