58 Rev. R. W. Bosanquet, A.M., on Rock Hall. 



gentleman's family, it lost its peculiar character as a Border 

 tower in that of a mansion. There are indications of its 

 having been inhabited by good families at so early a date, 

 that it is probable that its foundation took place in the time 

 of the Norman kings. Though I do not at this moment 

 enter upon the history of any inhabitant of the place, I will 

 just mention that, in the 6th year of Edward I. (1278), 1 

 find the name of Thomas de Rock in a list of good names of 

 persons holding 20 librates of land, some in capite (as tenants 

 in chief under the king), and some not,* " all of whom ought 

 to be knights and are not ; " and " all of whom are obliged 

 to find sureties! for their becoming knights before the follow- 

 ing Xmas." Therefore we may conclude that Rock at that 

 time was respectably inhabited ; and the first of the extracts 

 with which Mr. Tate has kindly furnished me from the Testa 

 de Neville, shews that in the first half of the same 13th cen- 

 tury, between 1219 and 1252, " William de Rok held Rock 

 under William de Vescy " (who was tenant in capite and 

 held direct from the king) " by service of half a knight's 

 fee of ancient feoffment (that is a feoffment prior to 1135, the 

 time of the death of Henry I.) This throws the first valua- 

 tion of Rock back quite to the time of the Norman kings, and 

 there is no reason to suppose that it was not inhabited as a 

 mansion at that early date ; for the service by which it was 

 held, viz., half a knight's fee, appears to have remained the 

 same down to the time of Thomas de Rock, 1278, when Rock 

 was worth £20 a year, and Thomas ought to have been a 

 knight and was not. My only object in mentioning these 

 individual tenants of Rock is to support my notion that 

 there was probably a mansion existing and inhabited here, 

 even in the time of the later Norman kings, say Stephen, 

 and that there certainly was so not long afterwards. 



My mention of the time of Stephen as a Norman date 

 reminds me of a very strong argument in favour of the proba- 

 bility of there having been a mansion at Rock in those early 

 times. I have been accustomed to hear it said, by persons 

 of architectural skill and knowledge, that the west door of 

 our little church here, with portions of the mason work in its 

 vicinity up to the string course, and considerable portions of 

 the side walls, are probably not of a later date than' Stephen, 



• The names of two of Thomas de Rock's sureties are " Ivo Eockard of Rock, 

 and John, son of Ralph, of the same, 

 t Hodg. Hinde's vol. of History, p, 296, from the Harleian collection. 



