232 Whalton and its Vicinity, by the Rev. J. E. Elliot. 



to the west and south-west. It is known by the name of the 

 " Dead men's graves," probably from the inequalities of the 

 surface. It, as well as the former, appears to have been a 

 fortified station of a quadrilateral form. 



Of the Saxon period scarcely any remains exist. Mr Wilson 

 in his recent work says : " There was a Saxon church on the 

 site of Whalton Church ; and one fragment of it is incopor- 

 ated in the present edifice. This is the tall, narrow, semi- 

 circular headed tower arch. In the transitional Norman 

 period the tower was taken down ; except this sturdy arch." 

 As, at the close of the reign of Edward the Confessor, above 

 a third of the landed property of England was, according to 

 William of Malmesbury, in the hands of the ecclesiastical 

 body, and the advowson of the living seems at a very early 

 period to have belonged to the prior and convent of Tyne- 

 mouth, which was a dependency of the great monastery of 

 St. Alban's in the south,* I am inclined to believe that a 

 considerable part of the parish consisted of church-lands. At 

 the Conquest, however, it seems to have been constituted into 

 a barony, and bestowed by William (who paid little regard 

 to the privileges of the clergy) on one of his followers. There 

 is some difficulty in making out the line of succession of its 

 early possessors. The first mentioned by Hodgson was a 

 certain Eustace Fitz-John, who, he says, was a great man in 

 the north in the time of King Stephen. His name is of 

 continual recurrence in the accounts of this period, as picking 

 up manors and baronies in different parts of the country ; for 

 which amusement he appears to have had a decided vocation. 

 He had a fine field for the development of this talent in the 

 troublous reign of Stephen, when a sort of free fight was 

 going on over the length and breadth of the land. His first 

 wife was Agnes, daughter and heiress of William, son of 

 Nigil, baron of Halton in Cheshire ; and his second, the 

 heiress of the great De Vescy family. His son by Agnes was 

 named Richard Fitz-Eustace ; whose son in like manner 

 adopting the patronymic is called Roger Fitz-Richard ; who 

 again was succeeded by his son, Robert Fitz-Roger. On this 

 last King John, June 6, 1205, bestowed Whalton. Meantime, 

 however, another family appears to have had substantial 

 possession of the barony. Almost contemporaneously with 

 Eustace Fitz-John, Walter Fitz-William in the reign of 



* Kiley's AM>at Monasterii St. Albani. 



