FEUDAL BARONAGE 



> 1 



vested in an establishment called the Chancellor and Council of the Duchy 

 Henry IV. added no new possessions to the Duchy as enjoyed by his father, 

 but Henry V., by a statutory charter granted in Parliament in the second 

 year of his reign, annexed and incorporated the inheritance of the house of 

 Bohun, which he had derived by hereditary right from his mother, with the 

 inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster, which had descended to him from his 

 father. By this measure the Bohun possessions were absorbed in the greater 

 estate and thenceforth clothed in like manner with all the prerogatives of the 

 king, but in administration distinct from other lands of the crown. From 

 the reign of Henry V. to that of our present sovereign, King Edward VII., 

 the rulers of this realm have enjoyed the splendid inheritance of the Duchy 

 of Lancaster, both out of and within the county Palatine, as an estate with 

 sovereign prerogatives entirely distinct and separate from the crown of 

 England.* 



In dealing with the feudal baronage of this county those fees have been 

 selected for notice which at some period or another were described as baronies, 

 and the holders of them as tenants by barony, who paid for their relief, not 

 the knight's customary relief of five pounds for each fee, but an arbitrary 

 sum. Not included in this category are the half knight's fee of the Moly- 

 neux family at Sefton; the fee held in this county by the Marsey family, with 

 three knights' fees in co. Nottingham; the extensive fee held by the family of 

 Gernet, chief foresters of Lancashire; and the fee comprising the south-eastern 

 half of Furness, which was held by the Fleming family, and was long known 

 as Micheland, from Michel le Fleming, the first grantee. These may possibly 

 have ranked as baronies at one time or another during the first century after 

 Domesday, but of this there is no evidence, nor can the enjoyment of special 

 franchises, nor inclusion amongst the ' barones comitatus ' of the holders of 

 these fees, be considered as sufficient justification to include their fees among 

 the Lancashire baronies.* 



THE BARONY OF THE CONSTABLE OF CHESTER WITHIN 



THE LYME* 



The earliest infeudation within the district afterwards known as Lan- 

 cashire of which there is any indication was that by which four hides and 

 one carucate of land between Ribble and Mersey were conferred upon the 

 constable of Hugh Lupus, earl of Chester,' but whether by the Conqueror 

 himself or by Roger of Poitou, after he had received his English fief, and 

 whether to Nigel, the first constable, or to William, his son and successor, it 

 is not possible to determine.* The inclusion among the barons of Roger of 

 Poitou of a great Cheshire feudatory — who also held lands in distant parts of 

 England under the earl of Chester — was probably due to the dictates of 



1 Dep. Keeper's ^oih Rep. p. vi. 



^ Ibid. W. Hardy, Charters of the Duchy of Lane, in which volume all the charters and acts of Parlia- 

 ment affecting the Duchy from 1342 to 1558 are set forth in full. 



' Cf. Tait, Mediaval Manchester, pp. 182-197. 



* Dugdale, Baronage, i. 100 ; Cotton MSS. Cleop. C. iii. f. 332 3 (Afw. Ang. vi. 315). 



5 See the chapter on Dom. Bk. p. 280 above. 



" The statement which originated with Dr. Kuerden that William fitz Nigel acquired Widnes by mar- 

 riage with the heiress of Yarfrith, a supposed pre-Conquest baron of Widnes, obtains no confirmation from 

 Domesday nor from any other known record, and may well be discredited. 



I 297 38 



