A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



seem to have held land in both," and that even after this connexion, if it 

 existed, had come to an end Whalley and Clitheroe are described in a charter 

 of about 1 122 as in Cheshire.'* 



If these indications be regarded as misleading, it must be supposed that 

 ' betwreen Ribble and Mersey ' before the Conquest possessed a sheriff and 

 shire-moot, vi^ithout being a recognized shire, as border districts after the 

 coming of the Normans w^ere sometimes entrusted to great lords who appointed 

 their own sheriffs." 



The portions of modern Lancashire lying north of the Ribble, with the 

 southern halves of the later shires of Cumberland and Westmorland, and the 

 present Yorkshire wapentake of Ewcross, remained down to the Conquest in 

 the earldom of Northumbria and diocese of York. They are surveyed in 

 Domesday Book as appendant to Yorkshire. Here, too, the vills were nearly 

 all grouped round a few great head manors.'' But while those between 

 Ribble and Mersey were all continuous areas, administrative divisions of a 

 well-defined district, the Northumbrian manors were much interspersed and 

 highly irregular in outline." The sixty-one vills which ' lay in ' Preston, 

 however, comprised the compact region of Amounderness. North of Amoun- 

 derness the manorial boundaries did not in any way correspond to those of 

 the later shires. Preston, Halton, Whittington, Beetham, and ' Hougun,' con- 

 taining three-fourths of the rateable area of the whole, were held in demesne 

 by Tostig when earl of Northumbria (1055—65).*° 



Domesday Book reveals a wide difference in the recent fortunes of the 

 lands separated by the Ribble. Between that river and the Mersey very 

 little waste is noted, and its revenue had only decreased by ^25 when the 

 Conqueror granted it out. A comparatively large proportion of the English 

 holders remained on the land. On the manors beyond the Ribble no value 

 could be put ; three-fourths of the vills of Amounderness were ' waste,' the 

 rest scantily inhabited. This desolation has been attributed to the struggle 

 between Harold and Tostig in 1066, but the district may have shared in 

 William's devastation of Northumbria three years later." 



The comparative immunity of ' between Ribble and Mersey ' from the 

 ravaging that befell Northumbria and Cheshire *' suggests that, belonging 

 neither to the earldom of Morcar nor to that of Edwin, it gave little trouble. 



This district, with some of the manors north of the Ribble, was given 

 by the Conqueror not earlier than 1072 to Roger, third son of his cousin 

 Roger of Montgomery." Roger, ' the Poitevin ' (Pictavensis) as he came to 

 be called before 1086 in virtue of his marriage to the sister of the count of 



^ Tilt, Mediaeval Manchester, 154. After the Conquest, William son of Nigel, constable of Chester was 

 enfeoffed on both sides of the lower Mersey ; see below, p. 183. 



" Dugdale, Mon. jingl. v, 120. 



" The ' prepositus ' mentioned under West Derby Hundred, who was a judicial officer (J)om. Bk. i, 

 2693), may have been the 'King's reeve' of that hundred manor ; cf. Chadwick, op. cit. 228 sqq.). 



" Preston, Halton, Whittington, Beetham, Austwick, Bentham, Strickland, and ' Hougun.' ' Hougun ' 

 (which comprised Fumess and the land between Duddon and Esk) and its vill 'Hougenai' have been erroneously 

 connected with Walney (Wagheney) Island ; Mr. Farrer identifies the former with Millom ; Lanes, and Ches. 

 Antiq. Soc. Trans, xviii, 97. 



'' See the map, ibid. " Dm. Bk. i, 3013. 



" Lanes, and Ches. Antiq. Soe. Trans, xviii, 1 1 1 . The absence of valets T. R. E. as well as T. R. W. 

 seems to favour the first alternative, but is perhaps not decisive. 



" Cheshire suffered severely when William occupied Chester early in 1 070. 



" The superior limit of date seems fixed by his father's investiture with the earldom of Shrewsbury, which 

 was after Earl Edwin's death in 1 071. 



180 



