POLITICAL HISTORY 



In all but the strictly technical sense, however, it was a palatine county. 

 The crown's devolution of its authority was as complete here as in the neigh- 

 bouring county of Chester ; in one respect more complete, for while the 

 bishop of Lichfield held his Cheshire lands directly of the crown and not of 

 the earl, there was no tenant-in-chief in the Lancaster fief save Roger himself. 

 He had his own sheriff, and no doubt his own shire court, with special juris- 

 diction excluding that of the king." Had his fief been inherited by a long 

 line of his descendants, its history would have been more closely parallel with 

 the fortunes of Cheshire. As things turned out, it frequently escheated to 

 the crown, and though several times granted out again, only once passed from 

 father to son." 



To Count Roger's time belong not only the delimitation of the county 

 and its organization as a private shire, but great changes in ownership and a 

 new and fuller life. Roger founded and endowed the first religious house 

 within its limits.'" He introduced Norman military tenure. Even before 

 the date of Domesday Book he had enfeoffed some twelve knights with 

 nearly half the land rateable to geld between Ribble and Mersey." A fresh 

 distribution was made after his temporary dispossession, only one of these 

 knights being known with certainty to have retained the holding he had 

 before 1086. This was William son of Nigel, the constable of Hugh, earl of 

 Chester ; his extensive fief in the hundreds of West Derby and Warrington, 

 with its court at Widnes, formed part of his Cheshire honour of Halton."' 

 The enfeoffment of a Cheshire baron by Roger, and the fact that by his 

 tenure of Widnes and Halton he held both sides of Runcorn Gap, strongly 

 suggest the possibility of some arrangement with the earl of Chester for the 

 defence of the Mersey.*' Roger's revised arrangements proved more perma- 

 nent than the old ones, but there is not enough evidence to decide exactly 

 how many of the military fiefs which come into view later were of his 

 creation. Excluding Widnes, they can hardly have exceeded six : Man- 

 chester (Grelley),Tottington (Montbegon), Warrington (Vilers), Penwortham 

 (Bussel), and Hornby. With the exception of Hornby and part of Pen- 

 wortham, all these were cut out of ' between Ribble and Mersey.' 



Roger's enfeoffments were made partly out of the demesne, partly at the 

 expense of English thegns and drengs, who became free tenants of Roger's 

 vassals. More than half the land held by thegns in the hundred of West 

 Derby had been thus mediatized as early as 1086, and little more than a third 

 of the land held by the drengs of Warrington a hundred and twenty years before 

 was still in their hands. Nevertheless, a not inconsiderable proportion of the 

 land of the county continued to be held by thegnage and drengage tenure." 

 The labour services recorded in Domesday Book were generally commuted for 

 additional rent," but as late as the fourteenth century there were still drengs in 



" Godfrey the Sheriff appears as a tenant of Roger, c. 1093-4 ; Lanes. Fife R. 269, 290. 



'' See below, p. 187. 



•" See above, p. 1 67. 



" Dom. Bk. i, 2693-270 ; 2i8| plough-lands out of 474. 



" Testa de Nevill (Rec. Com.), ii, fol. 718 ; Harland, Mamecestre, 135, 361. 



" This would account, perhaps, for William's exemption from the redistribution of fiefs made by Roger 

 under Rufus. 



" In the twelfth century about 100 plough-lands, yielding some ^^33 annually ; Lanes. Pipe R. 37. 



" The drengage ' customs ' of Bolton-le-Sands were commuted in the reign of John for an increment of 

 2 marks on the rent ; Lanes. Inquests, 95. 



183 



