A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



in the county. The burgesses of Lancaster received a grant of the liberties 

 of Bristol,"' and his father's charter to Preston was confirmed and extended;"^ 

 the knights, thegns, and freeholders dwelling within the extensive forest of 

 Lancaster were empowered to assart, sell, and give away their woods, and the 

 precarious exemption from the Regard which they had purchased from 

 time to time was made permanent;"' considerable areas of demesne land were 

 granted by charter to his local followers."' A large number of leading 

 freeholders of the county, including the heads of the Montbegon, Boteler, 

 Gernet, Redman, Lathom, and Molyneux families, and Jordan dean of 

 Manchester, consequently supported their traitor lord in February, 1194, 

 against the brother whose release from his foreign prison upset all John's 

 plans.^*"" On his behalf they made an expedition to Kendal, the bare fact of 

 which is alone recorded."^ The great military tenants in the county seem, 

 however, with the exception of William le Boteler baron of Warrington, 

 Roger de Montbegon baron of Hornby, and Theobald Walter, lord of 

 Amounderness, to have held aloof. One indeed, Robert Grelley of Man- 

 chester, was a minor and married to a niece of John's old enemy William 

 de Longchamp, the former chancellor and justiciar ; ^^^ while the most 

 important of them all, Roger de Lacy, constable of Chester, who, in 

 addition to his Cheshire lands and Widnes fief, had just inherited the 

 honours of Clitheroe and Pontefract from his cousin Robert de Lacy, was 

 at bitter feud with the count. Three years before he had hanged the 

 castellans of Tickhill and Nottingham, who betrayed those castles to John, 

 and the latter had avenged them by depriving Roger of the lands he held 

 of him and ravaging those he possessed elsewhere.^" But the collapse of the 

 resistance to Richard here was due to John's desertion by a trusted servant. 

 On leaving England for Normandy he had placed Lancaster Castle in charge 

 of Theobald Walter lord of Weeton in Amounderness, whose services in Ireland 

 had been rewarded with an hereditary butlership and large grants of land, 

 while in Lancashire he received from John, about 1192, a grant of all 

 Amounderness, that is, of the whole of the demesne and other profitable 

 rights there, pleas of the crown only excepted. ^^ Shrinking from treason 

 or yielding to fraternal influence Theobald surrendered the castle to his 

 younger brother Hubert Walter archbishop of Canterbury.'" The honour 

 was resumed by the crown and entrusted to Theobald Walter as sheriff."' 

 In further recognition of his loyalty he received a re-grant of Amounder- 

 ness."^ Richard did not show himself implacable to John's partisans. 

 Archbishop Hubert used his influence in favour of clemency, and some forty 



"« Lana. Pipe /J. 416. '" Rot. Chart. (Rec. Com.), z6b. 



'" Ibid. 25. The charter cost them ;^5oo, but the relief from the oppressive exercise of the forest law 

 was cheap at the price ; cf Lams. Pipe R. 419. 



"' Ibid. 115, 431 et seq. ; Rot. Chart. 25. Among these grants was one of Preesall and Hackensall in 

 Amounderness to GeofiTe7 his crossbowman (Arbalaster) on the annual service of two crossbows. For the 

 grant of Amounderness itself to Theobald Walter see below. 



"« Lanes. Pipe R. 77. >" Ibid. 78. '» Tait, op. cit. 137. 



'" Gesta Ricardi, 232, 234. His superior, the earl of Chester, took an active part against John. 



' ' Diet. Nat. Biog. viii, 77 ; F.C.H. Lanes, i, 352. Mr. Round's statement [Diet. Nat. Biog. viii, 77) 

 that he held Amounderness in 1 1 66 is an error due to a later addition to the Black Book of the Exchequer ; 

 Liber Rubeus (Rolls Ser.), 445. 



'" Hoveden, Chron. ii, 237. 



"* Being much employed elsewhere he executed this office after the first year by deputy. 



"" Lanes. Pipe R. 434. 



190 



