214. 



Early Annals of Trowbridge. 



being- in the possession of Edward of Salisbury, a great Norman noble, 

 who was Vice Comes, or Sheriff of Wiltshire, and had no less than 38 

 manors in this county. How he acquired this manor, whether by grant 

 from the crown, or by purchase, I have not been able to ascertain. 

 In a document of the date A.D. 1120 — 1130 it is enumerated 

 amongst those estates which were- of his own acquisition in contra- 

 distinction to those which he enjoyed by inheritance, and this looks 

 rather as though he had purchased it. 



Edward of Salisbury left two children, a son, Walter of Salisbury, 

 who founded the Priory of Bradenstoke and subsequently himself 

 assumed the tonsure and habit of the canons there, — and a daughter, 

 Matilda, who married Humphrey de Bohun, and with her husband, 

 in the year 1125, founded the Priory of Monkton Farleigh. Through 

 this marriage the Bohun family became possessed of considerable 

 property at Trowbridge and elsewhere in Wilts. The Lordship of 

 the manor however still vested in the family of Edward of Salisbury. 1 



The descent of the manor from that time to the present can be 

 easily traced. The lordship of the manor has been held by not a 

 few distinguished personages. After three or four immediate de- 

 scendants of Edward of Salisbury, it came to the celebrated Ela, 

 in her own right Countess of Salisbury, the foundress in one day of 

 the abbeys of Lacock and Hinton Charterhouse. By her marriage 

 with William de Longespee, son of King Henry II. by Rosamond 

 Clifford, it came ultimately to Margaret de Longespee, who, by her 

 marriage with Henry Earl of Lincoln, took the manor into her 

 husband's family. Their only daughter Alice Lacy married Thomas 

 Earl of Lancaster, and he became consequently possessed of the 

 manor of Trowbridge. This Earl was beheaded at Pontefract 

 in 1521, and all his honors forfeited. After some temporary grants 



1- W"e have a similar instance of the Lordship of the Manor being retained in 

 the family of Edward of Salisbury, though much of the property originally 

 appertaining to it was alienated, in the case of " Bishopstrow." The Church 

 at Bishopstrow and a hide of land in that village, together with other property, 

 is particularly specified among the gifts of Matilda de Bohun to the Priory of 

 Monkton Farleigh. The Manor of Bishopstrow, which was one of those be- 

 longing to Edward of Salisbury at the Domesday Survey, descended in the male 

 line to the Countess Ela, and was employed by her in the foundation of the 

 nunnery of Lacook. 



