[205], 20. Psalm viii. 8.
[207], 7. Geoffrey Fitz-Peter and William de Stutville. These were important officials, whom John could ill spare. Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, Earl of Essex (died 1213) was justiciar, having been appointed by Richard I. to this high office in 1198, on the resignation of Archbishop Hubert Walter. He was confirmed in his appointment by John, who disliked him, but used him for his own ends. William de Stutville had been appointed sheriff of the county of York in 1201, and died in 1203.
[209], 20. made his will just as if he was now to die. The Royal summons to Court was dated 1203, as the brief of Innocent III. is printed in Migne's Patrologia, vol. 214, and is dated 21 January, 1203. Samson lived nearly nine years afterwards; but as to the facts of his latest years we know practically nothing. As to his death and burial, see Preface, pages xl.-xlii.
[211], 9. Pollicitis dives quilibet esse potest. Ovid., De Arte Amandi, 1. 444.
[211]. At the foot of fol. 163 of the Liber Albus, from which Jocelin's Chronicle is taken, is a memorandum by William of Diss, which, as it has been printed both by Rokewode and Arnold, is translated below, though it is not by Jocelin. It is merely an expansion of the story told by Jocelin himself on pp. 86-8. Adam of Cockfield wanted to claim his father's lands by hereditary right; but William of Diss gives the evidence against this claim. The succession was: Lenmere, Adam the first (married Adeliza), Robert (died 1191), Adam the claimant (died 1198), who married Rohesia, and had a daughter Nesta, over whose wardship there was the dispute recorded on page 187.
"Robert of Cockfield acknowledged to my lord abbot Samson, in the presence of many persons—Master W. of Banham, brother W. of Diss, chaplains, William of Breiton, and many others—that he had no hereditary right in the vills of Groton and Semere. For in the days of King Stephen, when the peace was disturbed, the monks of St. Edmund, with the consent of the abbot, granted the aforesaid two vills to Adam of Cockfield, his father, to be held all the days of his life: Semere for the annual payment of one hundred shillings, and Groton by the payment of an annual rent, because Adam could defend the aforesaid towns against the holders of the neighbouring castles, W. of Milden and W. of Ambli, in that he had a castle of his own near to the aforesaid manors, namely, the castle of Lelesey.
"After the death of the aforesaid Adam, they granted the said manors to Robert of Cockfield, son of Adam, at a double rate for Semere, that is an annual rent of ten pounds, so long as the lords abbots and the convent wish. But he never had a charter for it, not even to the end of his life. He had good charters for all the tenements which he held of St. Edmund by hereditary right, which charters I, William, known as William of Diss, at that time chaplain, read, in the hearing of many, in the presence of the aforesaid abbot: that is for the lands of Lelesey, which Ulfric of Lelesey held of St. Edmund in the same township; the charter of the abbot and convent concerning the socages of Rougham, which Mistress Rohesia of Cockfield, once wife of Adam the younger, brought as her dowry; for the lands also which Lenmere, his ancestor, held in the town of Cockfield by hereditary right, and which in the time of King Stephen, with the consent of Anselm, abbot of St. Edmund, were changed into half a knight's fee, although at first they had been socages of St. Edmund.
"He had also charters of the abbot and convent of St. Edmund, for the lands which are in the town of St. Edmund; for the land, that is to say, of Hemfrid Criketot, where the houses of Mistress Adeliza were once situated. They have also a hereditary charter for a great messuage, under a payment of twelve pence, where the hall of Adam the first, of Cockfield, was of old situate, with a wooden tower seven times twenty feet in height. It was confirmed to them as hereditary right by the charter of the abbot and convent, in which charter are specified the length and breadth of that place and messuage, to be held by a payment of two shillings. They also hold a hereditary charter for the lands which Robert of Cockfield, son of Odo of Cockfield, now holds in Barton. But they have no charter for the township of Cockfield, that is, for the portion which pertains to the food of the monks of St. Edmund.
"Then there was one brief of King Henry I., in which he commands Abbot Anselm to allow Adam of Cockfield the first to hold in peace the farm of Cockfield, and others, as long as he pays rents in full; and that brief was sealed only of one part, representing the royal form—against the form of all royal briefs.
"But Robert of Cockfield claimed, in the presence of the lord abbot and the aforesaid, that he believed Cockfield to be his hereditary right on account of his long tenure: because his grandfather, Lenmere, held that manor for a long time before his death, and Adam the first, his son, for the term of his life, and he, Robert, all his life—well-nigh sixty years; but they never had a charter of the abbot or the convent of St. Edmund for the aforesaid land."