Cheshire

by Charles E. Kelsey

An old engraving gives us a picture of the royal state with which Earl Hugh was surrounded. He is represented sitting on a raised throne and presiding over his council or parliament, which consisted of the four chief abbots and the four greatest barons of Cheshire. Behind a barrier at the lower end of the council-chamber a crowd of humble people are gathered, bearing petitions or grievances for the earl's hearing and consideration. For the earl possessed power of life or death over all offenders, could pardon treason and murder within his own domain, and give protection or 'sanctuary' to criminals, who, however, paid heavy fines for this privilege. He also raised taxes, appointed all the judges and justices of the peace in the earldom, and created his own barons, who were themselves permitted to hold baronial courts for the trial and punishment of evildoers. Gilbert de Venables, the Baron of Kinderton, and his successors held courts at their castle near Middlewich until late in the sixteenth century, when all these courts were swept away.

Ordericus Vitalis, a Norman monk who wrote in the early part of the twelfth century, says that Earl Hugh 'was very prodigal, and carried not so much a family as an army along with him. He daily wasted his estate, and delighted more in falcons and huntsmen than in tillers of the soil. He was much given to his appetite, whereby in time he grew so fat that he could scarcely crawl.' He was also a lover of minstrelsy and romance, and invited the best narrators of great deeds to live with him and spur on to rivalry the young nobles whom he delighted to gather round him at his court.

The mass of the English people became dependent on their Norman masters. The latter had learned the use of the lance and the longbow, and the fame of their mailclad mounted knights had spread through all Europe. They kept the English down by building strong castles in their midst. At Aldford, Shocklach, Doddleston, and Malpas on the Welsh borderland, where castles were naturally more numerous, little remains to be seen at the present day but the green mounds on which were erected the keeps or donjons of the Norman lords. Round the tree-clad hummock at Aldford—'Blob's Hill' the village folk call it—the moat that surrounded the Norman castle yet remains, now dry and carpeted in springtime with primroses, whose waters must often have been dyed with the blood of Norman, Saxon, and Welshman.

The Norman castles were of great strength, though not always built of stone. Many were built on the sites of British encampments or Saxon 'burhs', in which case the old wooden stockade was doubtless allowed to remain. The central fortress or keep, a square, or sometimes circular, building with walls of immense thickness, was surrounded by an inner ward or courtyard in which cattle and provisions could be gathered in case of attack, and where, on a raised mound in the centre, the baron held his court. Round this ward were grouped the domestic apartments, the stables, and the quarters of servants and retainers. Beyond these buildings was a second or outer ward, the whole being enclosed by walls with projecting towers at intervals. The castles of the plain were further protected, as at Aldford, by a deep ditch or moat crossed by a drawbridge leading to the principal entrance. The keep was the last place of refuge when the defenders were driven from the walls, and frequently contained a well of water. In the keep at Beeston Castle is a well over three hundred feet deep, to which water was perhaps at one time drawn from Beeston Brook or some other neighbouring stream.

On the summit of Halton Hill you may still see a portion of the outer wall of the castle built by Nigel, Baron of Halton and cousin of Earl Hugh. He was the chief of all the Cheshire barons, was constable of the city of Chester, and led the Cheshire army, when required, against the Welsh. Thirty-seven manors, among them those of Congleton, Great Barrow, Raby and Sale in the county of Cheshire, were included in his possessions. Other barons created by the Earl of Chester were William of Nantwich, Vernon of Shipbroke, Fitzhugh of Malpas, Venables of Kinderton, Hamon Massi of Dunham, Nicholas of Stockport, and Robert of Montalt or Mold. The last-named shows that the county of Flint was at that time part of the earldom. The name of the Norman baron was often added to that of the Saxon village where he dwelt, as in the case of Dunham Massey, Minshull Vernon.

The earl himself resided at Chester, where large additions were made to the stronghold of Ethelfleda, but probably his castle was built largely of timber, for no stone of it remains, and a hundred and fifty years later Henry the Third ordered the stockade with which the castle ward was enclosed to be removed and replaced by a wall of stone. On the eastern side of the castle was erected a great shire hall where the earl held his parliament, and an exchequer court where the dues and taxes were paid to him.

What these dues and taxes were we may learn from the Great Survey called Domesday Book, which was made by King William's orders, and completed about the year 1087. The chief object of the Survey was to find out what the country was worth, and how much the people could afford to pay in taxes. The book, which is carefully preserved at the British Museum, is the most valuable record we possess of the state of England under its first Norman king. Domesday Book was written in Latin, but translations have been made by scholars, and may be seen in many of our free libraries. In the 'Customs of Chester' we are told that the city paid in rent forty-five pounds and three bundles of marten skins, a third of which went to the earl and two-thirds to the king. The skins were imported from Ireland, and show that the Irish pirates of former days had given place to peaceful traders. The king also claimed two-thirds of the produce of the brine pits at Nantwich, Northwich, and Middlewich, the last-named being farmed 'for twenty-five shillings and two cartloads of salt'. The value of every manor, with the number of 'hides' of arable land, the extent of meadow land and of woodland, was faithfully recorded. 'There was not one single yard of land, nor even one ox, one cow, one swine that was left out.'

Some Saxon villages had little left to record after the Conqueror's visit, so that you may learn from Domesday something of the severity with which William's conquest had been accomplished. Prestbury and many other Saxon villages are not even mentioned. When Earl Hugh received the city of Chester it was worth only thirty pounds, 'for it had been greatly wasted; there were two hundred and five houses less there than there had been in the time of King Edward' (the Confessor).

From Domesday we can learn the names of the Saxon freemen who were allowed to keep their lands. Marton was held by the Saxon Godfric, probably in return for some service rendered to the invaders, or because he had at least not taken arms against them; Butley was divided between the Saxon Ulric and Robert, son of Hugh Lupus. The manor of Brereton was retained by the Breretons, whose descendants play a great part in the later history of Cheshire. But such cases are few and far between, and by far the greater part of the county passed into new hands.

The story of Mobberley may be taken as a good example of what happened in most cases to the old English landowners. The very name of the village brings to our eyes scenes of old English life as the Normans found it, for Motburlege, as the name is written in Domesday, is the open space (lege) by the fortified house (burh) where the assembly of the people was held (mote). 'The same Bigot' (thus Domesday runs)' holds Motburlege. Dot held it and was a freeman.... The value in King Edward's time was twelve shillings, now only five shillings.' Such is the simple story, repeated again and again in the great survey. Dot was a Saxon lord of sixteen villages, including Cholmondeley, Bickerton, Shocklach, Grappenhall, Peover, and Dodcot, to the last of which he gave his own name. Thus, even as Dot's own forefathers had driven out the Celtic tribesmen who pastured their flocks on the neighbouring commons, so now it was Dot's turn to be thrust from his ancestral home at Mobberley and seek a refuge perhaps among the very people whom he had displaced.