Hugh Lupus made John Done of Utkinton and his heirs Chief Bowbearer and Forester of his Forest of Delamere. The Dones had the right to kill deer and game, take swarms of wild bees, the fallen trees, and such small game as 'foxes, hares, weasels, and other like vermin'; their badge of office was a black bugle horn tipped with gold. Their hunting-seat or 'Chamber in the Forest' was served by ten keepers and two woodsmen. Some of their descendants were buried at Tarporley, and on one of the tombs you may see the badge of the bugle carved.
Earl Richard, the successor of 'the Wolf', married Matilda, niece of King Henry I and a daughter of Stephen of Blois. He was drowned with his wife on his return from France when the ill-fated White Ship went down in 1119.
The next earl was Randle of Meschines. He was one of King Henry the First's chief fighting-men, and led the van at the Battle of Tinchebrai against the king's elder brother Robert.
His son, Randle the Second, played a great part in the civil war of King Stephen's reign. Stephen was quite unable to curb his barons as his predecessors had done, and the Earl of Chester was unruly and ambitious. In addition to his Earldom of Cheshire, he had succeeded to vast estates in Lincoln and the Midlands. His power and influence was so great that he ruled over an extent of country hardly smaller than the ancient Earldom of Mercia. Stephen refused to add the city of Carlisle to the already numerous possessions of the earl, who in anger declared himself on the side of Stephen's rival Matilda when she took up arms, and became one of Stephen's most bitter and active enemies.
The king took Randle prisoner by a stratagem, and the monks of Pulton Abbey were commanded to pray for the earl's safety. When at length he was set free, the earl in a moment of gratitude gave the monks permission to fish the waters of the Dee, and freed them from the toll which they were accustomed to pay for grinding their corn in the Dee Mills at Chester. Under the Norman rule the use of handmills, such as the Saxons had used, was strictly forbidden, and everybody had to send his corn to be ground in the mill belonging to his lord.
When the Welsh heard of the earl's captivity they took advantage of his absence and ravaged the county of Cheshire, but were defeated in a battle at Nantwich in 1146 by Robert of Montalt.
Randle died in the same year as King Stephen, and was succeeded by Hugh Kyvelioc. This second Earl Hugh enclosed large stretches of forest-land in East Cheshire, and gave the chief forestership to Richard Davenport. It is Richard's grandson Vivian whose grave-slab we have seen in the church at Prestbury.
To Vivian Davenport's office was also joined the office of Hereditary Grand Serjeant of the Hundred of Macclesfield. The Grand Serjeant received twelve pounds six shillings and eightpence a year, and a fee of two shillings and a salmon for the capture of a master-robber, and one shilling for a common thief. Human life was held cheap in those days. The robbers when caught were beheaded, and their heads sent to Chester, where they were publicly shown as a warning to others. Descendants of the Davenports live now at Capesthorne, and their peculiar crest, a robber's head with a rope round the neck, recalls the gruesome duties of their ancestors.
A portion of the Forest was held by the Venables in return for providing thirty-three huntsmen on hunting days. The Downes of Taxal held their land more cheaply on the northern limits of the Forest, which is now Lyme Park, 'by the blast of a horn on Midsummer Day and one pepper-corn yearly.' Near Overton is a spot still called Gallows Yard, where the Downes had power to execute robbers and criminals. In Lyme Park you may see to this day the red deer that are descended from their wild ancestors of Macclesfield Forest.
When Hugh Kyvelioc was Earl of Chester, Henry the Second ruled England and the greater part of France. He also received at Chester the homage of the King of Scotland. But in the later years of his reign he found it hard to keep together the widely scattered parts of his empire. Rebellions were frequent, and his wife, his sons, and his barons all took up arms against him. Among his discontented barons none was more unruly than Hugh Kyvelioc, who stirred up Brittany against Henry, but he was captured in battle and brought to England. In the great rising of 1173 Geoffrey of Costantin, one of Henry's sons, held the castle of Stockport against the king. Not a stone of this castle is to be seen now, but it stood in the highest part of the town near the Parish Church.