The Foljambe family were connected with Tideswell and Wormhill from very early times. One of them was enfeoffed as a forester of fee (that is an hereditary forester) by William Peverel in the days of the Conqueror. William Foljambe, who was probably his grandson, died in 1172. Thomas Foljambe, of Tideswell, is mentioned in 1208, and again in 1214, when he was a knight. He had three sons, whose names appear as witnesses to various charters between 1224 and 1244; John and Roger are described as being of Tideswell, and Thomas of Little Hucklow. John died in 1249.
Sir Thomas Foljambe, son of the above-mentioned John, was of Tideswell and Wormhill; he was living throughout the reign of Henry III., and for the first ten years of Edward I. He was also of some position in Yorkshire, for in 1253–4 he was seized of a knight’s fee in the Wapentake of Osgoldown; in 1282 he had the manor of Tideswell from Richard Daniel. He died on the Saturday next after the feast of St. Hilary in 1283. One of his brothers, Henry Foljambe, was bailiff of Tideswell in 1288.
It matters but little what class of old records connected with North Derbyshire is studied, the name of Foljambe is certain to occur in important matters, and usually with some frequency. Some serious attention has lately, for the first time, been given to the history of the Peak Forest (Victoria County History of Derby, i., 397–425), though the mass of documents relative to its administration yet awaits thorough study. In these records members of the family are continuously mentioned. Thus, at the Forest Pleas of 1251, the heaviest vert or “greenhue” fine (damage to or illicit appropriation of timber) was that of twenty marks imposed on Roger Foljambe for a variety of transgressions; and his two pledges for future observance of the forest assize were John Foljambe and Walter Coterell. At these Pleas, too, Thomas Foljambe was returned by the jury as one of the foresters of fee for the Campana division of the Peak Forest. The next Forest Pleas were not held until 1285. The rolls of the successive bailiffs or stewards of the forest since the last session were produced, from which it appeared that Thomas Foljambe had been bailiff for the year 1277, and again in 1281. In the latter year he was also constable of Peak Castle; his total official receipts for that twelvemonth amounted to the then great sum of £260.
Sir Thomas Foljambe was succeeded by his eldest son, another Sir Thomas Foljambe, of Tideswell, who was a knight of the shire for the county of Derby in 1297, and died in the following year. He was succeeded by his son, yet another Sir Thomas Foljambe, of Tideswell; he represented his county in Parliament in 1302, 1304–5, 1309, and from 1311 to 1314. He was one of those Derbyshire knights who in 1301 were summoned to the muster at Berwick-on-Tweed to do military service against the Scots. He died in 1323, and was succeeded by a fourth Sir Thomas Foljambe, who married the heiress of the family of Darley in the Dale, and so acquired considerable estates in that neighbourhood, which passed to his younger son, Sir Godfrey.
There is interesting information with regard to the Foljambes in the rolls of the Forest Pleas of 1285, from which it appears that the family at that date held two of the hereditary foresterships of the Peak.
The Campana foresters of fee of that period were John Daniel; Thomas le Archer; Thomas, son of Thomas Foljambe, a minor in the custody of Thomas de Gretton; Nicholas Foljambe, who had been a minor in the custody of Henry de Medue, but was then of full age; and Adam Gomfrey. Of these foresters, Adam Gomfrey and Thomas Foljambe held jointly the same bovate, which had formerly been divided between two brothers. Also Thomas Foljambe and John le Wolfhunte held another bovate in the same way, John holding his half by hereditary descent, whilst Thomas Foljambe, senr., had acquired his half by marriage with Katherine, daughter of Hugh de Mirhand. This sub-division of serjeanties became burdensome to the district, as each forester of fee endeavoured to have a servant maintained at the expense of the tenants; but the jurors confirmed a decision of the Hundred Court of 1275 to the effect that there could be only four such servants or officers, according to ancient custom, for the Campana bailiwick.
The bovate of land held by Wolfhunte and Foljambe was a serjeanty assigned for taking of wolves in the forest. On the jurors being asked what were the duties pertaining to that service, the following was the highly interesting reply:—
“Each year, in March and September, they ought to go through the midst of the forest to set traps to take the wolves in the places where they had been found by the hounds: and if the scent was not good because of the upturned earth, then they should go at other times in the summer (as on St. Barnabas Day, 11 June,) when the wolves had whelps (catulos), to take and destroy them, but at no other times; and they might take with them a sworn servant to carry the traps (ingenia); they were to carry a bill-hook and spear, and hunting-knife at their belt, but neither bows nor arrows: and they were to have with them an unlawed mastiff trained to the work. All this they were to do at their own charges, but they had no other duties to discharge in the forest.”
Wolves abounded in Derbyshire to the end of the thirteenth century. They were troublesome in Duffield Forest as well as in the Peak. There are two highly significant entries on the Pipe Rolls of Henry II. as to the devastation then caused by wolves in this county. In 1160–1 25s. was paid to the forest wolf-hunters as an extra fee. So great was the value set on the skill and experience of the Peak wolf-trappers, that Henry II. in 1167–8 paid 10s. for the travelling expenses of two of them to cross the seas to take wolves in Normandy. The accounts of Gervase de Bernake, bailiff of the Peak for 1255–6, make mention of a colt strangled by a wolf in Edale, and of two sheep killed by wolves in another part of the district.
Reverting to the descent of the eldest line of the Foljambes of Tideswell, John Foljambe succeeded his father, the last named Sir Thomas Foljambe, in 1323. This John Foljambe had a younger brother, Thomas, who had two sons, John and Thomas, of Elton, both of whom appear to have died childless. John Foljambe entailed the family estates in 1350, and a second entail was made in 1372, whereby on the extinction of the male descendants of the elder line, the estates of Tideswell and Wormhill passed to the younger branch of the family.