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Text of The Wapentake of Osgoldcross

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Dementus
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« on: March 07, 2011, 07:48:39 pm »

I have a scanned copy of an article written around 1890 called "The Wapentake of Osgoldcross" . The document itself is badly scanned, and the conversion to text format has destroyed much of the meaning. It
has many pages consisting of just one letter per page, many words have been converted to strings of symbols and much of the article is in latin.  To make sense of this I am slowly editing the document, deleting those parts which are totally useless and taking out the latin. A thrilling moment came last week when I reached a part of the document  dealing with events in this area of ours. Although incomplete it makes fascinating reading. As I edit it into a form of meaningful English I will publish it here. The document itself is free from copyright and as it has been made digital there is a chance it is located somewhere on the Internet or the Usenet. I am searching to find a more complete and readable copy.
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« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2011, 07:53:27 pm »

THE WAPENTAKE OF OSGOLDCROSS.

Roger Dodsworth practically spent his life in antiquarian study, a very large portion of which was devoted to the elucidation of the early history of Yorkshire ; so that his collections have, or should have, an eminent attraction for all Yorkshiremen or others interested in the subject of his enquiries.
He was born in 1585, the year in which Glover's Visitation of that great county was completed, and his father being Chancellor to several Archbishops successively, the records of the diocese were open to a person of his tastes in a way that they could be but to few. Having some small fortune but no profession, he seems to have given full scope to his antiquarian leanings from the earliest age, and to have laid a solid foundation for his marvellous collection before he had seen his twentieth year.
So far as is now known, his first performance (which is of the year 1605) was a Pedigree of the representatives of the co-heirs of Peter de Brus ; but little of his work is dated so early, though its course can be determined to a considerable extent by following the sequence of his volumes according to his own numbering. But this sequence, it should be remembered and as I have already explained, though really a most valuable guide, has been entirely discarded in the existing arrangement of the volumes.
As his experience increased, Dodsworth 's Collections became less desultory and more systematic ; and in 1632, he filled a quarto volume M M. (Vol. 138) with large extracts from a Nostell Chartulary then in the possession of Charles Fairfax of Menston (the Colonel Fairfax of " The Second War" in 1648), but now in the British Museum (Ves-WAPENTAKE OF OSGOLDCROSS. 81pasian, E. XIX.) and rebound, in such a way, it may be added, as to destroy much of its irregular archaic paging, the meaning of which the binder evidently failed to grasp.
How extensive were Dodsworth's selections from this Nostell Chartulary may be perceived when it is stated that there are in the volume to which I refer (138, according to the modern numbering) as many as twenty-one extracts relating to the small estate of Huntwick, which the compiler of 800 considered to deserve transcription, besides others of very considerable interest which he overlooked as not helping in his particular design ; in other words, the bearing of which was not of special interest to him at the moment. The twenty-one which he selected, seems a large number to concern so small a property, but as they and others were extracted by the great antiquary at a time when his information was very complete, and his experience fully ripe, it seems only just to suppose that he had a reason for what he did, and that there was a thread, perhaps something more than a thread, that bound the whole together, the exact position of which he knew. Whether, however, such was the case or not, the connecting link is certainly not to be found among the charters selected for 800, but must be sought elsewhere. For although the bulk of those transcribed by Mr. Tilleyson can be readily separated into three groups referring to separate properties, and a very little would be required to connect the groups with each other, the link is missing ; while a few of the documents appear to be quite independent of the rest. Except that a reference in one of them covers in a very interesting manner two generations beyond the grantor it will be seen that they .all refer to the thirteenth century, and neither of them includes much beyond its commencement or its close. But to understand their bearing on each other it is necessary to go somewhat into the history.

Featherstone, Purston, Hardwick, and Nostell (which last again included also Huntwick and Foulby) had been grouped together in the time of Edward the Confessor, under one Ligulf. He must have been a powerful Thane, for besides Whitwood, Aketon and this large grouped manor, on the south side of the Calder, he possessed on its north bank the manor of Pairburn, which then and for some subsequent genera-
tions (so far as concerns a portion) included Ledsham also.
He must likewise have been a politic man, since he managed to keep terms to some extent with the Norman. And although William Pictavus, who had obtained Burg (the subsequent Burgwallis), Skellow and Leid, had received out of what had formerly been Ligulfs property, a further grant of the fertile manor of Ackton, and his younger brother Roger, who had already received Altofts (Westerby, as it is called in Domesday), was obtaining the adjacent Whitwood at the very time that the returns that compose the Domesday Survey were being tabulated, Ligulf managed to retain in his own hands, as a substantial fragment of his former domain, the picturesque northern manor, which even now so well justifies its descriptive name of Fairhnvn.
The position of the manor which Ligulf thus continued to hold, though probably by a lower tenure than formerly, is indeed one of the most charming in this part of the country, as any one will confess, who in early spring, soft summer, or ripening autumn — each has its special charm — will essay to follow the route of the eager party who on that bleak Saturday morning, the day previous to the Palm Sunday which witnessed the Battle of Towton, were sent from the encampment before Pontefract, over Castleford Bridge, to march through Fairburn under the shelter of its northern hills in order to intercept and cut off the Lancastrian detachment which had seized and were threatening to hold the Une of communication at Ferrybridge. The view from this charming Fairburn, surely one of the brightest manors in Barkston Ash, will well repay the traveller.
Continuing to retain this picturesque holding Ligulf utterly lost Ackton, Whitwood, and the four other Osgoldcross manors which in his hands had made so large and important a group as to possess 1 6 carucates of taxable land, as much as there was in Tateshale itself, while the number of villanes was even 25 per cent, more than in that manor and the bordars almost double the number. William Pictavus obtained Ackton, besides the neighbouring Altofts where his descendants long flourished ; his brother Roger had Whitwood ; Featherstone was given to Ralph, who appears in the Nostell confirmation Charter of 1122 as Ralph de Featherstone; and the remainder fell to one Emulphy who thenceforward, like Ralph, became known by the name of his estate. And with no other possession tliat can be traced, this Ernnlph de Preston managed on such a com-paratire fragment of Ligulfs former holding, to found a floarishing and famous family. The present paper includes, it will be observed, notices of Hardwick and Huntwick, two of the five hamlets granted to him. The twenty-one Huntwick charters transcribed into 800,  Huntwick, as I have said, comprising but a small part of Nostell, which, in its totality, was less than two square miles in extent, ‚Äî may be divided into three separate groups, the first of which including charters 11, 12 and 19 is concerned with three separate properties. But by the aid of those three charters I am able to construct the following, the black figures referring to the documents in the order in which they were copied into 800, and as they appear in the text (post, pp. 60-66) :
Aschelin de Dai,a benefactor to the Canons at their foundation, oir. 1106.
Hugh de Dai,  who as a leper disappeared from active life, and whose  place was thenceforward taken by his son-in-law.
Peter de Towleston, 11 =?= Eva de Dai, 18, 19.
Rajner de Aketon.

With this before us it is interesting to notice that in the charter of Nostell which Henry I. confirmed in 1122 as chief lord (the Lacy estates being then in his hands by the second and final dispossession of Robert de Lacy, as they had been in 1106 by his first dispossession) one Robert de Dai is named as having been at the foundation (cir. 1106) a grantor of two tofts in Aketon which, at the survey, had been the fee of William Pictavus ; while " Acelin, his brother,'* the grandfather of Eva 12, was the donor of the wood " above the pool of St. Oswald," this latter donation being from the fee of Ernulph, who himself appears with the grant of a bovate from Hardwick. The two were thus, we may suppose, tolerably well endowed, though their origin is 80 entirely unknown.
For who were these de Dais, whence they came, how they derived their name, what were their rights in this district, and how they acquired them, are questions as to which it is perhaps futile to speculate ; we only know that at Domesday VOL. XI. Aketon had been acquired by William Pictavus, who also made a grant out of Skellow, of the usual subscription to St. Clement's Chapel, Pontefract ; after which his history is a blank.
On the other hand, although Nostell, Foulby, Hunt wick and Hardwick appear to have been, with Purston, granted in their entirety to Ernulph, yet in 1106 these Dais were in full possession of a substantial portion, if not the whole, whether as having married William's heiress, as succeeding to a dispossessed man, or in what other way, there is nothing to show.

And here I must pause to remark (1) that while many" authorities '' state this wood to have been the gift of the king, the fact is that it was the gift of Aschelin, the king only confirming the gift and allowing it to be made from land of which he was the chief lord by the dispossession of Robert de Lacy ; and (2) that the pool was known by
the name of St. Oswald before the priory was founded, thus evidencing a previous local honour to the Saint, an honour thereby proved to have been only continued and not initiated by the foundation of the monastery.
In the Pipe Rolls the De Lacy fee is reported as a whole, so that nothing can be gathered from them with regard to the undertenants ; but so far as concerns the names Dai and Towleston, and their connection, I find from Liber Niger that in the second half of the twelfth century Henry de Dai and Ralph his brother, with Peter de
Towleston, held two Knight's fees between them under the first Henry de Lacy ; that these had been enfeoflFed of the new feoflFment (i.e., during the reign of the usurper Stephen), and that those three held them in equal shares at the time the returns were made (i.e., shortly after the accession of Henry II). Hearne indeed suggests that this Peter de Towleston was " vulgb Towton ; '' but there appears on the surface no reason for assuming that Towton and Tolleston were identical, and Hearne gives none. It is true that there is a Peter de Towton, who witnesses one of the Pontefract charters in the Monasticon (and the existence of his name in that position probably misled the editor ofLiher Niger), but this fact really furnishes no argument, since there was not only a Towton, but there was a Tolleston, and these were neighbouring places each in the fee of Osbern de Arcis. on the other hand, the two names really belonged to the same person, and Towton must be Tolleston or the converse, then the balance of evidence is by these Nostell charters turned in favour of the Towleston or Tolleston form, especially bearing in mind that the frequent mistakes made in the latter part of the Monasticon in the names of the witnesses to the charters there printed, illustrate the then failing powers of Roger Dodsworth, and utterly preclude the acceptance of such copy of charter evidence as of absolute authority. What we learn from these three Huntwick charters, 11, 12 and 19, is briefly as follows: ‚Hugh, the eldest son of Aschelin, having the misfortune to become a leper, was admitted by the canons as a brother of their establishment ‚under what regulations it is now impossible to say, ‚ and henceforward he disappears from active life ; his younger brothers representing the name, and, in conjunction with his daughter Eva and her husband, absorbing the interests and fulfilling the responsibilities attached to it. For instance, Henry de Dai and Ralph, his brother, the two younger brothers, witnessed a charter of Jordan Folio t, by which he granted to the monks of Pontefract " the West Mill of Norton," that is, the Water Mill, near the Priory. This was some time after 1159, so that their date is fairly well ascertained; and, allowing a few years to elapse, during which the whole of the Knights' fees passed into the hands of Eva (the daughter of the leprous eldest brother) and her husband, about 1170 or 1180 may be accepted as the date of her grant.

The transactions referred to in her deeds go back at least half a century, to the early part of the reign of Henry I., when Aschelin de Dai gave to the canons " the wood cd)Ove the pool," as it is described in the confirmation charter of Henry I. : " the clearing which is beyond the pool, near Foulby," as it is in the charter 12, that of the donor's granddaughter Eva. From a collation of which expressions we may gather that the subject of this grant was to the west of the pool, and that the canons' buildings were not far distant, but on its east side ; while from a charter of Peter, her husband, we learn that Hugh, her father, had made the canons a donation of ten acres when, on account of his having been stricken with leprosy, he became a member of their house. The charter, which will be found appended to Note 38, further adds that the clearing was nearer their land towards Huntwick. From 11 we further gather that, maintaining the family tradition, Peter de Towleston and Eva his wife had not only confirmed all previous donations, but with the consent of their heirs, had granted another 60 acres to the Priory, the bulk of which was in hand, though a third was let in fee farm. These two charters may be referred to the time when Eva's brothers were both dead without heirs ; in consequence of which she and her husband had come into possession of the whole of the inheritance which Liber Niger represents to have been held jointly by the three.
The next group of charters comprises 4, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15 and 21, and extends throughout the whole of the thirteenth century. It commences with Hugh de Towleston, whomDodsworth's genealogy (vol. 138, 46) represents as the son of Peter, and brother to Rayner de Aketon, though the necessary link is missing from these Huntwick deeds, the place where his name should have appeared in No. 14 being represented by A provoking blank only. There can be no doubt, however, that the " blank " should be filled as Dodsworth suggests, and that his genealogy supplies the missing name.
Hugh de Towleston,
Henry de Huntwick =t= Beatrice
Robert =p Alice, 8. Alot, 6.
WiUiam, 4, 7, 15, 21.cir. 1300.

Hugh de Towleston by 13 (cir. 1200) gives to the canons of Nostell the land held of him by Ivo Fish, with all the adjacent meadow and his common rights (which 3, a subsequent 13th century deed, implies were in a moor common to Huntwick, Featherstone, Aketon and Preston [Purston Jaglin], not yet divided among the four townships). The next generation, that which witnessed the matrimonial connection between the Towlestons and the patrician Huntwicks, gave nothing to the canons, so far as these charters show ; but the third generation amply atoned. In the first place, Robert, son of Henry de Huntwick and the Towleston-de Dai heiress, by the following deed grants to the canons a*' clearing " which awkwardly wedged into their holding.
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Happy Daze
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« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2011, 09:42:28 pm »

Hugh de Towleston by 13 (cir. 1200) gives to the canons of Nostell the land held of him by Ivo Fish, with all the adjacent meadow and his common rights (which 3, a subsequent 13th century deed, implies were in a moor common to Huntwick, Featherstone, Aketon and Preston [Purston Jaglin], not yet divided among the four townships). The next generation, that which witnessed the matrimonial connection between the Towlestons and the patrician Huntwicks, gave nothing to the canons, so far as these charters show ; but the third generation amply atoned. In the first place, Robert, son of Henry de Huntwick and the Towleston-de Dai heiress, by the following deed grants to the canons a*' clearing " which awkwardly wedged into their holding.

During the time that Ligulf 's tenure lasted, Featherston, Purston, Hardwick, Noetell, Foulby, and Huntwick being adjacent and held as one manor, must have had some sort of common interest,
and yet when the tie of a common lord-ahip ceased to bind them, the six having two churches at Featherstone and Nostell, formed two centres ; Feather-stone and Purston combining not ouly
with Whitwood in Osgoldcross, but with Ackton in Agbrigg to form an eccle-siastical parish, while the Nostell group formed a second parish, taking a name, Wragby, which belonged to neither
though it was probably as old if not older than either of them. Thus Huntwick, a member of the parish of Wragby, and Ackton, a member of the parish of Featherston  are in the wapentake of Agbrigg, while their churches are each in thew apentake of Osgoldcross. Huntwick, of which so much appears here, is not mentioned in the Poll Tax of 1378. Neither is Foulby nor Nostell. Huntwick was evidently cleared and cultivated very early, but seems uever to have had any resident population except at the Grange, which while the monastery was in exis-tence was probably reckoned as part of the monastic buildings. Ackton (which appears in Domesday as Aitone, and probably by a slip of the pen as Attone) is called Haikton in the Poll Tax of 1378, which records only 4 taxpayers, and those at but id. each.  In the Dodsworth vol, after the date 1329, is the memorandum '*lt seems that Rich. Fetherston was chief lo: of the Fish by this deed,'* a note
that not only embodies a double blunder, but ignores the distinction between the manor and the parish, which included several manors. For the four manors were not all in the same parish, as has
already been explained.

John de Richmond late keeper of the parke of Pontefracf in free marriage with Margret [alibi Margery, fo. 422, note in the margin"] my daughter, one bovate of land with the appurtnances in the Teritory of Hunte\oick‚Ǩy viz that which William de Kyneslay quit claime to , our heires by his writeing which Robert of Doncaster &* Wyraarc his wife lately held of the said Willia'.  When this grant was made, the
moor or town field was still held jointly by the four townships. There is an earlier deed as follows, which perhaps shows when Richard de Fetherston succeeded to his estate.
This is the earliest mention I have found of the Park of Pontefract, which is apparently the Pontefract portion of a "moor," originally held jointly by Pontefract, Featherston and Houghton.
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Happy Daze
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« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2011, 09:56:24 pm »

This is all I can glean from the digital document I have. I received the document from an American living in Chicago whom I "met" online in a mediaeval history forum a few years ago.
He informed me that this was originally part of a document held at Yale University which has been scanned some years ago, been printed and then scanned again. This double scanning treatment with different software of a document containing abbreviations and latin text with many years in between the scans has led to its very bad digital state. If anyone has any other information on the early years of this area I would love to read it.
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