BY T. WALTER HALL, Hon. M.A. (SHEFFIELD), F.R.Hist.S.
Place-names, obvious in their meaning but suggesting a remote origin and
a forgotten past, attract the historian, if not the philologist.
Hawksyard is one of these; its import is Hawksland but its history lies
hidden in the records of past centuries; it excites our curiosity and
quickens our imagination.
We instinctively recall scenes of English sport in bygone days; of kings
and nobles, knights and ladies, riding across the unfenced country; over
moorland and waste, through fen and ford, with hooded falcon and stooping
hawk, enjoying what was for nearly a thousand years the national sport of
England.
Such a scene was brought to mind by the perusal of two musty parchments
with imposing seals and faded script, quarried from the lower _strata_ of
time-worn muniments, in the office of Colonel Brooke Taylor of Bakewell.
The earlier of these deeds takes us back to the death of John of Gaunt
and the resignation of Richard II in the closing year of the 14th
century; the later one was sealed and delivered in the less tragic days
of Queen Elizabeth.
They both relate to Hawksyard, situate in that part of The Moorlands of
Staffordshire known in the middle ages as Highe Frith of Malbanc Forest;
south of Buxton and east of the church at Newtown near Longnor.
The deed of John of Gaunt bears date the 15th May 1399, in bold Arabic
numerals; it is written in a jargon intended to be Latin and measures 15
A-- 8A1/2 inches; its round pendent seal of green wax has a diameter of
three and a half inches and is nearly an inch thick. The parchment is
dark in colour, coarse in texture and much crinkled; the writing is not
uniform in character, parts being in a flowing hand suggesting a date
long subsequent to the Plantagenets. The deed begins with the word
_Conventum_, meaning a covenant or agreement under seal; but, from the
concluding paragraph, it was evidently intended to operate as a deed of
gift or grant in fee simple of the lands called Hawksyard.
[Illustration: _Photo Ethel Eadon_