THE NORMANS COME TO CHESHIRE
In the early months of the year A.D. 1070 the Saxons of Cheshire fled
before the approach of an army of discontented and almost mutinous
troops who had cut their way through the deep snowdrifts of the Pennine
Hills. But neither the severity of the weather nor the hardships of the
march seemed to have any effect upon the stern and indomitable Norman
warrior at their head, who, like the Vikings whose blood flowed in his
veins, set an example of energy and endurance to his half-starved
fainting followers.
William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, had landed in England three and
a half years previously, and defeated the English King Harold at the
battle of Senlac. But the real 'conquest' was yet to come; and after
swift visits to the west and north of England William crossed the hills
that lay between York and Cheshire and made a dash upon Chester, the one
great city of free England that had not yet bowed to the might of the
Norman invader.
There were at this time in Chester many English, the wife of Harold
among them, who had fled thither after the defeat of Senlac, prepared on
William's approach to cross the seas to Ireland. In the next century
Gerald 'the Welshman' related the legend that Harold himself was not
killed at the battle of Senlac, but escaped, and, after many wanderings,
took refuge in a hermit's cell near the minster of S. John's, where he
remained until his death. The story was no doubt invented by those who
were unwilling to believe that an English king had been defeated by a
foreigner.
William captured the city and received the submission of Edric the
Forester and other Saxon leaders. Chester was put in charge of a Flemish
noble called Gherbod, who, however, in the following year returned to
his native land. Then, leaving a trail of fire and sword through
mid-Cheshire, William marched southwards to Salisbury Plain, where he
held a grand review of all his followers and distributed to them their
rewards. You will not see him again in Cheshire. No part of the country
ever needed a second visit from the 'Conqueror'.
The English who had borne arms against William were treated as rebels
and deprived of their lands and possessions, which were parcelled out
among the Normans. A parcel of land thus granted was called a manor. All
the landowners, including those English who were allowed to keep their
estates, were compelled to take the oath of fealty to King William in
person. In this way William broke up the great earldoms which had been
created by the Danish king Cnut.
Cheshire, however, in which the Saxon Earl Edwin, Harold's
brother-in-law, owned vast estates, was from the first treated in a very
special manner. Owing to its position on the border of Wales, William
saw that it was very necessary to place a strong military power in this
part of England to protect his newly-won kingdom from invasion from the
west. So he bestowed the county upon his own favourite nephew Hugh
d'Avranches, surnamed Lupus or 'the Wolf', and his heirs, giving him the
title of Earl of Chester. The earl's duty was to repel any attacks that
might be made by the Welsh, and permission was given him even to extend
his earldom, if possible, beyond the Welsh border. Royal rights were
granted to him over all land within the earldom, which was held by him
'as freely by the sword as the king held England by the Crown'. For this
reason Cheshire was called a County Palatine, that is, a county whose
ruler exercises all the powers of an independent prince, save only that
he owns allegiance to his overlord the king. And the sword, the 'sword
of dignity', as it was called, was no light one. You may see it if ever
you visit the British Museum, a mighty two-edged weapon four feet long,
with its inscription in Latin engraved beneath the hilt, 'Hugo comes
Cestriae,' Hugh Count of Chester.
In the quadrangle of Eaton Hall is an equestrian statue of Hugh Lupus,
an ancestor of the Dukes of Westminster, whose family derives its name
of Grosvenor from Robert the 'gros veneur' or great huntsman of the
Conqueror and nephew of 'the Wolf'.
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.
Bigot received more than one manor. Domesday tells us that he held
Sandbach also. Over the entrance of Sandbach Town Hall you may see his
statuette, placed there to remind you of the days when Cheshire lands
passed from the hands of the English to their Norman conquerors.