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DESCENT OF THE MANOR OF HURST-PIERPOINT,

AND OF ITS LORDS.

BY WILLIAM SMITH ELLIS, ESQ.

THE following is the account given of Hurst-Pierpoint in the Domesday Survey :

"In Botingelle (Buttinghill) hundred, Robert holds Herst of William. Earl Godwin held it. It was then assessed at 41 hides. It is now not rated, because it was always exempt from the land-tax. At the time it was transferred there were only 18 hides. There are 3 hides in the rape of the Earl of Moreton, and 19 hides in the rape of William de Braiose. The arable is 25 plough lands. There are two ploughs in the demesne, and thirty-five villains, and eight bondsmen have 21 ploughs. Here is a church, eight ministers, three mills of nine shillings, eighty acres of meadow, and a wood of fifty hogs. William holds three hides of this land; Gilbert 31 hides, which villains formerly held. The total value in the time of King Edward was £36; it was subsequently reduced to £9, and the whole is now estimated at £12."

This is one of the largest manors, if not the largest, in Sussex, mentioned in Domesday as held by a mesne tenant, the more extensive ones being possessed by the great baronial tenants in chief, and ecclesiastical corporations. Several subinfeudations of so considerable a lordship were no doubt made, the greater number of which have either ceased to exist, or from early desuetude, or extinction of dependent suit and service, have continued to the present day as independent manors, and cannot be identified, except conjecturally, from circumstances of ownership and locality. However, the manor of

Howcourt, in Lancing, Domesday Book itself testifies, was held of or included in the manor of Herst. In addition to this, the manors of Pakyns and Hautbois,1 the demesnes of which are in the parish, are the only two besides, with perhaps that of Hixted, that can be clearly presumed to have been members; though it is probable that the manor of Oathall in Wivelsfield, of which the manor of Leigh in Cuckfield and Hurstpierpoint is a subinfeudation, was originally another. It is not often that a manor and a parish are conterminous; still less so, that a parish does not contain lands belonging to more than one manor: this double position was that of Hurstpierpoint the manor, from its large area, extended into several parishes, and the parish, though not extensive, contains lands that are parcel of the adjoining manors of Sedlescombe and Pangdean, and perhaps of others.

The preceding extract from Domesday does not inform us who the "Robert" was who was the under-tenant of the manor, though elsewhere the lord paramount is mentioned as William de Warren. It is only by circumstantial evidence we know his surname was De Pierpoint; for no deed, recital, or any document of a later date, describes, as is often the case with other families, the Domesday tenant as ancestor, direct or indirect, of any subsequent owner of the name of Pierpoint; and in early deeds, as in the cartulary of Lewes Priory, down to the time of Henry the Third at least, the place is mentioned as "Hurst" simply, though it might probably at one time have been called WestHurst, in contradistinction to East-Hurst, before it got the appellation of Hurst-Monceux. There can be no question, however, that the Pierpoints enjoyed the possession of the manor which received their distinctive name, in unbroken male descent from the Conquest till the period when it passed out of the family by a female heir, an interval of about three centuries. But it is so often assumed by topographers that the Domesday tenant of a manor is the ancestor in the male line of subsequent owners, when we know that a female

1 This manor (according to Sir William Burrell), though now only a small farm, called "Abbeys," took its name from the family of Hautbois, many of whose deeds are to be found in the Lewes Cartulary. The place which gave this family their

name, or received it from them, if a corruption of Haut-bois, was Hobbesse, a parish in Norfolk, as it is spelt in the Domesday Survey, being then held by William de Warren.-See an account of the parish and family in Parkins' Norfolk.

inheriting, even at that early period, frequently imposed her patronymic on her husband and son, that truth requires extreme caution in admitting prevalent statements of this nature, which arise from conclusions too hastily formed. In the case before us, though the Robert of Hurst is not called by his surname in Domesday, yet that document, in giving the undertenants of William de Warren in Suffolk, mentions Robert, Godfrey, and Rainald "de Petraponte," as owners of lands which appear by subsequent deeds to be possessed by the Pierpoints of Hurst; and other their possessions in Sussex can be traced up to their Domesday owners, "Godfrey" and "Robert." In the Gallia Christiana (vol. ii., Appendix) a charter is cited, dated 1059, by which Robert de Petrapont and his brother Godfrey gave the tithes of Cuverville to a monastery.1

There can be little doubt that these are the same persons as the Domesday tenants. Where a mesne tenant holds largely of his superior lord, he is often found to be his son or other near relative; such was undoubtedly the case with the Pierpoints and Warrens. In Sussex, Robert de Pierpoint held 58 hides of land, and Godfrey 24-together 82 hides, or about 9000 acres of land, To this enumeration should be added the possessions of William Fitz-Reinald, who had Poynings and other manors amounting to 30 hides, nearly 4000 acres; for this person also held land in Wretham, in Suffolk, the manor of the Pierpoints; and it is probable he was son of Reinald de Pierpoint before mentioned. In order to ascertain what relation the Pierpoints might be to the Warrens, an inspection of the pedigree of the latter makes us acquainted with a "Godfrey," uncle of the William de

1 "Gilston of Gileston, to which there was a manor or lordship attached, was so called from Sir Giles Pierpoint, one of Bernard Newmarch's knights. Joyce, daughter and heir of John Pierpoint alias Parkville, married Walter or Watkin Gunter, eighth in descent from Sir Peter, a contemporary of Sir Giles."-(Jones's Hist. of Brecknock, vol. ii. part 2, p. 593.) In the pedigree of Gunter, in Vincent's Sussex, quoted in Dallaway's Chichester Rape, Richard Gunter, seventh in descent from Jenkin Gunter, temp. William I., marries Maud, daughter and heiress of John de Pierpoint.

2 Mr. Watson's handsomely embellished volumes, Memoirs of the Earls of Warren, are generally resorted to for information on this family; but that work is well known to be, in many respects, quite untrustworthy abounding with hasty conclusions, false deductions, erroneous statements, and quotations from bad or doubtful authorities. The pedigree of the Warrens at the end of this paper is compiled from deeds and other documents by the late Mr. Stapleton (a very safe authority), and brought together by Mr. Eyton, in his excellent Antiquities of Shropshire.

Warren of Domesday, who might have been, and probably was, father of Robert and Godfrey de Pierpoint, and perhaps, also, of Reinald, and who might have fought at the battle of Hastings, and died before the Domesday Survey.

We shall now endeavour to give an account of the successive lords of the manor, and of their families. The account given by Collins in his Peerage, of the Pierpoints, is probably in the main correct, and doubtful chiefly in the early part. It professes to be compiled from authorities that are cited, amongst others a pedigree of the family. But such pedigrees, whether to be found in visitations, or made out irrespectively by heralds, are in the early parts now so generally found to be fabulous, or put together upon insufficient evidence, and often upon none at all, that they are never to be relied upon, unless confirmed by unquestionable testimonies. And such pedigrees, and most genealogies, until the advent of a more sceptical race of genealogists, were characterized by a frequent absence of all criticism, and an utter confusion and inconsistency of dates. Thus Collins, in the account before us, states that the Robert de Pierpoint of Domesday held ten knights' fees of Earl Warren in Sussex, giving as his authority the Testa de Nevill, a document compiled in the time of Henry III., full 150 years afterwards. But when, in citing a French genealogy of the family, he says this Robert was a lieutenant-general in the Conqueror's army, it is possible he may be correct.

As to the place which gave name to the family, Collins, giving as his authority, "family evidences at Holme-Pierpoint," says that they continued their possessions, viz., the castle of Pierrepont, in the south confines of Picardy, and diocese of Laon, in 35 Henry I., 13 Henry II., and 2 Richard I., and were benefactors to the Abbey of Thionville, for lands in the territory of Sornicourt and Veel. Mr. Eyton, however, states that the family took their name from Pont St. Pierre, a vill in the diocese of Rouen, situate at the confluence of the rivers Andelle and Seine. But this seems simply a conjecture. Pont St. Pierre is evidently a bridge, or a town clustering near a bridge, named after the family of St. Pierre, as Pontdelarch, called also Pont-Arches, was after the family of Arches, and others, as Pont-Audomare, Pont-Cardon, similarly named.

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