Collins, following the pedigree he mentions, says that Robert left a son William, who had a son Hugh, whose issue were Simon and Robert. This may be true; but we shall content ourselves with such notices as are to be obtained from genuine documents.

The next notice, then, after Domesday, that we obtain of the family, is in a deed from the Cartulary of Lewes Priory (quoted in Watson's Memoirs, i. 126), in which Hugh, Robert, and William de Pierpoint, occur as witnesses to a charter of William, third Earl of Warren, who died 1148, the charter itself being proved to be dated about two years before. These might have been sons of the Robert in Domesday.

By the Liber Niger, it appears that in 1166, Robert de Pierpoint was owner of a knight's fee in Lincolnshire. By the same document, it appears that Simon de Pierpoint was coparcener of some land held of the Bishop of Chichester. Unfortunately the tenants of the Earl of Warren for the rape of Lewes are not specified in this valuable record.

Fuller, in his Worthies, gives the name of Richard de Pierpoint as sheriff of Cheshire, 35 Henry II. Watson says that Beatrix, who married William de Warren, lord of Wormegay, who died 1208, was daughter and heiress of Hugh de Pierpoint, probably the before-mentioned Hugh. Dansey, in his Crusaders, says that Robert and Simon de Pierpoint were with Richard I. at the siege of Acre. This is highly probable. About 1175, Simon de Pierpoint and William de Pierpoint were witnesses to a certificate of John Le Strange. 11941203, Simon de Pierpoint appears as a knight. At the same time occur Alan de Pierpoint and William de Pierpoint, brothers, probably sons of Simon. Guy de Pierpoint alias de Glazeley, probably son of Alan, and father of a second Alan his heir, had three sons, Harry, Alan, and William, by Juliana, who survived him. Juliana, in a cause, names Adam de Pierpoint her attorney. 1238, Wydo de Pierpoint was witness to a feoffment of John Le Strange. 1255, Alan de Pierpoint was lord of Glazeley. All these notices are from Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. i. p. 211, where there is a pedigree of the Glazeleys of five generations, from Alan of 1225 down to 1353, but no arms are assigned to the

family. There cannot be much doubt that this Shropshire branch of the Pierpoints came from Hurst. During the reign of Henry III., we meet with scattered members of the family whom it is impossible to affiliate. In a dateless deed of this reign, Simon de Pierpoint grants and confirms to Walter, son of Randolph de Pierpoint, all the land which Randolph held in Hurst, Wyke, and Wrandham (Wrentham, in Suffolk), the witnesses to which are Peter de Hurst, and Simon, son of Peter of Hurst.1 Richard de Pierpoint, and Ralph his brother, are witnesses to a dateless charter of Gilbert de Ockley. Edmund de Pierpoint was witness about 1275 to a charter of Sir Robert de Pierpoint.2 John de Pierpoint, of Hove, had a daughter, Helewisha, married about 32 Edward I., to John de Bolney. And a Walter de Pierpoint, of Hove, occurs 28 Edward III.3 Another Walter, of Ovingdean, is met with much later, viz., 14 Henry VI. (Gainsford Deeds, Harl. MSS., 392, p. 88.) From the Testa de Nevill we learn that Simon de Pierpoint, temp. Henry III., held ten knights' fees of the Earl of Warren; and that John de Perpunt held land by serjeanty in Nottinghamshire. The former was probably the Simon who, 23 Henry III., had a suit between William Earl of Warren, concerning free warren in Hurst and Goldbridge. This Simon, Collins says, died without issue, and was succeeded by his brother, Sir Robert, who sided with Henry III. against the Barons, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Lewes, 1264. According to the same authority he was succeeded by Sir Robert, his son and heir, who married Annora, sole daughter to Michael de Manvers (who died 39 Henry III.), and sister and heir to Lionel de Manvers, whereby he became possessed of several lordships in Nottinghamshire, and among them the lordship of Holme-Pierrepoint. This Sir Robert was dead before 1292; and by Annora his wife, who had survived him, he had two

1 A facsimile of this deed is in the Burrell MSS., and is given at length in p. 56 of the History of Hurstpierpoint, 12mo, 1837. The deed is supposed to comprehend the farm called "Randells," part of the Danny estate.

2 Lewes Cartulary. Plea Rolls.

4 According to the pedigree in Davy's Suffolk Collections in the British Museum,

it was a Sir Henry who married Annora. This pedigree in other respects differs from Collins, as also does much more materially the pedigree in the Visitation of Notts, which seems in many respects to have no foundation whatever, but in the imagina. tion of the compiler. Collins's account is supported by the pedigree in the Plea Rolls.

sons, Simon and Robert. Simon was one of those who were summoned as barons to Parliament, 22 Edward I.: his daughter Sibilla marrying Edmund Ufford, whose descendants were owners of the Sussex property, including Hurst; whilst Robert, his brother, who carried on the line, and was progenitor of the Barons Pierpoint, Dukes of Kingston, had the Nottinghamshire estates. Further information of the lords of Hurst at this period is supplied from other sources, which confirm Collins's account. In Suckling's Suffolk (ii. 369), we are told that Henstead was attached to the great manor of Wrentham, held by Godfrey de Pierpoint at the Domesday Survey. To distinguish it from another manor of the same name, it was called Henstead-Perpounds, which in 1349 was owned by Alan de Henstead, who was also then patron of the living; in 1301-1316, Simon de Pierpoint holding the patronage. In 1271, Sir Simon obtained license of free warren for his estates in Benacre, Wrentham, and Henstead. John, son of Sir Simon, married Ela, daughter of Sir William de Calthorp, who on their marriage, 5 Edward III., had settled on them the manor of Hurst-Pierpoint. Soon after this period, their interests ceased in Henstead. From the Plea Rolls, 28 Edward III. (Coll. Topog. et Geneal. part iii. p. 272), it appears that Simon, son of Sir Simon de Pierpoint, Chevalier, son of Robert, sought to recover from Walter de Pierpoint, one messuage, one carucate of land, and 100s. rent in Hove. From these additional particulars it would seem that John and Simon were brothers of Sibilla, and left no issue, their sister becoming their sole heir.

It would be irrelevant, now our notices of the Pierpoints of Hurst, indeed of Sussex, are brought to a close, to pursue a branch of the family who had no connection with the county; but in the spirit of that feeling of interest and affectionate remembrance which follow the departure of those with whom we have been long associated, a very concise account of the descent and fortunes of that more distinguished line of the Pierpoints, who became extinct only at the end of the last century, may be excused and welcomed.

Sir Robert, brother of the last Sir Simon, of Hurst, attended Edward in his Scottish wars, and was succeeded by se veral generations, who maintained their knighthood in every

reign, till in the time of Charles I., Robert Pierpoint was raised to the peerage, by the titles of Baron Pierrepoint, Viscount Newark, and Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, whose son obtained the further dignity of Marquis of Dorchester. This last title, however, became extinct in the person of its first occupant, he dying without male issue. The other titles passed to his male heir, in whose successor Evelyn Pierrepoint, 1706, the marquisate of Dorchester was revived, and who in 1715 was advanced to the highest grade in the peerage, by being created Duke of Kingston. This and all the other hereditary dignities, however, became extinct with the death of Evelyn Pierrepoint, grandson of the first Duke, in 1773.

But the name of Pierrepoint and some of the titles were subsequently revived. Charles Meadows, being son of Philip Meadows, by Frances, sister and heir of Evelyn, last Duke of Kingston, assumed the name of Pierrepoint, and was created Baron Pierrepoint of Holme-Pierrepoint, and Viscount Newark, 1796; and Earl Manvers, 1816, ancestor of the present Earl Manvers, &c.

Whe

Before we proceed to notice the successors of the Pierpoints, we may well pause to indulge in a few observations on a race who for so many generations occupied a foremost rank among those proud and potent vassals of a long feudal and warlike period, those Anglo-Norman Sussex knights and warriors the Echinghams and St. Legers, the Poynings' and Kaynes', the Savages and Percys and Bohuns. ther one race is really more prolific than another-not within the narrow limits of a county and a century, but comprehending all the male descendants in a direct line of some one progenitor for four or five centuries-would be a curious genealogical inquiry, and not without much ethnological and physiological interest. But certainly there are families who flourish so numerously for a few generations in certain districts, and then almost entirely disappear, as if struck down root and branch by some curse or plague; whilst others never cease from the land, but, pushing deep and wide their roots, keep up their numbers with unfailing fertility on their native soil. There were Chatfields and Luxfords and Cruttendens, in Sussex 500 years ago; and there are probably as many Chatfields and Luxfords and Cruttendens in the county now,

as would furnish a battalion for the militia. In the days of Elizabeth there were Coverts and Culpepers enough in the county to have formed a grand jury; in the days of Victoria it is doubtful if a Covert or Culpeper is to be met with from Chichester to Rye. Is the race then extinct, or is its fecundity kept up on the banks of the Severn or the Humber, in the wilds of Connemara, or among the Cheviots and Grampians? Or did the Mayflower carry across the Atlantic the surviving scions of the stock, and does a new race of Coverts and Culpepers rank high among the planters of Virginia and the merchants of New York? Such problems may be classed with the curiosities of genealogy, and may one day receive a solution.

To return to the Pierpoints. At the Conquest, they seem to have had as large a share in the partition of Sussex as any other under-tenants. A century and a half afterwards, at the time of Henry the Third, they were among the most extensive landholders of the county, Simon de Pierpoint then holding, as we have seen, ten knights' fees, his neighbour and cousin, Thomas De Poynings, holding the same number. Here, however, a difference seems to have arisen in the fortunes of the two families-a difference that seems to have grown in the same direction for some generations afterwards. A knight's fee is said to have been equal to about 600 acres; we have seen that the two Pierpoints, at the Domesday Survey, held about 9000 acres (the lands of Godfrey passing by some means to the successors of his brother Robert). The possessions of the predecessor of the Poynings' amounted to about 4000 acres. The family of Poynings then, so early as Henry III.'s time, had added to their manors, whilst the Pierpoints seem to have parted with many of theirs without acquiring new ones; and this disparity seems to have gone on widening till the Poynings', at the time when the last Pierpoint was gathered to his fathers in their ancestral place of sepulture, had attained a height of rank and wealth that eclipsed all the Pierpoints had gained two centuries before or after, at the time when they were ranked among the barons of the realm, had built a stately castle, had gained laurels on every battle-field, had made splendid alliances, had acquired manors and parks and forests stretching across the county,