At a General Meeting of the SURTEES SOCIETY, held in Durham Castle, on Tuesday, June 4th, 1907, Mr. J. CRAWFORD HODGSON in the chair,

It was resolved,

That the Percy Chartulary, edited by Miss M. T. Martin,

be the volume for 1909.

WILLIAM BROWN,

Secretary.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Percy Chartulary was apparently compiled in the time of Henry, fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick, upon his creation as Earl of Northumberland. It contains no later handwriting, and no document of later date than the charter of creation given on the coronation day of Richard II, 16 July, 1377.1 The volume consists of over eleven hundred conveyances of property which directly or eventually came to the Percy inheritance. About half the chartulary is occupied with lands in Yorkshire, and a quarter with Northumberland. The earliest charters in the volume belong to the middle of the twelfth century, when the greater part of the large possessions of the Percies in Yorkshire already belonged to them. At the time of the Domesday Survey, they held eighty-six lordships in the North Riding. Seamer, Whitby, and the manors of Spofforth and Topcliffe, for so long residential seats of his descendants, were all acquired in the lifetime of William, the first Lord Percy of Yorkshire, who died on the first crusade in 1096. In 1176, the inheritance was divided between the two daughters of William, fourth Lord Percy, Maud wife of William de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, and Agnes, who married Joceline of Louvain, son of the Duke of Brabant, and brother of Adeliza, Queen of Henry I.2 The Earl of Warwick died in a crusade in 1184, and Maud died in 1203, without descendants, leaving her inheritance to Richard de Percy, son of her sister Agnes; for nearly twenty years Richard disputed the inheritance with his nephew William, son of his elder brother Henry who had died before his mother. The manor of Settle, which, with a few other places, remained to Richard, was granted by him

to his son Henry, who, in 1249, obtained licence for a market and fair,1 and confirmation of his father's grant in 1258;2 in 1260, he conveyed the manor to his cousin Henry, ninth Lord Percy, in the elder line of descent. By marriage with Isabel Bruce, Henry son of Agnes and Joceline acquired the manor of Kirk Levington, to which was attached the curious service of taking to the Christmas Mass the lady of Skelton Castle, and afterwards dining with her. The manor of Pocklington, obtained in 1294 by the abbey of Meaux from Edward I, in exchange for Miton and Wick where the King wished to found the port of Hull, came to the Percies in 1303, by exchange with the abbey for the advowson of the church of Nafferton. William, eighth Baron Percy, married Joan, fifth daughter of William Briwere, who brought to him the manor of Foston in Leicestershire, and many other lands, principally in the southern counties.5 Foston, with Tadcaster and Pocklington, was settled by Henry de Percy second Lord of Alnwick, on his son upon his marriage with Mary daughter of the Duke of Lancaster; at the same time, the seisin of large estates held in fee simple was converted to fee tail by means of conveyance through John de Creik, parson of Spofforth. After the death of Joan Briwere, William de Percy married Ellen daughter of Ingelram de Balliol, and thus acquired Dalton Percy in Durham; the manor was granted by Ellen, when a widow, to her son Ingelram de Percy, and at his death, in 1262, was divided between his brothers William, canon of York, and Walter; William granted his moiety to Walter for the rent of a pair of white gloves at Midsummer.8

Many conveyances are of small pieces of land which pass from hand to hand until they are finally released

to the lord, or are exchanged for other land in order to increase the demesne or enlarge a park. No fewer than thirty deeds concern holdings of the Agillum family in Leckonfield, only one being as large as four acres and one of three; these lands were all sold directly to Richard de Percy, who, for one piece of land of two acres, gave a tunic and surcoat, worth half a mark.1 A ploughland and toft in Spofforth were leased in 1240 for the picturesque rent of two garlands of primroses at Easter, of roses at Midsummer, and of sunflowers at Michaelmas, one for the lord and one for the lady, and at Christmas a pair of furred gloves or sixpence.2

The principal religious houses which occur in the volume are the great Cistercian abbeys of Fountains and Sawley. The only notice of a grant to Whitby, the chief burial-place of the house of Percy till the end of the twelfth century, is a mention of a rent to the infirmary, of 5s. at Martinmas from land in Ayton.3 The earliest notice of Fountains is in 1182, when the monks owe to Agnes de Percy a rent of 12s. for the grange of Marton. During most of the thirteenth century disputes were carried on between the Percies and the abbey, chiefly relating to pasture and hunting-lodges in Langstrothdale and the enclosure of Creybeck. In 1219, the abbot of S. Mary of York, the dean of York, and eight others were arbiters between the abbot of Fountains and Richard de Percy, and Richard's nephew, William, with whom he was continually at variance.5 One of the provisions agreed upon was that William should not take the abbot's sheep against the charter of King John. This charter, with its important protection of the flocks so valuable to the Cistercians for their trade in wool, was granted in 1199 after the King's persecution of the Order, which ended in his founding their house of Beaulieu. In 1294, Henry de

1 No. CCCXLVIII.

2 No. CCLXX.

3 No. CVII.

4 No. XXII.

5 No. c.

Percy granted to Fountains the manor of Litton with Littondale, reserving, as usual, hunting rights; two foresters were to be provided by the monks, who restored the pasture in Buckden acquired from William, Henry's grandfather, in 1241.1 The abbey of Sawley was founded by William de Percy in 1147, and refounded when in great poverty forty years later, by his daughter Maud, Countess of Warwick, who gave to it the church of Tadcaster; in the next century, the abbey surrendered her gifts of demesne land in Catton to Richard de Percy her nephew, and of land in Linton and Wetherby to William de Percy; and granted to William the free customs of the chapel of his court of Tadcaster. William de Percy, who died in 1245 and was buried at Sawley, gave to the abbey the manor of Gisburn for the soul of Ellen de Balliol his wife, to maintain six monks in priest's orders; subject to a rent of twenty marks of silver to be paid to Sandon Hospital, in Surrey, the burial-place of Joan Briewere his first wife, where his own heart was afterwards laid.4 This rent was remitted to Sawley by the first Earl of Northumberland, in whose time the profits of the manor were not sufficient to provide for the six priests and also supply the rent. For the soul of Joan, Percy gave to the Premonstratensian canons of Coverham the chapel of S. Oswald of Hubberholme, with a chamber and garden for a priest.6

Several deeds in the volume are conveyances of land made in satisfaction for acquittance from Jewish money-lenders. As the King and great monasteries, especially of the Cistercian Order, obtained land in this way from the large landowners, so the lords, in their turn, added to the number of their manors, or took into their own hands lands of their tenants who had fallen into debt. Ingelram de Percy, lord of Dalton, for acquitting Ralf de Haulay towards his Jewish creditors, received more