Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/44

36 THE END OF THE NORMAN January should not affect their claim, especially as the earl on the previous occasion had pleaded to the writ without taking this objection. However, another adjournment was made, in a form which suggested that it was thought possible that a settlement might be arranged before the next hearing. What the outcome of the case was is not quite certain, but it appears from later proceedings that judgement was never given, as the earl died in 1237, while the plea was pending, and two of the co-heirs (Ferrers and D'Aubigny) are found putting forward again what looks like this very claim in the proceedings by other persons for partition of the county palatine, which took place after the earl's death.^ John the Scot died without issue at Damhall, in Cheshire, very shortly before 6 June 1237, on which day a royal letter bears date, addressed to the constables of Chester and Beeston, stating that the king had heard for certain that the earl was dead.^ His short tenure of the earldom had but little incident.^ Charters to the abbey of St. Werburgh and to the city of Chester stand to his record. At the coronation of Queen Eleanor on 20 January 1235/6 (while the suits were pending) he bore the curtana, one of the three swords of state, as earl of Chester, and claimed (unsuccessfully) to carry a second sword in right of his earldom of Huntingdon, as his father had in 1170.* He took the cross the same year. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his wife, Helen, daughter of Llewelyn, prince of North Wales, and was buried in St. Werburgh's Abbey, Chester. He was the last of the seven Norman earls of the county palatine.^ The Partition of 1237 Historically, no doubt, the most important feature arising out of the death ot Earl John was the annexation of the earldom by the Crown. There are other interesting matters, i.e. the claim to the title by the husband of one of his co-heirs, and the claims by the others for partition of this portion of the earl's inheritance, to which sufficient attention has hardly been given. The annexa- tion will be dealt with later. As regards the claims the position stood thus. The earl had died without leaving issue, and there was then no male issue of his co-heirs. They were four * — ^two « Post, p. 42. • Cal. of Pat. Rolls. For the date of death see Obits of St. Wtrburgh's Abbey, p. 95. • He does not appear in the Diet, of Nat. Biogr. • Round, The King's Serjeants, p. 339, &c. • No inquisitio post mortem survives. According to The Complete Peerage (ed. Gibbs), iii. 170, the writ for his inq. p.m. is dated 25 May 1242. This was not for an iN^. p. m. but for an inquiry into the disseisin of a tenant of the earl after the earl's death by the bailiffs of the king. See Cal. of Inquisitions, d-c. (P.R.O.), i. 2. • See The Complete Peerage, ed. Gibbs (which corrects the original edition in some respects), svb Chester, Aumale, Balliol, Bruce, &c.