Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/52

44 THE END OF THE NORMAN January possessions with which his predecessor enjoyed and maintained the earldom. He still had the aesnecia attaching to the senior co-heir which, besides the right to the title, would give him the capitale messuagium of the county (which no doubt meant in this case Chester Castle) with the attendant privileges and profits of jurisdictions. In addition he was entitled to his share of the whole inheritance of the earl under the partitions, possibly one-half of one-third if the division were per stirpes, one-quarter if per capita. But a title without lands, and large lands, was of no value in those times. To be the earl of Chester with all its feudal obligations and the military necessities attendant upon its position on the borders of Wales may, under such reduced, conditions, have seemed little more attractive to him than it appeared desirable to the king, and he may therefore not have been at all unwilling to come to terms for the surrender of his rights. Some negotiations were doubtless necessary, but eventually one (though not the last) obstacle to the complete royal control of the county was removed, the king acquiring, by means of an exchange, de Forz's prospective share of the Cheshire lands. On 5 October 1241 the Charter Roll records the gift to him and his wife of the manor of Drifiield (Yorkshire) and the manorand advowson of Tingden (Finedon, Northamptonshire) , in exchange for the share which fell to her of the inheritance of the earl in the comitatus of Chester. At the same time, and doubtless as part of the transaction, a rent of £30 payable to the king by de Forz for the manor of Pocklington (Yorkshire) was reduced to the nominal render of a mewed sparrow-hawk.^ He also obtained leave to pay by instalments of £40 a year a sum of nearly £400 owing to the exchequer for his own and his father's debts, including £94, the share of the liabilities of Earl John which fell to be paid by de Forz and his wife. But (and this must be called to the attention of the peerage lawyers, misled by Coke, and failing in independent investigation of the facts in the case), although he had parted Avith his share of the Cheshire inheritance, there was still vested in de Forz the aesnecia. This fact, and what happened, is the strongest evidence, if any further be required, that there was no abeyance of the title whatever, nor was there any refusal of the king to call it out in the modern sense, and if the Chester case is to be (as it has been) considered a part of the foimdations upon which the modern doctrine of abeyance has been built up, the house has indeed been built upon sands. And so it was considered necessary to complete the transaction by obtaining the extinction of the right upon which the claim ' Cal. of Charier Rolls, 5 Oct. 1241 ; Cal. of Close Rolls, 22 October 1241 ; and Excerpta e Rot. Fin., 24 October 1241. Christiana died s.p., and her sister Devorgild de Balliol inherited some of these lands.