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THE ANCESTOR 247 Castle. From the younger sister Margaret, by her husband, Geoffrey de Cornwall, descended the Cornwalls, 'Barons of Burford,' a curious titular distinction which they owed to their share (in which Burford was included) of the Richard's Castle fief The deeds relating to this partition will be found on pp. 36, 97-8, 177-9 ^^^^ volume, which was prepared by an eminent scholar, Mr. W. H. Stevenson, a special authority on place-names, their identity and derivation. Of the demesne manors here dealt with little need be said. They are Burford in Shropshire, Cotheridge and Wychbold in Worcestershire, Blethvaugh in Radnor, Nympton in Devon, Amberden (in Depden^) and Hobrige (in Witham^) in Essex, and Norton near Daventry, Northants. None, I may say, of these names presents the slightest difficulty ; Mr. Stevenson however could not identify Blethvaugh (' Blethevagh ') or Norton, and although he successfully identified Margaret's moiety of Nympton (' Nymeton '), Joan's moiety (' Nymynton ') baffled him (p. 672) ; Hobrige, an important manor, he mistook for Heybridge, explaining that the ' Hobrugg ' of the text was intended for ' Hebrugg ' (p. 645), which it is not. The so- called laws of ' phonology ' (or whatever the thing calls itself) were incompatible, no doubt, with the simple facts. When we pass from the demesne manors to the knight's fees of the under-tenants, we realize at once the value of a document which records the names of those under-tenants in a given year (1309), the number of knight's fees they held, and the manors in which they held them. I have here ar- ranged the details in tabular form for convenience, giving the modern equivalent of the place-names in the text. We have first the knight's fees assigned to the elder sister Joan. The reader should observe the interesting cases in which parishes have derived their present distinctive name from the families which then held them. Warwickshire {I fee Jordan de Say i „ Heirs of William de Halughton V Heirs of Walter le Norable Mollington |- „ Eleanor de Clare Dunchurch |- „ Eustachia widow of John Dunheved 1 This was an escheated manor of the Honour of * Peverel of London.' 2 This was held of the Montfichet fief