Temple Newsam: 
 
 Its History and Antiquities; 
 
 COMPRISING 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT PRECEPTORIES OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 
 THERE AND AT TEMPLE HURST, THE I5AR0NIAL HOUSES 
 OF DARCV, LENNOX, STUART, AND IRWIN ; 
 
 / TOGETHER WITH AN 
 
 ACCOUNT OF THE MODERN MANSION, 
 
 AND 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED PICTURES. 
 
 w. wheater, 
 
 Author of " The Historic Mansions of Yorkshire^'' <5rV, , ^c. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Leeds : 
 
 goodall and suddick, cookridge street. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM 
 
 Its History and Antiquities. 
 
 ' Tivas there the 'ivarrioy''s hand did (^aiJt 
 The rents, and the long vassal train 
 
 That conquest gave. 
 
 ITHIN three miles of Leeds, and on as pretty 
 a spot as can be found at so short a distance 
 from any busy manufacturing town, stands the time- 
 honoured mansion of H. C. Meynell-Ingram, Esq., at 
 Temple Newsam. A noble park, studded thickly with 
 venerable and majestic trees, grand in their superb 
 growth, and attractive in their verdure, rises from the 
 bank of the river Aire, and is skirted by undulating hills, 
 whose various aspects combine to form a sylvan scene 
 all-potent in alluring the townsman from his dingy streets 
 whenever the relaxation of business permits him, The 
 delightful picturesqueness of that part of the Vale of 
 Aire is unquestionably the charm that gathers together 
 the throng of pleasure-seekers who - thanks to the 
 
4 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 generosity of its owner — may often find at Temple 
 Newsam so pleasant a retreat from the distracting 
 commotion of a manufacturing town. The present 
 huge red-brick house, contrasting so unfavourably with 
 the Gothic buildings of the old preceptory of Knights 
 Templars which it has replaced, is, externally, utterly 
 incapable of exciting interest in those who love to linger 
 over the time-worn ruins of antiquity ; the present fame 
 of Temple Newsam rests solely upon its superior land- 
 scapes. But that park and mansion have historical 
 associations ; and although the owners of the " many 
 twinkling feet " that now tread the soft sward on a 
 holiday afternoon, to the seductive tune of a merry waltz, 
 may, in the delirium of their pleasure, forget that the 
 past has a history ; yet, in their sober moments they will 
 not fail to perceive that those gnarled oaks and stately 
 elms — from the profusion of which in the earliest days of 
 our country's history, the ancient kingdom of Elmete is 
 said, rather fancifully, to have taken its name — are 
 precious relics of days long since fled» Unlike Kirkstall 
 Abbey, the favourite place of resort on the western side 
 of Leeds, Temple Newsam does not offer us a quiet 
 ramble among hoary old ruins ; for, although it has once 
 possessed a vast influence, little short of that of its 
 modern rival, nothing now remains to us to suggest its 
 former celebrity, except the first component word of its 
 name. Monarchs swept away the Corporation that gave 
 Temple Newsam its historical pre-eminence, and since 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 5 
 
 then the sure hand of time has removed, by inevitable 
 decay, whatever edifices may have been raised by those 
 who then possessed it. The proud steed of the vaHant 
 soldier-monk no longer caracoles upon the springy turf; 
 the mock strife of the tournament no longer entices high- 
 born dames to gather together in all their beauty to praise 
 the prowess and reward the devotion of each combatant 
 who strives for victory solely to gain the name of a true 
 knight, and the gratifying prerogative of proclaiming the 
 superior beauty of his "ladie-love." The soldier-priests 
 have gone, have died in battle and have occupied 
 unknown graves, or have brought their weary limbs 
 home to leave them to the bitter hostility of slander and 
 envy ; their successors have gone also, to be forgotten 
 in the wreck of an exploded civilization. The days of 
 chivalry are passed, that is, the chivalry of secular knight- 
 hood, which fed upon pomp and ceremony ; and it is for 
 the purpose of recording the history of the stoical Monks, 
 as well as of the men who clung tenaciously to its pageants, 
 when they are said to have forgotten or ignored its 
 precepts, that this task is in part undertaken. 
 
 Temple Newsam, or, as it was anciently called, 
 Newsam, Newsholm, Newhus, Newhusum, or Newbiggin, 
 like the many villages in its immediate neighbourhood, 
 is of unquestionable antiquity, although the words 
 comprising the latter part of its name suggest a later 
 foundation than most of the villages surrounding it 
 
6 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 If the name is to be taken as a sufficient indication, it 
 is probable that Newsam is of Norse origin, and was an 
 offshoot by some colonist of that nation from his victorious 
 comrades, who had seized the Angle villages north and 
 east of it. Yet, even if this be the case, Newsam may 
 be an ancient seat of population, for the circumjacent 
 villages are of the greatest antiquity, and have been of 
 the highest political importance. I may mention that 
 the western boundary of the township of Newsam is one 
 of the Roman roads, which is also the boundary of the 
 adjoining parish of Swillington, an Angle Clan-station, 
 and therefore one of the earliest of the foundations of 
 that people. It has been held that this Roman road was 
 probably the route of the army of Penda, the pagan 
 king of Mercia, who was slain hereabouts at the battle 
 of Winwidfield in 655. That statement, not devoid of 
 probability, I must, however, leave as I find it. Thoresby, 
 in his Ducatus^ expresses his belief that Leeds was the 
 capital of the old kingdom of Elmete, which retained its 
 independence as a British settlement after the Angles 
 had subdued and colonized the surrounding districts ; 
 indeed, it is contended that Leeds, before the advent of 
 the Romans, was one of the 28 chief cities of the island, 
 and Bede tells us that the royal villa or residence of the 
 Kings of Northumbria was in the country called " Loidis" 
 — in regione quce vocatu7^ Loidis, There is on the 
 declining hills of which Newsam occupies a part, a 
 remarkable series of place-names — Leeds, Ledston, 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 7 
 
 Ledsham, and lastly, at the crossing of the river Aire by 
 the Roman road, the once fortified station of that people 
 Legeolium, the modern Castleford. The name Leod is 
 held to mean "the people," that is to say, the Celts, native 
 people, and by this interpretation the sequence of names 
 becomes remarkable. These names all occur north 
 of the river; on the south of it there is no such 
 a singularity. 
 
 It was about the year 616 that Edwin, King of 
 Northumbria, as one of his earliest deeds on ascending 
 the throne, conquered the British territory of Elmete, 
 then existing as an independent State. Edwin was the 
 first Christian monarch of Northumbria ; he was the 
 most magnificent prince of his age, and it is he who is 
 said to have erected a royal palace in the neighbourhood. 
 Osmundthorpe is allowed, with every appearance of 
 truth, to have been the site of the villa regia spoken ot 
 by Bede as being near Leeds, and the home of the early 
 Anglo-Saxon Kings. Temple Newsam may be nearly 
 contemporary with the introduction of Christianity and 
 the erection of a church at Whitkirk ; but as that church 
 and village are not distinctly mentioned in the Doomsday 
 Survey, it cannot be conjectured by whom or when the 
 church was founded. Halton, the halig-tun or holy town, 
 has given the name to the settlement, although the 
 village is now a subordinate member of the parish of 
 Whitkirk. Its name of Whitkirk — derived from the 
 
8 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 circumstance of a stone, or "White" church, as such fabrics 
 were called in contradistinction to the wooden, or ''Black" 
 church, being built there — leads us to suppose that it was 
 not founded anterior to the middle of the ninth 
 century, the period when stone edifices were beginning 
 to be erected. 
 
 Whatever may have been the date of the foundation 
 of the Angle or Norse village of Newsam, years, perhaps 
 centuries, elapsed before the period when we have 
 authentic accounts of it, the first being furnished by that 
 invaluable compilation. Doomsday Book. From this 
 source we learn that, along with the whole tract of land 
 as far as the eye can reach in every direction, Newsam 
 passed from its early possessors into the hands of the 
 Norman Ilbert de Laci, the mighty baron of Pomfret, 
 who was the first of the Norman leaders to carry Norman 
 supremacy into the wild, hilly districts of Yorkshire and 
 Lancashire. As a reward of his success he received 
 from the Conqueror a grant of the whole district between 
 Pomfret and Blackburn in Lancashire, a district which, 
 at the present day, includes nearly the whole manufactur- 
 ing industry of England, and a very considerable portion 
 of her mineral wealth. 
 
 Ilbert de Laci was lord of Bois \ Eveque, near 
 Darnetal, in Normandy, but his Norman influence and 
 possessions were utterly insignificant as compared with 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. C) 
 
 those in England. He built Pomfret Castle as the seat 
 of his barony, and the Reoio Loidis became a part of 
 those vast domains he soon parcelled out among his 
 many followers. In Sceltune " he possessed three 
 carucates of land ; in Caldecotes, two carucates ; in 
 Colleton, two carucates ; and in Ossethorpe (Osmund- 
 thorpe), four carucates. In Newhusum^ Dunstan, and 
 Glunier, two Thanes, both men of great war fame, had 
 possessed eight carucates of land in the time of Edward 
 the Confessor, 1041-66, and had there four ploughs. 
 But when the Norman became its owner he subinfeudated 
 the manor to a vassal, named Ainsfrid, who kept eight 
 villanes and two sokemen, with three ploughs. This 
 signifies considerable opulence. There were but ten 
 carucates and six oxgangs to be taxed in Leeds, though 
 that town was held by seven Thanes. The whole 
 manor of Newsam at that period only contained three acres 
 of meadow-land, but it had an expanse of wood-pasture 
 half-a-mile long and half-a-mile broad. Its value in 
 King Edward's time had been 6oi-. ; when the conquest 
 was completed the effects of war had reduced it to 6s, 
 
 Other townships in the neighbourhood, now in the 
 parish of Whitkirk, had suffered in an equal or greater 
 extent. In Halghton " (Halton), a native named 
 Morfar had possessed six carucates of land^ on which he 
 maintained three ploughs ; now it was waste and 
 worthless. In Cipeton and Coleton " (Gipton and 
 
10 TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Colton), Cospatric, a Saxon noble, who was banished 
 for his share in resisting the Normans, had possessed 
 four and a half carucates of land that were liable to 
 taxation, and on which he maintained three ploughs."^ 
 When it fell into the hands of the Normans it was a 
 wilderness, rated at 25., although in King Edward's time 
 it had been worth 40^". No m.eadow or pasture-land is 
 mentioned, except wood-pasture ; but we are told that 
 then there was a church upon the manor, and it is not 
 improbable that it was the "White Kirk " arourid which 
 the village so named is now gathered. 
 
 After the Norman Conquest, Temple Newsam 
 appears to have descended from the Lacies, the chief 
 lords of the Honour of Pomfret, to a Norman family of 
 the name of Viliers, whose tenure was doubtless that of 
 military service. It remained with them for about a 
 century, when, through the gift of William de Viliers, it 
 became one of the possessions of that afterwards famous 
 fraternity, the Knights Templars, from whom it received 
 its prefix, Tejnple, The exact date of the establishment 
 
 * It may be that we discover, in the fact of Cospatric owning so 
 large a portion of the lands in the neighbourhood of Leeds, strong 
 grounds for the inference that the Saxon kings held the Regio Loidis as 
 their demesne until the very end of their rule. He was an offshoot of 
 the royal house, and at the time of the Conquest was one of the most 
 popular and daring of the patriot leaders. After the subjugation of 
 Yorkshire, in 1069, although he had been the most prominent of the 
 assailants at the siege of York, and had taken part in the insurrection in 
 which Robert de Comine had fallen, he made his peace with William, 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I I 
 
 of the preceptory has not been positively fixed by 
 contemporary writers. It is certain, however, that it took 
 place in the inheritance of Henry de Laci, the founder 
 of Kirkstall Abbey, for he ratifies the gift of the site. 
 We know it had occurred before 1 1 8 1 , for Laci's charter of 
 confirmation is addressed to Roger de Pont I'Eveque, 
 archbishop of York, who held the see from 1 154 to 1 18 i, 
 when he died. After the date of the great survey of the 
 possessions of the order, 11 85, the Templars possessed 
 in Nehus sixteen carucates of land by purchase from 
 William de Viliers, and by confirmation of Henry de 
 Laci, of which six carucates and three bovates (say 765 
 acres) were in domain. This vast farm, thus early under 
 their own cultivation, is the key to their polity ; they 
 were rearing and equipping soldiers and not raising rents, 
 
 Thus the simple Newhusum of the former Thanes 
 became Temple Newsam, the site of a preceptory of 
 warrior monks, whose valour was to astonish the world, 
 and whose power and riches were to excite the envy and 
 
 yet the Conqueror could not efface from his mind the fact that he was 
 an EngUshman who had been mighty in arms against him, and had 
 triumphed over the defeat and destruction of his armies. With the 
 consohdation of his power, WiUiam perfidiously deprived him of his 
 lands and honours. Cospatric then quitted England for ever, and settled 
 in Scotland, where his family long endured, honoured and opulent. 
 Earl Edwin, the brother-in-law of Harold, chief of Northumbria, and 
 one of the claimants of the Crown after Hastings, also owned lands in the 
 neighbourhood of Leeds ; he had the manors of Kippax and Ledstone. 
 
12 TEMPLE NEWS AM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 hatred of all other corporations, monastic or miHtary. 
 Like the order of Knights Hospitallers, the Templars 
 had their origin in the Crusades, being instituted in 1 1 19, 
 by nine Christian knights, for the protection of pilgrims, 
 whose devotions led them along the dangerous roads of 
 Palestine, The eloquent historian of the Crusades says, 
 ''There was not an illustrious family in Europe which did 
 not send at least one knight to the miHtary orders of 
 Palestine. Princes even enrolled themselves in this holy 
 militia, and laid aside the insignia of their dignity to 
 assume the red coat of arms of the Hospitallers, or the 
 white mantle of the Knights of the Temple. In all the 
 nations of the West, castles and cities were bestowed 
 upon them, which offered an asylum and succour to 
 pilgrims, and became auxiHaries to the kingdom of 
 Jerusalem. As monks, as soldiers of Christ, they were 
 remembered in every will, and not unfrequently became 
 the heirs of monarchs and princes." Subsequently, the 
 object of the order became the protection of the faith 
 generally, but more particularly the preserving of the 
 Holy Sepulchre from the grasp of Infidel Saracens. 
 
 Their name. Templars^ arose from the circumstance 
 that their house in Jerusalem was an abode given to 
 them by King Baldwin II., on the east side of the 
 Jevvisli Temple. Although intrepidity and military 
 prowess were ever the virtues most esteemed in each of 
 the brethren, yet, to the last days of the order, they 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 1 3 
 
 were mindful of religious exercises, and how free from 
 all florid decoration their worship was maintained, the 
 equipments of the Chapels of Newsamand Hirst proved 
 on the day when they were seized by the King. In that 
 respect, at least, they were the opposite of the monks. 
 Their soldierly piety was administered to with soldierly 
 simplicity; it had never been mixed up with the 
 pruriency of image-allusions, and the erotic striving for 
 feminal devotees. From the day of the confirmation 
 of the order by Pope Honorius II., in 1128, to the 
 time of its suppression by false and envious culumniators 
 and avaricious sovereigns, the highest, noblest courage 
 of the warrior, coupled with the piety of the priest, were 
 the characteristics of the Templars. Like canons 
 regular, they took the vows of chastity, obedience, and 
 poverty ; but unlike canons regular they maintained 
 their vows to the end of the life of their order. We 
 often find that vagabond monks are prohibited from 
 mixing with the laity, and from nightly visits to convents 
 of nuns ; we also find that nuns are not to drink ale in 
 public taverns, and frequent the resorts of gay young 
 men ; but we nowhere find such prohibition against the 
 brethren of the order of the Temple. 
 
 At the period of their first establishment the 
 knights subsisted upon the charity of the Christian lords 
 in Palestine. Then after the devotion of the first 
 members of the order had been proved, and their 
 
14 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 undaunted courage had spread a bright kistre over the 
 military qualities of the Christian soldier, the famous St. 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, with all the enthusiasm he was 
 capable of discovering, recommended to every true 
 Christian a society which prayed for and fought for the 
 tomb of our blessed Lord. The eloquence cf Bernard, 
 prompted by chivalrous feelings derived from a long line 
 of noble ancestry, and emanating from a zealous and 
 true Christian, was of the most vital service to the newly- 
 formed order : it w^on them that respect from the church 
 which their astounding valour had gained from the 
 secular powers. Numbers of knights and nobles 
 accepted service under the banner of the Cross, and 
 broueht with them larrre donations of lands and wealth 
 to enrich the fraternity into whose ranks they deemed 
 it the highest honour to be allowed to enter. The 
 greatest patrons of the order were the warlike Mowbrays, 
 their donations in Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire 
 were simply magnificent. Both the Knights Hospitallers 
 and Knights Templars held themselves most bound, 
 above all their benefactors, to Roger de Mowbray, to 
 whose heirs and descendants they granted peculiar 
 privileges. 
 
 On the 31st January, 11 28, the Master of the 
 Templars, Hugh de Payens, appeared before the Council 
 of Troyes, consisting of the Archbishops of Rheims and 
 Sens, ten Bishops, and a number of Abbots, among 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM ! ITS HISTORY AND AN ITQUITIES. I 5 
 
 whom was St. Bernard himself, and presided over by the 
 Cardinal of Albano, the papal legate. The Master having 
 given an account of the principles and exploits of the 
 Templars, the assembled fathers approved of the new 
 order, and gave them a new rule, containing their own 
 previous regulations, with several additions drawn from 
 that of the Benedictines, and chiefly relating to spiritual 
 matters. The validity of this rule was made to depend 
 on the approbation of it by the Holy Father and by the 
 Patriarch of Jerusalem, neither of whom hesitated to 
 confirm it. By the direction of Pope Honorius, the 
 Synod appointed a white mantle to be the distinguishing 
 dress of the brethren of the Temple, that of those of 
 the Hospital being black. This mantle was plain, 
 without any cross, and such it remained till the pontificate 
 of Pope Eugenius HI., who in T146 appointed the 
 Templars to wear a red cross on the breast, as a symbol 
 of the martyrdom to which they stood constantly exposed: 
 the cross worn on their black mantles by the knights of 
 St. John was luhite. Henceforth the terrible symbol 
 of the Templar became a tower of strength to his 
 friends, a mark of shame and confusion to his enemies : 
 and although in later years kings and priests in combination 
 could destroy an order whose qualities each might emulate, 
 they could not destroy the traditions which long after 
 their suppreGsion surrounded the memory of the knights 
 with a halo of glory. In the i6th century Spenser 
 remembered their valour with gratitude and their virtue 
 
1 6 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 with a Christian's pride, as is clear from his description 
 of the " Gentle Knight " 
 
 And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore, 
 
 The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, 
 
 For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, 
 
 And dead, as Hving, ever him adored ; 
 
 Upon his shield the like was also scor'd, 
 
 For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had. 
 
 Right faithfull, true he was in dede and word ; 
 
 But if his cheere did seeme too solemne sad ; 
 
 Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad. 
 
 Faerie Queene. 
 
 At first, the members of the order were divided 
 into three classes — knights, squires, and servitors ; all of 
 whom were of the highest nobility, and of these only 
 such were admitted as were most distinguished for their 
 courage and piety. In 1 172, as the order increased in 
 numbers and wealth, and became established in different 
 countries and different parts, an extension was made by 
 the admission of purely spiritual members, who officiated 
 as priests, chaplains, and clerks. All wore a badge of 
 the order — a girdle of linen thread to denote their vows 
 of chastity ; the clerical members having white, the 
 servitors grey or black gowns. The knights wore, 
 besides their armour, simple white cloaks, adorned with 
 octangular blood-red crosses, to signify that they were to 
 shed their blood in the service of Holy Church, 
 whose teaching at that period was most warlike. By the 
 
TEMPLE NEVVSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I 7 
 
 popular preachers, mePx s minds were filled only with the 
 idea of 
 
 Founding in Palestine a purer reign, 
 
 Wliere piety may rest, and peace recline 
 
 In full security, and none restrain 
 
 The free-born pilgrim, passing o^er the brine, 
 
 From offering holy vows at meek Messiah's shrine. 
 
 And the consequence was, that every act or every 
 institution having for its avowed object the deliverance 
 of the Holy Sepulchre, received prompt patronage from 
 those whose martial and religious zeal had been formed 
 and nourished by their spiritual advisers. Nor could 
 the results of such teaching be peace ; so the war then 
 looming in the not remote distance became a holy war, 
 and the military orders, by their peculiar constitution, 
 received the greatest amount of applause and support. 
 The chivalry of England and the West, obeying the 
 impulses of a training which especially fostered military 
 intrepidity and love of adventure, entered into them 
 with a celerity that gratified the priest whose fervent 
 harangues had known no other object than the liberation 
 of the Holy Sepulchre. Under the influence of these 
 doctrines, and in expectation of that crusade when Coeur 
 de Lion " led his mail-covered vassals to Palestine's 
 shore," three preceptories of Knights Templars were 
 established in the immediate neighbourhood of Leeds. 
 The first was that of Hurst, now called Temple Hurst, 
 founded by Ralph de Hastings in T152 ; the second was 
 
 B 
 
1 8 TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Temple Newsam, founded in the reign of Henry II., 
 and ante 1181, most probably in 1155, by William de 
 Viliers, who gave, along with the manor, other estates in 
 the neighbourhood, together with the church of Whitkirk, 
 which became the church of the preceptory, and remained 
 in the patronage of the Master of the order until its 
 suppression ; and the third was Ribstan, founded by 
 Robert Lord Ros in the latter part of the reign of 
 Richard or the beginning of that of John. 
 
 We have the means of restoring the structures 
 which formed a preceptory of Knights Templars. It 
 was not a sumptuous edifice like those of the monastic 
 orders. Their houses were built of timber, so the 
 Mowbray charters plainly tell us. In the main it may be 
 described as a manor house fitted amply enough, but 
 with rigorous economy. Its outline was entirely 
 domestic ; its adjuncts wholly rustic. The idea of its 
 use was never permitted to be lost sight of ; it was a 
 cavalry depot, and as such was maintained. The fabric 
 afforded sufficient accommodation lor man and horse ; 
 the husbandry of the estate was chiefly bent towards 
 supporting the knight and his charger. Stables and 
 stable utensils on the one hand were abundant, on the 
 other the accommodation of the knights was restricted 
 to mere sufficiency. The flocks and herds of the 
 Temple were mean as compared with those of the 
 Monastery. The granaries were well filled ; at Newsam 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 1 9 
 
 they contained oats to the value of ^39 35-. 4^^., while 
 the wheat was only worth ;£i2 16s. Sd. The farrier's 
 shop was well supplied, but the kitchen, the brew-house, 
 and the dormitory were scanty enough in their appoint- 
 ments. At the dissolution of the Order, the furniture in 
 the hall at Newsam was worth four shillings; at Hirst 
 three-and-ninepence, — ^and this sybarite equipment 
 administered to the luxury of a brotherhood lost in pride 
 and personal indulgence ! The inventory of the goods 
 then catalogued at these two preceptories is the most 
 eloquent defence of their sustained severity of life that 
 the knights could by any means put forward. 
 
 The founders of the order of Templars were, as we 
 have seen, either knights descended from the highest 
 houses, or prelates of a rank and distinction sufficiently 
 exalted to ensure for their protegds every respect and 
 consideration. It would be a pleasing, if somewhat 
 laborious task, to trace the development of the Order 
 of the Templars in Yorkshire, where they were more 
 liberally patronised and more strongly posted than in any 
 other part of England. That, however, the limits of 
 this work entirely preclude, though they do not prevent 
 me giving a fixed date as to the foundation of another 
 of the preceptories. At Rouen, on the 25th June, 1203, 
 King John grants to the Templars the gift of Guy de 
 Bouvaincurt of all the town called Westerdale, which 
 Hugh de Balliol confirmed. This same Guy (or his 
 
20 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 father) was the founder of the nunnery of Basedale. 
 They were apparently tenants of the Balliols. The 
 magnates of the land had alHed themselves with the 
 newly-formed order, and the prosperity which such 
 patronage ensures speedily followed. No sooner does 
 William de ViHers appear to have ceded his interest 
 in the Manor of Newsam, than his superior lord is 
 invited to ratify the gift. The then representative of 
 the house of De Laci was Henry de Laci, founder of 
 Kirkstall Abbey, and, as might only have been expected 
 from one whose generosity towards religious corporations, 
 if uncontrolled, which, however, appears to be quite 
 impossible, was equal to his unbounded opulence, 
 the ratification of the transfer was speedily made. 
 It may, however, be that stronger influences than 
 mere approbation of their valour, prompted him to 
 assist the Templars. As we see from the charter of 
 confirmation, at a date antecedent to Viliers's gift of 
 Newsam, De Laci had given to the Templars 
 lands in " Nieulond," and the gift clearly indicates 
 his desire to establish a perceptory upon his fee ; 
 but, as in the case of Kirkstall, the first site 
 may not have been eligible, or suitable to his 
 views, and another was chosen which did not remain 
 wholly in his hands. The change of the locus of these 
 two institutions was certainly not a mere fortuity. Why 
 Barnoldswick should have been deserted, in the case of 
 the Abbey, and the site at West Headingley chosen, is 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 2 1 
 
 perhaps sufficiently apparent. The first appropriation 
 of Barnoldswick can be proved to have been a pure 
 fraud. The land which the monks said De Laci gave to 
 them was not his to give ; it belonged to Hugh Bigod, 
 Earl of Norfolk, then absent from the country, but who. 
 on his return home, promptly drove both the monks and 
 their protdge out of the place by process of law. That 
 was a sufficient reason why they should leave Barnolds- 
 wick, and the unscrupulous greed which took them there 
 accompanied them without shame on their exit. The 
 wealth of the town of Leeds, and the conveniences the 
 neighbourhood would offer, I take as the motive for 
 choosing that site ; but such a motive hardly presents 
 itself in the case of the preceptory. In a worldly sense, 
 the monks had every thing to gain by an approach to a 
 larger population ; and it might be argued that in touch 
 of such a population their religious influence would be 
 the more powerfully felt. But that was not the case with 
 the Knights. They were not the teachers of the populace 
 either by art or influence, nor were they recruited from 
 the populace ; they had therefore nothing to gain from 
 contact with it. The change then was due to the other 
 reasons, perhaps now beyond discovery."^ 
 
 * According to the records Newland, which was in Normanton, 
 went to the Hospitallers, and this is what they say of it : — Newland, in 
 the deanery of Pontefract. The manor of Newland being given to 
 the Knights Hospitallers by King John, they estabUshed here a 
 preceptory of their order, to which, in the next reign, Roger le Teytevin, 
 
2 2 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 There was this similarity in the circumstances. Practi- 
 cally the two refoundations occurred at the same date, and 
 both were obviously due to one work, that of the chief 
 lord of the fee, It was William Pictavensis, of Head- 
 ingley, who gave the site of Kirkstall to the abbot, 
 although at the instigation of Henry de Laci, his superior 
 lord ; it was William de Viliers who sold the manor of 
 Temple Newsam, at the instigation of De Laci, who may 
 therefore be regarded as the virtual founder of the 
 preceptory. His cause for making the grant in the first 
 instance may not have been religious enthusiasm alone, 
 
 lord of Altofts, was a great benefactor. It was valued, 25 Hen. VIII., at 
 ^129 T4S. ii^d. yearly as Dugdale; at ^223 19s. y^d. as Le Neve's MS.; 
 and aL ^203 3s. 8d. as another MS. Valor ; and granted, 36 Hen. VIII., 
 to Francis Jobson, Andrew Dudley, e^•c. But I find a charter of King 
 John, given by the hand of Mag. Richard de Marisco at Roffham, 8 
 June, T213, which says — Know ye that we have granted and given of our 
 gift and by this charter have confirmed to the brethren Militioe Templi 
 the land of Niweland with its appurtenances, which William de Braus 
 held of them atferm, and which was taken into our hands with the other 
 land which the said William held ; having to them and holding in free 
 and perpetual alms. Wherefore we wish and firmly enjoin that the 
 brethren may have and hold the said land well, &c., as aforesaid. 
 Witnesses, the lord H., Archbishop of Dublin, Galf. FitzPeter, Earl of 
 Essex; Wm., Earl of Pembroke; Wm. Brievere ; Robert de Ros ; 
 Thos. Basset; Warin Fitzgerold. — Kot. Chart. 193. Roger le Peytevin 
 was of the above family. By charter dated 1256 Roger le Peytevin, 
 lord of AltoftS;Son and heir of Thomas le Peytevin, gave to the Knights 
 Hospitallers of Newland with his body which is to be buried in the 
 church of the brethren at Newland, or in the cemetery of the church, 
 and for the health of his soul and those of Thomas his father, Isabella 
 his mother, his wife, ancestors and successors, the whole advowson of 
 the church of Normanton, which advowson Matilda, Emma, and 
 Isabel, daughters and heirs of Walter le Morkar^ acknowledged to be 
 his right. See Hist. She? bum and Cawood^ p. 181. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 1^ 
 
 The commander of the Christian forces at the battle of 
 the Curdes, in 1163, is said to have been a Templar 
 named Gilbert de Laci, and it was probably for his 
 kinsman's sake, temporal as well as spiritual, that Henry 
 became so large a benefactor to the newly-formed 
 preceptory It is no great stretch of the imagination, 
 then, to regard Gilbert de Laci as the first preceptor of 
 Temple Newsam."^ The charter of confirmation, which 
 we have quoted, is as follows : — 
 
 " The Charter of Henry de Laci, confirming the Donation of 
 William de Viliers of Nieuhus, Scheltune, Chorleton, and 
 Witechirche. 
 
 " To our venerable father in God, Roger, Archbishop of York, and 
 to all the other sons of holy church, as well in the present as in the 
 future, Henry de Laci sends greeting. Be it known to all, that I give, 
 and by this my charter, confirm, to God, to Holy Mary, and to the 
 brethren of the Temple of Solomon, the land which William de Viliers 
 gave to them in perpetual alms, to wit, Nieuhus, and Scheltun, and 
 Chorleton, and Witechurche, with all their appurtenances, in wood, 
 plain, meadows, pastures, waters, mills, fisheries, footpaths, in the way 
 and out of the way : and know ye that I give to them this land in 
 exchange for the land of Nieulond, which I first gave to them ; and 
 these brethren have returned to me that land of Nieulond, which, in 
 the same way, I gave to Wadon de la Val. But I have given this land 
 to the aforesaid brethren in free and perpetual alms, and free from all 
 
 * Gilbert was a doughty knight ; it was he who attacked Noureddin 
 in his tent and totally defeated him. For particulars of the action see 
 James's Cceur de Lion^ and Littleton's History of Henry //., vol. 3, 
 p. 281. We need not pile up conjecture, but if it is true that Newsam 
 was founded in 1155, and the Templar Gilbert de Laci distinguished 
 himself as above, it is not an improbable thing that Gilbert's entrance 
 into the order was signalised by the foundation of this preceptory. 
 
24 TEMPLE NEWS AM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 secular exaction and service, as free and as clear as they hold any land 
 freely and clearly. And know ye that I and my heirs guarantee the 
 land to the said brethren against all men : and I did this for the good 
 of my soul, and the souls of my father and mother and all my friends, 
 as well living as dead, that it may give life to us for many years. And 
 this convention was made in the presence of the king. These are 
 witnesses — William de Vesci, Jordan Foliot, Robert Piciavensis, Ralph 
 de Tielli, William de Reinevil^ Ote de Tielli, Henry Foliot^ Richard 
 Bacod, Henry Walensis^ Robert Barbo, Henry de Clai, William de Rie, 
 William de Badh, Thomas^ son of Peter (de Birkin), &c."* 
 
 The above expression " this convention was made 
 in the presence of the King," may lead us to the actual 
 date of the charter. The witnesses are all Yorkshire- 
 men, holding of the De Laci, and from the number of 
 
 * The men whose names are printed in italics were witnesses to 
 Henry de Laci's dedication of the church of St. John the Evangelist in 
 Pomfret. The text of the original charter to the Templars is printed in 
 the Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. vi., p. 840. We may here dwell with 
 pleasure on the name of one of the witnesses, Ralph de Tielh. He was 
 of the Doncaster family, and seneschal of the Archbishop of York. 
 He was the prime hero of the unsuccessful assault on Acre in December, 
 T190 ; it was he who cut the ropes by which the Saracens had grappled 
 the scaling ladders when our people were repulsed. A powerful 
 Yorkshire contingent was serving at this siege, among whom was Robert 
 le Venur del Pumfrait, who died there. He was presumably one of the 
 family afterwards Hunt of Carlton, and the record of his death is all 
 the more valuable as it informs us that the " vulgar " name Pomfret is the 
 old expressive name of the place that superior culture has since dubbed 
 Pontefract. See Historic Mansions of Yorkshire^ i. pp. 136, 148. I 
 could dwell at much greater length upon these men and their children. 
 For instance, as to the connexion of the Vesci? and the Tillis — in 1200 
 Eustace de Vesci sought against Gaufrid de Saucensmar and Matilda, 
 his wife, the town of Rotherham in right and heirship. Galfrid said he 
 claimed nothing in that land except through his wife, whose dowry the 
 land is of the gift of William de Tilli, formerly her husband, whose 
 heir is Ralph de Tilli, his brother. 
 
mo-.- \nl^-^uvr^ ''!\i'ami^Z. ^O^cm^ '!v^lh'l'^'^ mTu^,^"^']^ "^ni'l'^fv''"^- ^'I'l "^'^^'ourhood , I will give a pedigree of tlicm ; it is the 
 
 for Ihcir i>.nrona«c ol the Tc.nplars. I take the iirst de^ccuu fL. '/i,;;:. vH., Igoj P""""' England, and in that respect may account 
 
 Ralph. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 Brian Briset, whose arms were a Griffin Volant. = 
 . . I 
 
 wife, died 1st May, 1 1 12. 
 ljuried at the hospital of 
 
 Agnc> lie Arches, as her third 
 hiisland, she being his second 
 wife. Agnes was the widow 
 of Herbert St. Quintin, and of 
 Walter de fauconberge, and 
 lirtfl children by them all, 
 
 William Foliol. k 
 
 Robert de INIoiuUeuay, 
 
 St. John of Jeru-.. 
 the chapter hou^e 
 
 I of the heirs of Jordan. 
 
 Sir William Foliot, Kt., who gave the 
 mill of Norton to Nostel. He was a 
 contemporary of Robert de Laci (F'itz 
 Ilbert). 
 
 Sir Richard Foliot, Kt. Jc 
 
 I 
 
 ''oliot, the donor, who = 
 William his father 
 and Henry his brother. He 
 flourished in I l6o, and was one 
 
 of the wilne,s,es of lie Lnci'- 
 confirmation Xcvvim. 
 
 At a later period the Foliots wci 
 Notts. In the reign of Edward II., 
 she died in 1349. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 25 
 
 them we may assume that the charter was made in the 
 neighbourhood, say at Pomfret. If that were so, the 
 charter would be made in January or February, 1155, 
 in which months King Henry II. visited York and 
 Scarborough, and the western parts of England, return- 
 ing from York to Nottingham in the latter month. He 
 does not appear to have been again in Yorkshire until the 
 loth August, 1 175, when he was at York for a few days, 
 or perhaps weeks. He was probably not in this county 
 again until after the date of the Survey, 1 185.'^' 
 
 This charter made the Templars lords of the manors 
 of Newsam, Skelton, Chorleton," and Whitkirk, and 
 we may be sure they were not slow in implanting them- 
 selves upon their newly-acquired territory. The first 
 unpretending edifices would rise with the despatch of 
 necessity, and the first batch of brethren, when they took 
 up their quarters there, and viewed the fair lands then 
 belonging to them, would dwell upon the names of the 
 noble donors with feelings of the deepest gratitude and 
 devotion. The extent and appearance of the preceptory 
 in its original form are unknown to us, for, alas ! no 
 vestiges of the buildings remain, upon which conjectures 
 might be raised. The men alone who inhabited it can 
 now be dealt with, and they, being strictly historical 
 personages, can be revived with sufficient exactness to 
 
 *I rely for this Statement upon the " Outline Itinerary " published by 
 Dr. Stubbs in his edition of the Chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough. 
 
26 TEMPLE NEWSAM ! ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 reproduce a picture of the strange times in which they 
 played their wonderful and varied parts. Though the 
 land of Newsam was from ViHers, as the land of Kirk- 
 stall was from Pictavensis, yet, in the case of Newsam, 
 as in that of Kirkstall, the real founder was De Laci 
 himself. The transference of the preceptory from New- 
 lond to Newsam is also a very interesting fact. From it 
 we may perhaps antedate the foundation, and consider 
 it nearly contemporary with that of Hurst. 
 
 There is still much about the career of the early 
 Lacis which is doubt and darkness, notwithstanding the 
 research expended upon it. This may be attributed to 
 the revolt by Robert de Laci, the second Baron of Pomfret. 
 Ilbert de Laci, Robert's son, fled with his father to 
 Normandy. He also returned to England, and fought 
 at the battle of Lincoln in the cause of King Stephen, 
 by whose side he was taken prisoner in 1 141. " He was 
 a man of prudence, and cautious and indefatigable in 
 military undertakings," one of the principal leaders at 
 the battle of the Standard. The exact time of his death 
 is not known. In his charter, granting Hambleton to 
 Selby Abbey, he confirms what *^Hilbcrt de Laci, my 
 grandfather," gave. He also confirmed the grants of 
 his ancestor to Pomfret Priory about 1140. llbert's 
 death took place between the years 1141 and 1147. 
 His wife was Alice, daughter of Gilbert de Gant. Adliz 
 de Gant o^ave lands towards the buildinor of Fountains 
 
TEMPLE NEWS AM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 27 
 
 Abbey, witness, " Robert, my son, who consented to this 
 gift, and bore it upon the altar." After the death of 
 Ilbert, AHce married Roger de Mowbray, who confirms 
 the charter of AHce, his wife, giving Ingolvesmelles to the 
 priory of Pomfret. AHce de Gant, wife of Roger 
 Mowbray, also gave Brimeham to Fountains, "as it is 
 contained in the charter of the aforesaid Lord Roger de 
 Mowbray, and in the charters of my sons Nigel and 
 Robert. I make this concession to the said church after 
 Easter, to wit, 4th Ides (loth) April, 1 176, that year in 
 which the towns of Trex (Thirsk), and Malesart were 
 overthrown, and in witness and reminder of the same the 
 monks gave me a gold ring." 
 
 ilbert de Laci is said to have died childless, the sons 
 above mentioned being those of Mowbray. He was 
 succeeded at his death by his brother Henry, the sole 
 male representative of the Laci line, although Henry 
 had a sister Albreda, said to have for some years been 
 married to Robert de Lizours ; their descendants after- 
 wards assumed the name of Laci, and inherited the lands. 
 This Henry is the founder of Kirkstall and Newsam. 
 It is worthy of note, that in the confirmation charter 
 to Kirkstall of King Henry II., we find the gift of 
 Hugh (Bigod), Earl of Norfolk, of Barnoldswicke, with 
 the assent and petition of Henry de Laci ; and in the 
 charter of foundation, Henry gives the place of Kirkstall 
 " for the souls of my wife, of Ilbert my grandfather, and 
 
28 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Hawise his wife, of my brothers and sisters, and of 
 Matilda, my father's sister." This puts a new com- 
 pleKion on the received pedigree of the family. Hugh 
 Bigod had power over the lands during De Laci's life- 
 time; and there were, or had been, brothers and sisters, of 
 whom doubtless that Walter of the Temple, mentioned in 
 another of De Laci's charters might be one, and Gilbert 
 of the Temple, if not the same person, another brother. 
 
 The first of the above charters gives half a mark of 
 silver of the rent of Cliderhow every year, for a lamp 
 burning by day and by night before the altar, in the presence 
 of the holy body of God, in the church of Kirkstall, to be 
 paid on the Assumption of St. Mary (15th Aug.), in 
 autumn. The second gives to the abbey of St. Mary 
 de Kirkestall, a mark of silver of the rent of Cliderhow 
 every year, for the clothing of the Abbat; and the 
 witnesses to this charter are Brother Walter of the 
 Temple, Wm. de Hallai, Osbert the Archdeacon, Wm, 
 the Almoner, Wm. de Clerfai, Adam son of Suain, 
 Robert Paytefin, Wm, de Rainvil, Otto de Tilli, Jordan 
 Foliot, 
 
 Of these witnesses it will be seen that those whose 
 names are in italics are also witnesses to the gift of 
 Newsam ; the two transactions have been nearly con- 
 temporary. As to the Brother Walter of the Temple, 
 we may remark that Walter was then a surname in 
 
^^etitsvee of djc ortatnal line of Be ilact of ^Somfret. 
 
 1 l-.nL;land about^Hawise, mentioned in the charter of her son, Robert Fitz Ilbert 
 J of^Pomfret, wher e ha foundeil the priory of Pomfret ' 
 
 r t 
 
 monk, Emma, a mm of St. Lnguerrand Fit/. Fiilk de Lizoris=Albreda. 
 i i. Abbat Amand, Kouen, 
 
 of Caen 
 He was 
 
 nof 
 
 Ilbert De Laci, who fled with --Alice, dan. of= 
 his father to Normandy. Gilbert de Gant. I 
 Dead before 1 147, without See note below. 
 
 [t IS worthy ut note that these two men 
 thus connected ohould be the great | 
 patrons of the order of Templars. | 
 
 Robert de Mowbray. 
 
 ,t hav 
 
 koundhay 
 
 , liLis name hvmg at 
 1 there is great doubt 
 >i the received accounts 
 
 I - Robert de Lizours. 
 
 lid t. 
 
 have takei 
 
 iiji. i iic only I evidence of this marriage is 
 an entry in tlie Fifii: Roll, and there she is 
 merely called a \ Sister of Ilbert de Lacy, a 
 itness which I does not warrant all the infer- 
 :s of the gen | ealogisls. 
 
 1 
 
 Richard Fitz Eustace, =Albreda. = 
 son of Eustace Fitz j 
 Tohn, and his wife 
 Beatrice de Vesci. | 
 'I heir eldest son I 
 William took the | 
 name of Vesci, and | 
 founded that bar- 
 imial line. 
 John was killed i 
 Wales i 
 
 =Wm. Fitz Godric. 
 
 Alice, daughter of Wm 
 
 Constable of Chester, g; 
 :t .)f Werkeshal, Ladeni 
 a,, 1199. John aL.o g: 
 Chart, pf. 2^, 30. 
 
 le MandeviUe. 
 
 .■ to (iilbert, son of 
 , &c., which King 
 ; Flulecotes to the 
 
 touching the 11.. I. ■ I r.i 
 
 church of t!ie 1). M. (d W.ncr 
 walls of Jerusalem, the churcl 
 granted liberties to the leper 
 after that of the Count of Evr 
 IS with the King at Tatecaster 
 
 V.- A','/. Chart, p. 140. On the 
 )f C astleford with all its iipiuirtenancc , 
 ui the last year of his reign. 11S9. — / 
 .\. as witness to a charter of King Joliii. 
 1 the 4th March, and at York on the 71I 
 
 :. Lazarus without the 
 
 id, p. 67. Richard Cffiur de Lion 
 ■e of Henry de Laci appears next 
 . luic year l.oger de Laci, Constable of Chester, 
 vas a frequent companion of the King. 
 
 •ear'Roger de L 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 29 
 
 the family, and it will not be forgotten that Walter de 
 Laci was the only one of Stephen's Knights slain at the 
 battle of the Standard. A Walter of the Temple, with 
 Philip prior of Holy Trinity, York, witnesses the con- 
 firmation of Nigel de Mowbray " de omnibus " to 
 Fountains. 
 
 Henry de Laci is said to have died in 1187, when 
 the inheritance fell to his son Robert, who, dying child- 
 less in II 93, the male line expired. The estates then 
 went to the descendants of Albreda, Ilbert's sister, who 
 had married Robert de Lizours, by whom she had an 
 only daughter named after herself. This daughter, as 
 the heiress of both Laci and Lizours, obtained the two 
 properties. She married Richard Fitz Eustace, son of 
 Eustace Fitz John, who, with his brother, Nigel Fitz 
 John, was a witness of the charter of Henry L to 
 Nostell ; she married secondly Wm. Fitz Godric. By 
 her first marriage she had John Fitz Eustace, Constable 
 of Chester, who died in 11 90 at the Crusade, leaving a 
 son, Roger ; by her second husband she had Wm. Fitz 
 William, from whom came the present Fitz Williams. 
 Between the families of these two half-brothers she 
 divided her great inheritance. Roger, her grandson, 
 became the lord of the honour of Pomfret ; Wm. Fitz 
 William founded the line of Sprotborough. 
 
 In considering the influences which operated upon 
 the foundation of the two preceptories of Newsam and 
 
30 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Hirst, as well as upon the foundation of Kirkstall, it will 
 be well to draw a table of the descents of the first line of 
 the Lacis. 
 
 The establishment of a preceptory of Knights Tem- 
 plars presents no features exactly similar to those which 
 attend the establishment of a corporation of monks. 
 In the history of the former there are no periods of 
 interminable labour, no demonstrations of grand design 
 and skilful execution, such as occur in the erection of 
 those noble old monastic edifices whose ruins yet remain 
 to bespeak the skill and perseverance of their architects. 
 The profession of arms was by very nature averse to 
 such enterprises ; it has ever been ruinous to habits of 
 toilsome and persevering industry ; the feudal system 
 encouraged a contemptuous disregard alike for those 
 who lived by bodily labour and for the labour which sup- 
 ported them. And as the Templars were recruited from 
 the highest ranks of the feudal nobles, among whom 
 education had made but little way, it is not to be ex- 
 pected that the results of studious application are to be 
 discovered in their works. They never forgot that they 
 were Fj^atres Militice Templi m Aitglia and not mere 
 monks ; that their commander was a Pi^ceceptor, or 
 Magister, and not an Abbat, The time came when they 
 were taunted with pride, but their only pride was that of 
 a soldier, well-earned ; those who taunted them being 
 sunk in sloth and ease, earned by the most degrading of 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 3 1 
 
 methods. They never appear to have cared for raising 
 magnificent buildings ; their preceptories, as far as we 
 can judge from the few remains of them, as for instance, 
 at Temple Hurst, were unostentatious.'" This remark 
 will not apply to some of their churches, but they form 
 the rare exception, and not the rule. Indeed, the military 
 orders were composed only of proj-essional soldiers, each 
 of whom eagerly learnt such acquirements as taught 
 him to be 
 
 No carpet-knight, so trim ; 
 
 But in close fight, a champion grim ; 
 In camps, a leader sage ; 
 
 but all of whom systematically neglected letters, and, to 
 a large extent, despised men of learning and taste. It 
 
 * Temple Newsam has been so completely razed to the ground 
 that we have not the smallest actual evidence as to the grandeur or 
 design of the fabric. To the last of its days the house was very 
 probably the timber mansion of the native tenant Ainsfrit ; built, 
 perhaps, by him as the later Nehus. That is most likely the history of 
 the home as a residence. But have we not in the fact that it was 
 necessary to sweep it away at the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 some proof that no portion of it was worthy of preservation, which 
 experience shows us has not been the case with monastic buildings. It 
 is said Scott had Temple Newsam in his mind's eye when he described 
 Templestowe in " Ivanhoe." There is, however, no evidence to show 
 that Scott ever was at Temple Newsam, and, if he were, the description 
 is not sufficiently faithful to lead us to beheve that it is the original of 
 Templestowe. We shall quote his description to disprove the story, 
 and to show that Scott could say little in favour of Temple buildings : — 
 " This establishment of the Templars was seated amidst fair meadows 
 and pastures, which the devotion of the former perceptor had bestowed 
 upon the order. It was strong and well fortified, a point never neglected 
 by these knights, and which the disordered state of England rendered 
 
32 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 was no part of their mission to erect matchless fabrics ; 
 their duty was to form themselves into a powerful and 
 well-consolidated body, ready to meet the emergencies 
 of war, which might call for their combined action at 
 a moment's notice. The least fallible system of internal 
 organization was, therefore, the chief object which they 
 must strive to attain, and the order when fully developed, 
 and before superfluous riches had combined with a career 
 no longer possible in the sense of its first organization 
 to sap the virtues of the members, exhibited such stead- 
 fast adherence to self-imposed regulations, and fervid 
 regard for the sacredness of their plighted troth, as ever 
 mark the man of noble soul, and are perceptible in none 
 but him. The admission of a brother into the order of 
 
 peculiarly necessary. Two halbardiers, clad in black, guarded the draw- 
 bridge, and others in the same sad livery glided to and fro upon the 
 walls with a funereal pace, resembling spectres more than soldiers. The 
 inferior officers of the order were thus dressed ever since their use of 
 white garments, similar to those of the knights and esquires, had given 
 rise to a combination of certain false brethren in the mountams of 
 Palestine, terming themselves Templars, and bringing great dishonour 
 on the order. A knight was now and then seen to cross the court in 
 his long white cloak, his head depressed on his breast, and his arms 
 folded. They passed each other, if they chanced to meet, with a slow, 
 solemn, and mute (greeting ; for such was the rule of their order, 
 quoting thereupon the holy texts. In many words thou shalt not avoid 
 sin, and life and death are in the power of the tongue. In a word, the 
 stern ascetic rigour of the Temple discipline, which had been so long 
 exchanged for prodigal and licentious indulgence, seemed at once to 
 have revived at Templestowe under the severe eye of Lucas Beau- 
 manoir." Had Scott drawn his description from Temple Newsam, its 
 landscape would have enabled him to paint a much finer and bolder 
 picture. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 the Templars was a matter of much ceremony and 
 deliberation on the part of the initiated, and self-examina- 
 tion on the part of the candidate. Before he was 
 considered eligible as a probationer he must be a knight 
 whose reputation and soldierly achievements were 
 
 " Blazed in the roll of martial fame ; " 
 
 and that siiie qtid non^ the secular qualification of each of 
 the brethren, prohibited all, except those of approved 
 valour and recognized social pre-eminence and worth, 
 from entering a fraternity whose every brother was 
 considered a model of virtue and bravery. In the early 
 days of the order the simply-expressed desire of an 
 eligible candidate was insufficient to obtain his admission 
 into the society ; then a novitiate formed an essential 
 part of the course of admission ; but in their later and 
 more prosperous days the brethren neglected this wise 
 regulation, and this omission was afterwards made one 
 of the charges against the order. It had been enacted 
 so that the candidate might become practically acquainted 
 with the mode of life of the society into which he 
 desired to enter, and also to give him an opportunity of 
 discovering whether he was capable of conforming with 
 the severe regulations under which he placed himself ; — 
 for the maintenance of the strictest discipline of the 
 monastery, as well as the due performance of the arduous 
 duties of a true knight, were then alike the professions 
 and practices of a Templar. The novice, who vowed to 
 
 c 
 
34 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 fight in God's name, and for God's service, as long as 
 the Red Cross Banner waved o'er a stricken field, vowed 
 also never to strike or wound a Christian ; never to 
 swear ; nor to receive any service or attendance from a 
 woman, except by the permission of his superiors ; 
 never, on any account, to kiss a woman, even though she 
 was his mother or sister ; and never to behave 
 uncourteously to any man ; divine service he was to 
 attend punctually ; he was to be frugal at board ; and his 
 demeanour was to be that of a devout priest, as well as 
 a Christian soldier and gentleman. 
 
 The deeds of the Templars on the field of battle are 
 those of a regiment and not of individuals; it is therefore 
 difficult now to name the man who made the war fame 
 of the order. Their skill and courage in Coeur de Lion's 
 crusade were surpassing, and as in that campaign the men 
 of Norse descent — Northumbrians in other words — were 
 the greatest patrons of the Templars, we may cite their 
 records as reflecting the individuality of the Temple 
 brotherhood. One of the grand feats in that crusade 
 was the siege of Acre in 1 190. Richard was beleaguering 
 that great city. On the third day after the feast of 
 St. Michael (14th October), about 4,000 armed Saracens 
 sallied forth from Acre, and burnt four of the stockades 
 with Greek fire ; but they were manfully repulsed by the 
 soldiers of the army, and lost 20 Turks who were slain, 
 and many wounded. After this, at the feast of St. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 35 
 
 Martin (iith November), the Saracens again made a 
 sortie and attacked the Christians, who manfully with- 
 stood them. Baldwin de Carun, Walter de Oyri, and 
 Baldwin de Dargis valiantly withstood their assault until 
 Count Henry and Geoffrey de Lusignan came up with the 
 Templars, and compelled the Pagans to give way with 
 such a mighty charge, that they lost in their flight 40 
 Turivs who were slain. Afterwards, between the feast 
 of St. Andrew (30th November), and Christmas, the 
 whole army of the Christians was in arms for the purpose 
 of making an assault upon Acre, and the Germans and 
 English drew their scaling ladders to the trenches, that 
 they might place them against the walls, on which the 
 Pagans went out of the city by the postern gates, and 
 took their scaling ladders from the Germans, and drove 
 the English away from the trenches. They then fastened 
 ropes to the scaling ladder of the English, with the 
 intention of drawing it into the city, but Ralph de Tilli, 
 Humphrey de Veilly, Robert de la Lande, and Roger de 
 Glanville mounted the English ladder, and four times 
 extinguished the Greek fire that was thrown down. 
 Ralph de Tilli coming nearer than the others, cut asunder 
 the ropes with his sword, and so rescued the scaling 
 ladder from the hands of the Pagans. Shortly after, 
 and before Christmas day, famine began in the army of 
 the Christians, and continued until the Purification of 
 St. Mary. 
 
36 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Yorkshire may therefore claim no little honour even 
 in this repulse. The list of dead during the crusade 
 should be religiously held in mind. Henry de Braeley 
 died at Cataine, Ralph de Glanville, justiciary of England 
 and of Coverham, died during the siege ; Richard de 
 Clare, Ralph, parson of Croxebi, Richard de Lexbi and 
 Berenger his brother, Robert le Venur del Pumfrait 
 (Pomfret), Robert Scrope of Bartun, Ralph de I'ange, 
 Henry Pigot, seneschal to the Earl of Warren, Walter 
 Scrope, Walter de Kyme, son of Philip de Kyme, John 
 de Lamburne, Walter de Ross, brother of Peter de Ros. 
 In the third year (1191) Ralph de Aubeni died at Acre, 
 Nigel de Mowbray and Simon de Wale died, apparently, 
 at sea, for they were each " projectus in mare;" Richard 
 de Camville died at Acre, William de Camville ^'projectus 
 in mare," Gilbert Pipard at Brandiz, he was Sheriff of 
 Lincolnshire in 11 90; Drogo fitz Ralph at Acre, Reiner, 
 Sheriff of York, in the island of Cyprus ; Osmund de 
 Stuteville, at Jaffa, Robert Wacelin, clerk, at Acre. John 
 constable of Chester, died at Tyre. Among those who 
 were slain were William, Earl of Ferrers, Ingelram de 
 Ferrers, Hugh de Oiry, and who died at the siege, Gilbert 
 de Tileres, Robert the constable (of Burton Constable), 
 seneschal of William de Mandeville, Earl of Albemarle ; 
 William de Pratelles, one of the household of the King 
 of England, was taken prisoner at Joppa, and Reginald 
 his comrade slain ; the king only escaped capture through 
 his prowess. This list is very important as to the 
 
TEMPLE NEWS AM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 3/ 
 
 leaders of the troops ; the hosts of men from knights 
 downwards were not mentioned ; the minor leaders of 
 the English armies who died at their duty, were left 
 in oblivion ; their successors were not recorded five 
 hundred years later, during Marlborough's campaign. 
 
 It was to enable them to meet such emergencies as 
 these, that the brethren of the Temple were trained — 
 not as monks but as knights. The preceptory provided 
 each knight with all necessaries, as well clothes, arms, 
 and equipments, as the food upon which he was to 
 subsist. Within its walls must lie the workshop and the 
 farm, and within the ranks of the brethren must be found 
 the craftsman and the m.echanic, for military efficiency 
 demanded that every emergency should be anticipated 
 and provided against. For the menial occupations the 
 servitors had been provided; the knight devoted himself 
 only to the military duties. His arms were a shield, 
 sword, lance, and mace ; his dress was a long white 
 tunic, bearing a red cross on the back and front of it, 
 and under this he wore a girdle and linen shirt. But 
 although a professed monk, and trained to accept the 
 monk's idea of humility, the Templar never forgot that 
 he was a warrior and a nobleman born under the 
 influence of the feudal system, and by it taught to 
 consider himself incapable of performing menial service. 
 Such a state of affairs exhibited some inconsistency 
 in their system ; yet, considering the objects for which 
 
38 TEMPLE NEWSAM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 the Templars were organised, and the pecuHar nature of 
 their duties, we cannot, on that account, pass upon them 
 an unmitigated censure. As much as the secular knight 
 needed the services of an esquire, just so much did the 
 Templar ; and if the servitors whom we have already- 
 mentioned as introduced into the order for that purpose, 
 were of plebeian birth, which prevented their advance- 
 ment and perpetuated their serfdom, it resulted in a 
 desire to preserve the order from jealousy and bickerings 
 that would inevitably have arisen in a mixed body. 
 These servitors were, then, not only the esquires who 
 attended to the charger and miUtary trappings of the 
 knight; they were also craftsmen capable of producing 
 everything required by the brethren. A perfectly- 
 organised community would, therefore, be found at 
 Temple Newsam when in the zenith of its efficiency. 
 The smith, the baker, the farmer, the herdsman, the 
 farrier and armourer, as well as the host of brethren- in- 
 arms or esquires, the chaplains and the knights -formed 
 the personnel of the preceptory : the matdriel is not so 
 easy^ to describe. Besides the house in which the 
 brethren lived, and the offices connected with it, the 
 numerous quantity of outbuildings, required for all 
 purposes, would raise the preceptory into an establishment 
 of some magnitude. 
 
 It was their custom to cultivate their own lands 
 rather than let them out to tenants paying a fixed 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAAT : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 39 
 
 rent; and this they were enabled to do by their servitors 
 and the cottagers whom they maintained upon their 
 estates.'^ This system necessitated the erection of an 
 estabhshment of a somewhat incongruous species. The 
 minute inventory of the effects of the preceptory taken 
 December ist, 131 1, gives us a Hst of the chief buildings 
 and their uses as well as contents. We thus find noticed 
 a chapel, a kitchen, the dormitory, the brewhouse, the 
 furnace, and the hall, the "pistrina" (which may have 
 included both the apothecary and farrier's drug store), 
 and the dairy. As in the case of monastic buildings 
 generally, the grange occupies a prominent place in the 
 description of the establishment, but like the grange 
 of the abbey, the grange of the preceptory occupied 
 another, and often widely separated site. The grange 
 of the preceptory of Newsam was at Skeltont, and at 
 the present day there remains a farm house yet bearing 
 its name, and carrying us back to the very dawn of 
 
 The rent-roll of Ribstan shews that the tenant farmers occupied a 
 toft and croft and a bovate of land. This in modern language means a 
 farmstead, a croft, and fifteen acres of plough land, for which they paid 
 7^. yearly, and had in addition "common of pasture " in the unenclosed 
 lands. We need hardly dwell on the value of such a perquisite when 
 the township was mainly unenclosed. 
 
 t These old place-names are even yet beautifully illustrative of the 
 extending occupation of the country as pushed from the first seats of 
 population. The Norse word S/ea/i means a log-hut ; the centre from 
 which some quasi-squatter commenced the labour of reclamation. 
 
40 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 English history amid the primeval woods where the axe 
 of the first colonist rang. 
 
 The return of stock from Newsam shews the magnitude 
 of the establishment. There were 44 plough oxen, 14 
 plough horses, 454 sheep (valued at is. each), 335 wethers 
 (at IS. 3<^.), and 247 lambs (at Sd. each). The tithe at 
 Whitkirk, which was in sheaf, is valued at ^^33 6s. Sd. 
 Temple Hurst, the sister preceptory, was inferior to 
 Newsam in live stock, but had a large acreage in crops 
 of grain. In both establishments the kitchen appears to 
 have been well furnished with pans, pots, pickling-tubs, 
 and cooking apparatus generally. In the chapel their 
 vestments were few, their altar cloth was of fustian 
 (strange contrast with the developments " of the 
 present day !), the number of their books did not reach 
 a dozen, and of those two were of legendary lore, and 
 one was a martyrology ; and, with the exception of a 
 sacramental cup, which appears in all the valuations, 
 there is no mention of plate. In the grange they had 
 32 quarters of wheat (valued at 3^-. ^d. per quarter), 280 
 quarters of large oats (valued at is. \d, per quarter), and 
 410 quarters of small oats (valued at is, per quarter). 
 Not the least singular entry is that which shews them to 
 have kept at the grange six wagons for the king's wars, 
 with two pair of " shelvings " for each. Arms, chargers, 
 and military equipments are not mentioned ; they were 
 no doubt taken possession of when the Templars were 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 4 1 
 
 arrested. Their farming stock at the preceptory is 
 estimated at ^95 ; but, to arrive at that vakie, the plough 
 oxen are only estimated at 165". each ; the cows at lOi". 
 each ; their horses are valued at Ss. each ; and the solitary 
 ass which they possessed is considered to be worth 35". 
 A tolerably accurate valuation of the whole effects of 
 the preceptory may be made out from the inventory, 
 which is printed postea from the Gentlemait s Magazine 
 for 1857, part 2, p. 523. 
 
TEMPLE- HIRST. 
 
 HE story of the foundation of the Preceptory of 
 Templars at Hirst includes one of the latest 
 features in the colonisation of Airedale. The method 
 adopted by the Angle in his occupation of the valley 
 from Coniston and Cononley in the west, to Knottingley, 
 Kellington, and Pollington in the east is still discernible. 
 The names of his clan-stations are the most trustworthy 
 evidences of his method. They occur at regular inter- 
 vals on the south bank of the river, telling us who were 
 the chieftains from Coniston — Coningston, the settlement 
 of the King's children — to Pollington, the settlement of 
 the Pollings, or perhaps Boilings (see Bowling, anciently 
 Boiling)— and telling us also that in his advance from 
 the south, to drive forward the Britons when he had 
 determined to dispossess them, the invader made the 
 line of a river his new frontier. The development of 
 his occupation from these stations may also with fair 
 accuracy still be traced, and the state of the opposite 
 country determined with some minuteness. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 43 
 
 It is with the lower Aire, the portion watched from 
 the clan-stations at Knottingley, Kellington, and Polling- 
 ton, that our story is concerned. From Knottingley to 
 Pollington there is a river frontier some twelve miles in 
 length, without including the sinuosities of the stream. 
 Between these stations, which indicate the first garrisons, 
 we have subordinate stations at Smeathalls, Beaghall — 
 Beag-hal, the hall of crowns or garlands ; " Rowal — 
 Hensall — Edwin's hall, and Gowdall, the line of 
 occupation terminating at Snaith, in the midst of water 
 and morass. The terminal syllables, hall, all, al, and ale, 
 the equivalent of the Saxon heal, signify in the Saxon 
 polity an edifice in which courts of justice are held and 
 rule maintained : and although somewhat disguised by 
 the change of custom and manners, the word still retains 
 its original meaning. The hall of the village — yet often 
 called the Hall-Vow^^, was and is the manor house, not 
 so much the residence of the squire as the place where 
 the courts were held for the tenants, and where feudal 
 law was administered. The Hallmote (Saxon, Heal- 
 gemote) was the assembly composed of citizens in public 
 hall, and so became the lord's court held within the 
 manor. In the Westminster Hall of the nation, and the 
 Town Halls of our Towns and Boroughs, we have the 
 use of the Saxon hall perpetuated. 
 
 The long chain of posts, then, with names ending in 
 all, on the south bank of the river, indicates a debatable 
 
44 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 land, a line of unsettled territory, where strife has yet to 
 be waged before order succeeds. And this line is pre- 
 cisely co-extensive with the bank of the river, north of 
 which not a single place ending in it occurs. We begin 
 with Byram-cum-Poole ; we end with Carlton, until very 
 recently a township in the parish of Snaith. Between 
 these extremes, following the bank of the river, we have 
 but two places — Haddlesey and Brayton which have 
 assuredly had an existence in the Saxon times. The 
 Briton has lingered on the north bank after the Angle 
 had established his rule on the south, and if we may but 
 consider matters a century later we shall find that in 
 Brayton — Bretune in Domesday — the town or enclosure 
 of the Brets or Celts, we shall find a touching point of 
 the two nations where they could linger into the period 
 of assimilation. This is not the only evidence of the 
 halt of the Angle and the mingling of his speech with 
 that of the Celt. In the name of Snaith we have a 
 plainly marked footstep in the eastern march of the 
 invader Pollington is his most easterly clan-station ; 
 Snaith is one of the most easterly of his foundations. 
 Beyond Snaith we get to Cowi'ck and the marshes of 
 Don. Cowick bespeaks a Danish origin, and therefore 
 land unoccupied by the Angle. The modern word 
 Snaith, in Domesday Esneid, is most likely derived 
 from the Saxon verb Snithan^ to cut off, to lop. The 
 Esneid may have been, therefore, a piece of early 
 reclamation— cut off from the waters; or it may have 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 45 
 
 been, as the town is on a slightly superior elevation as 
 to the surrounding land, a patch occasionally cut off by 
 flood from what we may call the mainland. Anyhow, 
 the condition of the country in the early Angle days 
 becomes apparent ; its watery state gave him the 
 designation of his secondary settlement. The place- 
 name of Haddlesey has the same origin ; anciently 
 Hathelsey, it is but a corruption of the words that in 
 Saxon-speech mean the '* beautiful- water," and the 
 beauty of the scene has been enhanced by the rays of 
 the eastern sun shimmering on the waters between the 
 the foliage of the woods, where timber and pasture inter- 
 mingle"^ — the hyrst of the Angle— forming the veil that 
 
 * I make this statement with some doubt ; the word may mean the 
 Athel's or nobleman's water, and it will then refer to a territorial 
 arrangement which I cannot at present explain. The medieval history 
 of this district is not the less interesting because the district was frequently 
 favoured with the presence of the Kings during their hunting excursions. 
 We can catch a fair glimpse of Edward III.'s visit from the provision of 
 wine that Stephen de Abyngdon " delivered for the King's privaie uses," 
 to the manor houses in the neighbourhood during the years 1339-42. 
 At the manor of Sandhall, parish of Howden, there was delivered by 
 Richard de la Pole, two tuns ; in the " Tour " of York, 6 tuns ; in the 
 houses near the Mills there, two tuns ; ni the manor of Hathelseye, 
 seven tuns in 1341, and other four tuns in 1342 ; in the manor of 
 Thorne, six tuns ; in the manor of Conwyk, seven tuns ; and in 
 addition there was dehvered to the Earl of Athelas, at Ledes, one tun, 
 in 1 34 1. What the event was which sent the wine to Leeds, history 
 has not recorded, and now we may perchance never know. But from 
 the fact that in the same year, 1341, Edward consumed seven tuns of 
 wine at Hatheleseye, " for his own private uses," we may infer a iong 
 sojourn there, and high feasting throughout the whole lower valley of 
 the Aire, of which the baronial mansions of Hurst and Newsam could 
 not fail to enjoy a share — See Rot. Pari.., ii.^ J84. 
 
46 TEMPLE NEWSAM ! ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 separated his settlement at Kellington from that at 
 Polhngton. Longfellow must have seen such a Hathel- 
 sey in the great land of the West, a thousand years later, 
 when he wrote of the " Shining Big-Sea- Water " — 
 
 Dark behind it rose the forest, 
 Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 
 Rose the firs with cones upon them ; 
 Bright before it beat the water, 
 Beat the clear and sunny water, 
 Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. 
 
 That as to the north bank of the river the hyrst had 
 had no distinctive cognomen until the Norman times, 
 and was but a " wood " we have documentary evidence 
 to show. Birkin, the only riparian settlement of the 
 Saxon, also tells its history and its name. It is a 
 creation of pastoral habits, not the necessary and 
 immediate result of a settlement of population. Its 
 designation was pastoral, as well as its use. It was the 
 meadow which was distinguished from other meadows 
 by its association with birch trees. Such designations 
 are not uncommon, or peculiar to one people, they are 
 natural and obvious ; but they are such sure indications 
 of a later foundation than the hams, tons, &c., about 
 them, of which they are the necessary outgrowth. In 
 the neighbouring Gateforth we have Stocking," and 
 " Lund," the solitary farm-house, that tells of an oasis 
 in the early forest — the land " as distinguished from 
 the wood; and in the township of Carlton, where the 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 47 
 
 Dane came, we have " Eskholrn," which in his speech 
 is the meadow distinguished by the Ash trees. 
 
 Brayton may be cited as an allotment given over to 
 Celts under the Angle supremacy. North of the Aire, 
 as soon as we have passed Carlton and Camblesford, 
 which by their names are distinct but subordinate Angle 
 allotments, we get to the modern Barlow — -anciently 
 Berelay, the here or corn district — an outlaying spot 
 where agriculture was pursued, but ownership not 
 claimed. Just west of this we have the modern Brayton, 
 Brettune of old, the allotment of the Brets or Welsh 
 having their name from the Norseman, and not from 
 the Angle, in whose days the Celts had not been 
 controlled. North of Berelay we have Selby; the 
 Selja-by, or residence at the cattle huts. The name of 
 Berelay is Angle ; those of Brayton and Selby are 
 Norse, the allotment to the Brets not having been a 
 fixture until the Norsemen prevailed. The marsh- 
 pasture at Selby, where only the Norse herdsman lived, 
 was that given to the monks, easily spared, apparently, 
 for it was no man's land, and became terra regis, as 
 did most of the Celtic allotments. And so the picture 
 completes itself. North of the corn lands, where the 
 Celts had been wont to roam, the Norse herdsman might 
 allow his kine to wander into the marsh. The cultivated 
 Berelay — named from its purpose and not from dedica- 
 tion — was also most probably due to Celtic industry, 
 
48 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 for it is yet a member of the parish of Brayton. One 
 of the old lanes on the southern fringe of Berelay is 
 still called Thief-lane, a memorial, doubtless of long 
 forgotten border marauding. 
 
 Before the Conquest Birkin can scarcely have had an 
 individual history. The land is reported to have 
 belonged to Snaith, at least for religious purposes. It 
 certainly had not a church, and was not a parish. It 
 was an isolated nook, practically severed from its mother 
 church by the great hyrst " that extended from 
 Haddlesey to Carlton, and ran northward to Burn and 
 Barlow up to Selby, It was the possession of one 
 Aluric,"^ to whom succeeded Gamel, either by death or 
 the disruptions of the Conquest. Its territorial extent 
 was some nine or ten miles long by a mile or so broad. 
 Its cultivated extent was " in the demesne one plough 
 and four villanes and two bordars with two ploughs; and 
 one mill of three shillings; two acres of meadow ; wood- 
 pasture one mile long and half broad " — a mere insig- 
 nificant fragment of the total area. The rest may 
 therefore be set down to the "hyrst." In fact, so far as 
 the main features of the Norse civilization are concerned, 
 Birkin may be considered to be a lost portion of the 
 great border parish of Brayton, the debatable land 
 
 * See postea for the donations of Adam, son Swaine, son of 
 Aluric ; the connection therefore with the ante-conquest owner is clear 
 and indisputable. 
 
^cUifliet of Btrfetn, sljotoms tfje Descent ol tijt ebcrinsljams from tljat ijousr. 
 
 BiRKiN bore-Arg. a fess Az. a label of 5 points G. PAYrr.FlK-Er. 3 chevronels G. Evekingham~G. a lion rampant, , 
 
 An Lbsulf the Saxon, held lands in Oppor Airedale at the earliest period, and it would ! 
 rkins, who xyere donors to and had intimate connection with the affairs of Kirkstall. According 
 hook, at the time of the Survey Giselbert de Gaunt had one carucate of the land of Ulf, 
 
 the body of the record, Ab 
 
 n Berchinge, which w 
 
 the objections to tenancy in 
 oerchme; but, accordine to 
 held by Game) under Ilbert de Laci. 
 
 Essulf, the Merchant = 
 
 Adam Birkin, son of I'eter, gave lands to the I'L-miilars in = Matilda, dauiji.tci .jf Kubcrt 
 Fairburn before 1 1S5. He witnessed the chailer of Avice I Cauz, Lord of Lexingt(, 
 de Romelli to Drax. Notts. She died in 122.^. 
 
 John de Birkin. who, in 1 201, opposed J'Jobeit dc Budliers, i=Johan 
 and Ylaria Trusbut, his wife. John died in 1227. He gave 1 
 land in Sniethale to Ponifret, for himself and his wife Johan. ! 
 
 l !,n„.a> de Birkin, who witnessed the charter 
 of Avice de Romelli to Uiax and De Laci's 
 conhrmation of Newsam. Sec aiile, p. 23. 
 
 Peter de Biikin. William de Birkin. 
 
 iTE.-The monks of Kiikstall lecoid of their posse; 
 
 ions:— We have in Kighley 
 ,t the end of March, ss. id. 
 f John Byrkyn. In Hor.-fon 
 in Horsforde and two caruc: 
 ioress of Haverholm in c.\cl 
 
 Rogei de Birkin, who, in 1206, sought aRainst=Alice, widow 
 Roger rayltfin, ihc town of Towton. Roger of Robert 
 de Birkin died in 1227. I'.aytefin. 
 
 rhomas de Birkin, who died in 1230, on the lotli Oct. of which = Johanna, dau. of Sir John Melton, Kt. =Henry de Longchamp. who, in Dec, 1230, g.ivc 50 marks for having 
 year the King committed to Robert de Lexington all his lands, j in marriage Johanna, the widow of Thomas de Birkin. 
 
 _ = Isabella, dau of Mr John Monceaux. 
 
 I 
 
 Sir John de Everingham, to whom the Lady I, 
 his mother, gave the Manor of Birkin, 
 appurtenances, in the time of Abp. Walter ik 
 Cal. Gen. 407. In 1255 Sir John quit-c 
 to Selby lands in Hillam. 
 
 10 Robert and Alice 
 Ca/. Gin. 3Bi- i 
 
 agaiiM lier claim, and site lost h 
 Alan 1 hikenet being declared heir 1 
 
 \dam Everingliam, K.B., .son of Robert, w 
 years old at his father's death. He was 
 who gave evi<lence against the Templars. 
 
 John de Everingham, who. in 1329. P^''! ^ '^?'' 
 
 give a lay fee in Birkin at Mortmain. In 1347. "e-or his 
 son John-was doing service with the array against Scotland. 
 
.tniff oi 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 49 
 
 between solid Angle occupation south of the Aire and 
 the wilderness of morass enclosed in the peninsula 
 formed by the Selby dam, or even perhaps the river 
 Wharfe, the Ouse, and the Aire ; one where the herdsmen 
 might roam with their brousing cattle, but otherwise so 
 largely composed of wood and w^ater as not to be worth 
 seeking. 
 
 The first noteworthy event in the new life of Birkin, 
 after the conquest, was the erection of its church and the 
 formation of the parish. It is not known who erected 
 the church ; nor who was the mesne tenant of the land 
 at the time of the erection. The most that is known is 
 that the church which still remains is a very grand and 
 early structure ; some portion of it, perhaps, not later 
 than the end of the eleventh century. The erection has 
 been attributed to Gamel ; if correctly so he must have 
 been a very old man at the date of its foundation. It is 
 probable that Gamel's line ended in an heiress, or co- 
 heiresses."^ The probability is favoured by the fact 
 that in 1152 Ralph de Hastings was mesne lord of 
 Birkin, and there was then another family settled there 
 who had assumed the patronymic De Birkin. However, 
 be the date of the erection and the name of the patron 
 what they may, it is certain that the present church of 
 Birkin is largely represented by the very fabric that was 
 first erected. 
 
 * See postea where heiresses are traced in an account taken from 
 the Moil. Ang., but it is certainly not to be reHed upon. 
 
 D 
 
50 TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 The second noteworthy event in the history of Birkin 
 was the estabHshment of the Freceptory of Knights 
 Templars at Hirst by Ralph de Hastings in 1152, It 
 was one of the earliest Temple foundations in Yorkshire, 
 earlier than its greater sisters at Newsam and Ribstan. 
 Ralph's charter of donation is lost ; so we have not his 
 description nor the extent of the territory conveyed ; but 
 its confirmation by the chief lord of the fee, Henry de 
 Laci, remains, and the gift is there described as "my land 
 of Hurst" (terra mea de Hurst a). These words seem 
 to be of sweeping comprehension. The confirmation 
 was made at Bruge," in the presence of Brother Richard 
 le Hastings, a very prominent Templar, enjoying the royal 
 confidence, as we shall see a little later on ; in whom we 
 most probably have the first preceptor. The names of 
 the witnesses throw some light on the story ; many of them 
 appear to have been the officials of the great baron of 
 Pomfret — Ralph the dapifer, son of Nicholas ; Roger 
 de Tilli ; Adam, son of Peter (de Birkin, of whom 
 
 anon); Roger, son of Turstan; ~ de Malnvir (? Hamo, 
 
 father of Hamo de Meinfelin, a donor to the Templars, 
 and husband of Agatha Trussebut, whom he left a young 
 widow, and who was late in life one of the founders of 
 Ribstan) ; Robert Camerarius ; Robert the baker {pistor)\ 
 W. de Vilers (founder of Newsam three years later); 
 Hugh the abbot ; W. the cook (coctis) ; Alan the 
 chamberlain {earner arms).''' 
 
 * The Charter is printed in the Mon. Ang. VII. ^ p. 841; the 
 following is a translation of it — Confirmation of Henry de Laci of his 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 5 1 
 
 In this gift there is no mention of Birkin ; in the 
 presence of Adam, son of Peter (de Birkin), there is 
 evidence that Gamel's territory was now spHt into at 
 least two portions (see also the adjoining Camblesforth, 
 which scarcely concerns us) ; and what came to be the 
 present townships of Temple Hurst and Hurst Courteney 
 went to one heiress, while the Birkin end went to 
 another. In Adam, son of Peter de Birkin we find the 
 Adam de Birkin who married Matilda, daughter and 
 heiress of Robert de Cauz, Lord of Lexington, Notts. 
 
 land in Hurst. To the archbishops and bishops and to all the sons 
 of holy church as well present as future, Henry de Laci health and 
 faithful discourses in Christ. Be it known that I for the health of my 
 soul and for the souls of my father, mother, of my kinsfolk and ances- 
 tors, have given to the brethren of the Temple of Soloman that 
 donation which Ralph de Hastinges made to them of my land of 
 Hurst. Wherefore I wish that they may hold that land as freely and 
 quietly, with all its appurtenances, as they hold any alms in 
 England freely and quietly ; and as their charter which they hold 
 from Ralph witnesses. And this charter was made in the presence of 
 Brother Richard de Hastinges at Bruge. Witnesses, Ralph, son of 
 Nicholas, his dapifer ; Roger de Tilli ; Adam Fitz Peter ; Roger, son of 
 
 Turstan ; de Malnvir ; Robert the chamberlain ; Robert the 
 
 baker ; W. de Vilers ; Hugh the abbot ; W. the cook ; Alan the 
 chamberlain. The singular attestation of this charter is another evidence 
 of the irregularities which have been practised with respect to the lands 
 ot the Laci fee, and a support of the doubt of Henry de Laci's mental 
 or political responsibility. Had the gift been made openly by a great 
 baron, such as De Laci should have been if in his uncontrolled power, 
 it would have been made with ciat^ and not witnessed by grooms and 
 menials, having the name of "Hugh the Abbot" mixed with them. 
 The charter must be looked upon with suspicion, and so the transaction 
 is left in obscurity. 
 
52 TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 This Adam, son of Peter and Matilda his wife, were 
 donors to the Priory of St. John the Evangelist in 
 Pomfret. He was a witness to the charter of dedication 
 of the church by Henry de Laci, at or about the time of 
 the dedication of Newsam. Matilda died, apparently an 
 old woman, in 1224, and was the mother of the line of 
 de Birkin that terminated in Isabella, her great-grand- 
 daughter, who married Robert de Everingham, ancestor 
 of a knightly family who owned the village far into the 
 sixteenth century, and one of whose last offshoots, 
 Henry Everingham, of Gateforth, gentleman, had three 
 daughters, Katherine, Helen, and Elizabeth, baptised in 
 Brayton Church, the last on the 29th December, 1620. 
 
 Whatever may have been the title of the de 
 Hastings to Hurst, they were a generous and chivalrous 
 race, whose pious donations, not less than their acts of 
 valour, have handed down their name. Their arms, Or 
 a maunch gules, are still blazoned in Selby Abbey 
 Church, as they have been in many other churches, a 
 memorial of generosity and worth. About the armorial 
 badge — a maunch or sleeve — to which they clung with 
 desperate tenacity, the ancient romance of the Morte 
 d Arthur gives a passionate legend in connection with a 
 knight about to enter the lists and a damsel despairing 
 of his love, that may describe an act of them, or perhaps 
 have suggested to them the adoption of the badge. She 
 says in her anguish — 
 
TEMPLE NEWS AM : ITS HISTORY ANt) ANTIQUITIES. ^3 
 
 Sith I of thee ne may have more, 
 
 As thou art hardy knight and free, 
 In the tournament that thou would bear 
 
 Some sign of mine that men might see. 
 
 And he thus answers her: — 
 
 Lady, thy sleeve thou shalt off shear, 
 
 I wol it take for love of thee ; 
 So did I never no lady's ere 
 
 But one that most hath loved me. 
 
 Tennyson has also given us the legend with the 
 tinctures of the Hastings Shield ; but his verse entirely 
 lacks the force and passion of the old version : — 
 
 Suddenly flashed on her a wild desire, 
 
 That he would wear her favour at the tilt. 
 
 She braved a riotous heart in asking for it, 
 
 " Fair lord, whose name I know not — noble it is, 
 
 I well believe the noblest — will you wear 
 
 My favour at this tourney ? " "Nay," said he, 
 
 " Fair lady, since I never yet have worn 
 
 Favour of any lady in the lists. 
 
 Such is my wont, as those who know me know." 
 
 " Yea so," she answered ; " then in wearing mine 
 
 Needs must be lesser likelihood, noble lord. 
 
 That those who know should know you." 
 
 And he turned 
 Her counsel up and down within his mind, 
 And found it true, and answered, "True, my child : 
 Well, I will wear it ; fetch it out to me — 
 What is it ? " And she told him, " A red sleeve 
 Broider'd with pearls," and brought it. 
 
 Then he bound 
 Her token to his helmet with a smile, 
 Saying, " I have never yet done so much 
 For any maiden living," and the blood 
 Sprang to her face and filled her with delight. 
 
54 TEMPLE NEWSAM t ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Ralph Hastings was not the only donor to the 
 Temple, he and William de Hastings gave Temple 
 Hurst and Wyxham, with their appurtenances, and 
 William gave the brethren a meadow near Hackney, 
 called " Hastingmede." We have very early evidence of 
 the Templars at the baronial court of Pomfret. In 
 the Charter of Jordan Foliot, one of the witnesses to 
 the foundation of Newsam, giving, with the consent of 
 Beatrice his wife, the mill of Norton to the priory of St. 
 John the Evangelist, Pomfret, we have the names of 
 Robert de Pirou, and brother William de Hurst ; the 
 former was celebrated as a Templar, and I would fain 
 read the latter as William de Hastings."^ 
 
 * Roger de Hoveden mentions Pirou in 1161. Wi^en the King of 
 France was assaying to marry his two daughters, Margaret and AHce, 
 to the two sons of Henry XL, it was agreed that he should deUver the 
 castles of Gisors and Neafle into the hands of the Templars for safe 
 custody, until such times as the daughters should be married to the 
 English princes, and if: should be further arranged with them and with 
 Robert de Pirou and Tostes de St. Omer, that when the Princess 
 Margaret had been married to Prince Henry, they should deliver both 
 the castles to King Henry. Shortly after this period the marriage took 
 place, " although they were as yet little children crying in the cradle," 
 when Robert de Pirou, Tostes de St. Omer, and Richard de Hastings, 
 the Templars who had custody of the castles, immediately surrendered 
 them to the King of England. In consequence the King of France 
 was extremely indignant at them, and banished those Knights from the 
 kingdom of France, upon which the King of England received them, 
 ''and rewarded them with many honours." There is at this period another 
 circumstance which may have some bearing upon one or both of these 
 preceptories. In 11 63 Henry returned from Normandy, " and King 
 Malcolm of Scotland having recovered at Doncaster from a severe 
 illness, a solemn treaty of peace was made between hmi and the King 
 of England" — but where? According to Dr. Stubbs's Itinerary, at 
 Woodstock, on the ist July. 
 
tEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 55 
 
 Of the material history of the preceptory very little 
 is known. The brethren do not appear to have acquired 
 any land in Birkin, at least in the early period of their 
 establishment in the parish ; and it is not a little singular 
 that they never had any right in the parish church of 
 Birkin ; that of KelHngton being given to them for their 
 public religious duties. This noteworthy fact may have 
 some bearing upon the history of Gamel's immediate 
 descendants and the division of the Birkin estates. The 
 possessions of the brethren in the neighbourhood, 
 according to the general inquisition of their lands in 
 1 185, were — at Kellington, of the gift of Adam Suane,'^"" 
 eight bovates ; Raymond having one bovate for 45. and 
 4 hens and 40 eggs ; if these shall be pasture, and they 
 shall have hogs (the feeding of) 5 hogs (shall be 
 deemed equivalent) for i hog, &c. The church of 
 Kellington is of the gift of Henry de Laci, which John 
 
 " Adam Fitz Swaine was a man of great territorial power. He 
 was one of the early donors to the Priory of St. John of Pomfret. I, 
 Adam, son of Swaine, son of Ailrich, give the church of Silkeston, with 
 land in the same town, the chapel of my father at Calthorne, which my 
 father had previously given to them, with two parts of the tithes of my 
 domain lands in Calthorne, Kesburght, Gunulthwaite, Penyngston, 
 Wyrkesburgh, Carleton, Neuhale, Brerelay, Walton, Manesthorp, 
 Wrangbruk, Midelton, to wit, of the sheaves and with all belonging to 
 them. Moreover I, Adam, son of Swaine, devote, and with a joyful 
 mind grant, give and subject to the said church of St. John of Pomfret, 
 that place of the Blessed Mary Magdalene of Lund, which I founded 
 for religion in my patrimony. The progeny of this Swaine are given in 
 the Man. Ang. — Swaine, son of Alrick, enfeoffs the house of Pomfret ; 
 and from him came Adam his son ; and of the said Adam came Matilda 
 and Anabilla ; and of Matilda came Roger de Munbegun, Mabilia and 
 
56 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 de Kellington holds, returning nothing thence to the 
 brethren — so it would seem that it was the donation of 
 John, whose rights could not be interfered with during 
 his lifetime. Two mills at Hurste are in demesne. At 
 Fenwick (the ancestral home of the de Hastings), of the 
 gift of Jordan Foliot 40 acres, which they held ; 
 Alexander, pistor, 5 acres for 15^., &c. Of the gift of 
 Oto de Tilli, 8 acres, which Walter holds for ^od. Also 
 of the gift of Oto de Tilli, 8 acres, which Ralph, son of 
 Leofric, holds for 2s. Also of the gift of himself, 4 
 acres for i2d. Of the gift of Oto Bond, 20 acres for 5^. 
 Caesar, the clerk, 12 acres for 3^". At Norton, of the 
 gift of Jordan Foliot, Roger Plumer, one acre for 14^^. ; 
 William Man, 6 acres for 2s. At Fareburn, of the gift 
 of Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, 4 acres; and of the 
 gift of Adam, son of Peter de Preston (? de Swillington) 
 10 acres, which Simeon de Fareburn holds for half a mark. 
 At Burgh (Wallis) a mill which Robert le Walensis 
 holds for 20s, 
 
 Clementia de Lungvilers ; of dementia came John de Lungvilers ; 
 and of the said John came another John de Lungvilers ; and of this 
 John came Mabih'a, and Margaret, wife of Galfred de Neovilla ; and 
 of Matilda came WiUiam Delamare; and of Wm. Delamare came 
 the other MabiUa ; and of that Ma'jiUa came Hugh de Neovilla ; and 
 of Anabella, daughter of Adam, came Sarra ; and of Sarra came 
 Thomas de Burgo ; and of Thomas another Thomas de Burgo and 
 John ; and the said Thomas died without heir, and of John 
 came Thomas de Burgo who now is. This statement is certainly not 
 to be implicitly reHed upon. In his charter to Monk Bretton, Adam 
 himself mentions his sons Alexander and Richard. See the Monk 
 Bretton Charters for much biographical information. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 57 
 
 The written evidences of the Templar occupation, 
 so far as have been discovered, are scanty. Dodsworth 
 has preserved some in his collections now in the Bodleian 
 Library, vol. 8, fol. i8o, &c,, de Templo de Hurst; foL 
 234, de magistro et Fratribus de Hurste ; and he gives 
 more concerning them in vol. 38, fol. 56. The "Monas- 
 ticon Anglicanum " contains a copy of two documents, 
 of which the following are translations. 
 
 " Charter of John de Curtney of Lands in Est-Hyrst, 
 
 " To all seeing and hearing these letters, John de CarLney greeting 
 in the Lord. Know ye all that I, for the health of my soul and that of 
 Emma, my wife, and those of all my ancestors and survivors, have 
 given, granted, and by this my present charter have confirmed to God, 
 the Blessed Mary, and to the brethren of the soldiery of the Temple, 
 all the land in the territory of Est-Hyrst, according as the dyke 
 (fossatum) of the brethren runs and extends from the boundaries of 
 Carlton up to the arable land of Hyrst ; and (much being comprehended 
 in short and distinct speech) all the land in length and breadth in all 
 manners and senses as the dyke of the brethren extends and includes ; 
 to have and to hold to the brethren of the soldiery of the Temple all 
 the land with all liberties and easements which can be made to them 
 freely, quietly, entirely, and peacefully ; returning to me and my heirs 
 annually ten shillings at two terms, viz., 5^. at Pentecost and 5^. at the 
 Feast of St. Martin in winter, for all service and secular exaction. 
 Moreover I have given, granted, and quit-claimed to the same 
 brethren of the soldiery of the Temple all common which I and my 
 heirs or my men of Hyrst have or may have in the wood of the 
 brethren, that the brethren may endow their wood or essart at pleasure ; 
 and to the greater profit of them from any claim or damage of me, my 
 heirs, or my men. And for this my concession and quit-claim the said 
 brethren of the soldiery of the Temple granted to me and my heirs, 
 and quit-claimed all the common which they or their men have or may 
 
58 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 have in my wood, viz., that I may enclose or essart my wood at my 
 pleasure, and to my greater profit from any claim of the brethren or 
 their men. And I and my heirs will warrant, acquit, and defend to the 
 brethren for ever for the aforesaid service all the land according as it is 
 said. And as this my donation, concession, confirmation, and quit- 
 claim shall endure " ratse et illsesse," I have confirmed the present 
 writing with my seal. Witnesses — Sir Adam de Bella-aqua, Henry de 
 Bellaqua, Jordan de Insula, Simeon de Rupe, Alan de Smitheton, John 
 son of Helias, Ralph de Rohale, and many others.'' 
 
 This charter has been given ante 1227; it is 
 followed by a " final concord " dated in 1234. 
 
 " A Fine Raised by John de Courteney and Emma his Wife 
 UPON their Lands in Est-Hyrst. 
 
 " This is the final concord made in the court of our Lord the 
 King at York, on Tuesday nearest after the feast of St. Hillary, 19th 
 Hen. III., in the presence of Roger Bertram, Robert de Ros, Adam de 
 Novo-Mercato, William York, and JoUan de Neville, Justices itinerant, 
 and other lieges of our Lord the King, between Brother Robert de 
 Stanford, Master of the Soldiery of the Temple in England, seeking, 
 by Robert de Almanthorpe, his lieutenant, and John de Curteney and 
 Emma his wife, opposing of 60 acres of land with their appurtenances 
 in Est-Hyrst, whence a plea " ivarrantce caftcB " was summoned between 
 them in the same court, viz., that John and Emma should admit all 
 the said land with its appurtenances to be the right of the master and 
 brethren, as that which the master and brethren have of the gift of John 
 and Emma, to have and to hold, to the said master and his successors 
 and the brethren, of John and Emma and the heirs of the said Emma 
 for ever. Returning thence annually loj. sterling at two terms of the 
 year, a moiety at Pentecost and a moiety at the feast of St. Martin, for 
 every service and exaction. And John and Emma and the heirs of the 
 said Emma, warrant, &c., to the Master and his successors and to the 
 brethren the said land, with all its appurtenances, for all services, 
 against all men for ever. And moreover the said John and Emma 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ItS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 5^ 
 
 remit and quit-claim for themselves and the heirs of Emma, to the 
 Master, &c., all right and claim they may have in the common of the 
 wood of the Master and brethren of West-Hyrst for ever, as in herbages 
 and in other things ; therefore the master and brethren may enclose 
 and essart as much as they will of the wood at their convenience 
 without hindrance from John and Emma and her heirs for ever. And 
 for this recognition, warrant, remission, quit-claim, fine and concord, 
 the Master remits and quit-claims for himself and his successors to 
 John and Emma and to the heirs of Emma, all the right and claim they 
 may have in the common of the wood of John and Emma at Est-Hyrst 
 for ever, in herbages as in other things ; therefore John and Emma and 
 her heirs may enclose and essart of the wood as much as they wish 
 at their pleasure without impediment from the said Master, &c." 
 
 John Curteney was a Brayton man, a part of whose 
 ancestral estate is now Brayton Glebe ; but who was 
 Emma his wife ? Evidently she was an heiress, who 
 brought the lands of ** Est Hyrst " — so soon and hence- 
 forth for ever to be called Hirst Courteney — to her 
 husband, for it is her heirs who have to be parties to the 
 deeds. Was she a Hastings ? Was she the mother of 
 Robert Courteney of Brayton, who gave to Selby Abbey 
 a few years later one oxgang of land and a toft in 
 Brayton, which William, his son, confirmed ? There is 
 a conspicuous want of knowledge regarding the early 
 members of the Hastings family, whom Hunter describes 
 as inferior to none in splendour of descent and alliance. 
 The contemporaries of the transition days have left us, 
 by their pious acts, some knowledge of themselves which 
 seems to prove they were of native descent. Humfrid 
 Hastange and Leceline his mother gave the churches of 
 
6o TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Witeness and Hesel to Nostal in the time of Archbishop 
 Thiirstin. Atropus, son of Humfrid de Hastang, gave 
 the churches of Lamenton or Lemington, Chebesai, 
 Newbold, and Seldford or Salford to Nostal; and Torfin, 
 alias Torphin de Alverstain, son of Uctred son of 
 Gospatric, gave to Whitby the Church of Crosby 
 Ravensworth, which was confirmed by Alan, son of 
 Torphin, about 20th Hen. II., 11 73, and by Thomas de 
 Hastings, brother of Nicholas and Thomas, son of 
 Thomas de Hastings, grandson of the said Alan. 
 William, son of Baldwin de Alverstain, gave the 
 messuage, &c., in Alverstain to Yeddingham, which 
 Ralph Hastings, Lord of Alverston, confirmed. Later 
 Sir Ralph Hastings, by will proved 1397, orders his 
 body to be buried in Selby Abbey. 
 
 But even less than this seems to be known of the 
 Courteneys, who are apparently of the Devonshire stock. 
 Yet Hirst Courteney still bears their name, and at a 
 period antecedent to 1348 they were owners in Bray ton, 
 for we find that on the institution of that vicarage 23 
 acres of land, vulgarly called Courteney s land/' were 
 allotted to the Vicar. Moreover at a period not dated, 
 but presumably between 1225-50, Robert Courteney, of 
 Brayton, confirmed to the Abbot and Convent of Selby 
 4d. rent per annum, given by John Beaver, of Brayton, 
 the gift being witnessed by two Brayton men, Richard 
 Basset and Hugh de Mar. Hugh de Mar is known to 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 6 1 
 
 have married Agnes — and to have had a son Adam de 
 Mar, who also married Agnes. Hugh was contemporary 
 with Walter Basset and John Reygate (cij^ca 1260), son 
 of Robert the Cook, of Brayton, who had a wife Alice. 
 Mar was the place which in 1276 belonged to Ralph de 
 Wilgheby, who was pulled up by the King for claiming 
 warren and other feudal rights and his lands quit from 
 toll there, and who excused himself from proving the 
 legality of his claim on the ground that a charter given to 
 Robert, his grandfather, had been accidentally burnt in his 
 house at Mar. Robert Courteney, of Brayton, gave to 
 Selby a toft and one oxgang of land in Brayton and 
 threepence annuity, which William, his son and heir, 
 confirmed. The gift is witnessed by Richard Basset, of 
 Brayton ; which Richard gave his share of Brayton 
 Bargh, as much as belonged to 16 oxgangs of land. The 
 gift is witnessed by Godfrey de Alta Ripa, who lived 
 circa 1230-40. Sir Miles Basset is buried in Selby 
 Abbey; he lived circa 1250. There had been inter- 
 marriages in these families, which are all now extinct. 
 
 Curteney's charter tell us all about the woods in 
 Hirst— the Hyrst that had remained practically un- 
 touched from, the days of the Celt, divided only by 
 geographical expression — and how the thrifty Templars, 
 with a great administrative as well as executive burden 
 upon their shoulders, the supply of soldiers to defend 
 the Holy Sepulchre, thousands of miles away from their 
 
62 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES- 
 
 bases, managed to obtain the means of breaking into 
 them with their enclosures and their essarts, to raise corn 
 instead of acorns and beech-mast, food for rnen — warriors 
 and their war companions the horses — in preference to 
 food for hogs and a stay-at-home peasantry. 
 
 Of the family De Birkin, who were associated with 
 Hurst, we have an account at least coextensive with 
 the continuance of the Preceptory. Thoroton, in his 
 History of Notts, speaking of the family of Calz, who 
 lived in that dark period between the Conquest and 
 the reign of King John," shows a Walter, a Robert, a 
 second Walter, and a second Robert in lineal succession, 
 whilst Dodsworth appears to have been ignorant of any 
 Walter in the line. Neither do they agree in respect of 
 the heiress. Thoroton represents Matilda, daughter of 
 Robert de Calz, as married first to Ralph Fitz Stephen, 
 Chamberlain to Henry H., and secondly to Adam, son 
 of Peter de Birkin; while Dodsworth shows Matilda, 
 wife of Adam, son of Peter de Birkin, as aunt and co- 
 heir (with Constance, wife of Thomas de Ledes) of 
 Matilda, the wife of Ralph the Chamberlain. Both, 
 however, agree that the representation of the family 
 of Calz w^as in the descendants of Adam and Matilda. 
 Dugdale says of Robert, father of Matilda, that he was 
 forester of the counties of Nottingham and Derby by 
 inheritance, and that he had twelve knights' fees. 
 Adam Fitz-Peter, who married the heiress, is denomina- 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 63 
 
 ted De Birkin, rather that Birkin was the place of his 
 abode than that it was his hereditary name. The 
 foundations of his ancient mansion are still to be seen, 
 where till about the beginning of the last century was 
 the principle residence of one branch of the descendants 
 of Adam and Matilda. Near to the mansion was the 
 church, a singularly beautiful little edifice with a circular 
 east end, a feature perhaps peculiar to the church of 
 Birkin of all the churches of the West Riding. The 
 Lords of Birkin were also Lords of Stainborough, which 
 is within the limits of the Deanery of Doncaster. 
 Adam and Matilda had John de Birkin, father of 
 Thomas and Isabel. Thomas died without issue. 
 Isabel married Robert de Everingham, and died 36th 
 Henry III. It was by this marriage that the Evering- 
 hams, an East Riding family, obtained the large posses- 
 sions which they enjoyed on the other side of the Ouse. 
 Previously they had little more than their old manor of 
 Everingham, which they held of the Archbishops of 
 York. The service on which they held it was the 
 performance of the part of butler on the day of the 
 Archbishop's enthronisation ; so nearly did ecclesiastical 
 state in those days approach to regal. But this marriage 
 with the heiress of Birkin, Calz, and Alseline raised them 
 to the rank of tenants-in-chief of the Crown, and enabled 
 them to claim or subjected them to the duty of 
 summonses to serve in parliament among the barons. 
 Robert de Everingham had Adam, father of another 
 
64 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Robert, which Adam died 9th Edward I. An account 
 of this family may be read in Dugdale. The branch in 
 which the barony and paramount interest at Cantley 
 inhered became extinct nth Richard II., on the death 
 of Sir Adam de Everingham, Knight, who left two 
 grand-daughters his co-heirs, viz.: — Joan, who married 
 Sir William Ellis and John de Waterton, and Catherine, 
 wife of John, son of Sir Thomas de Etton. Both had 
 issue, and the barony was never taken out of abeyance. 
 
 It has been mentioned that Kellington was the 
 church used by the Templars, although their Preceptory 
 at Hirst was in the parish of Birkin, and the present 
 beautiful Norman church at Birkin was in existence 
 before the establishment of the Preceptory in very much 
 the condition in which it exists to-day. The only reason 
 to be assigned for the alienation of Birkin is the fact 
 that Henry de Laci gave the Knights the Church of 
 Kellington, while the Birkins held tenaciously to the 
 patronage and freedom of their mother church ; and it 
 was perhaps from this very tenacity that de Laci was 
 moved to give the brethren the neighbouring church.'"' 
 
 * This theory of course assumes that De Laci maintained the just 
 power of his position during his Ufetime. As I have shown, the events 
 of his career tend in the opposite direction. Whether Henry de Laci was 
 an imbecile or a man compos mejitis is uncertain, but it is tolerably clear 
 that he was a tool of the churchmen, and it may be that this arrangement 
 was the result of an intrigue between the De Birkins and the churchmen. 
 There can be no doubt that Kirkstall Abbey owes its existence to such 
 an intrigue. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 65 
 
 Yet it is certain that Birkin Church was no stranger to 
 their ceremonies of worship ; and it is not the less 
 pleasing in this nineteenth century to stand in the 
 chancel or within the apse of Birkin in the certainty 
 that we are surrounded by the very stones, in 
 undisturbed position and appearance, that the Templars 
 knew and looked upon. There yet remains in 
 Birkin Church a recumbent stone figure in a mural 
 shrine of what is said to be a Knight Templar. 
 That it is contemporary with the existence of the order 
 is certain, but whom it represents we cannot say. The 
 nominal roll of the brethren is so extremely faulty that 
 we cannot ascertain whether any of the Birkins or their 
 successors, the Everinghams, entered the order; but 
 it is not unlikely that some of them would do so, and 
 therefore this figure may possibly represent one of them, 
 All this, however, is mere supposition. The one thing 
 certain is that both the Birkins and Everinghams, not- 
 withstanding some little foibles on the part of the latter, 
 were a pious and generous race. Their donations in 
 the neighbourhood were many and far-reaching in 
 years. Adam Birkin son of Peter, and Matilda de Cauz, 
 his wife, gave to the monks of Pomfret half the mill of 
 Stainburgh; and the same Adam gave to the same monks 
 half a bovate of land in Fairburn to find wine for the 
 celebration of mass, his brother Roger, Robert the 
 the Steward (Dispensator) of Henry de Laci, the donor 
 of Kellington, and Robert, his butler, being witnesses of 
 
 E 
 
66 TEMPLE newsam: its history and antiquities. 
 
 the gift. John, the son of Adam, gave to the Priory 
 12 acres in Smetha'le, two oaks in his wood ot Birkin 
 every year, a buck from his park at the feast of St. John 
 Port Latin, and half his mill of Stainburgh ; these he 
 gave for the health of his soul, and the soul of his wife 
 Johanna, Et pro sospitate corporum suorum, Adam, 
 son of Peter, gave the monks of Rievaulx his new essart 
 in Stainburgh ; this gift was soon followed by another 
 from John Malherb and Joan his wife, who were of the 
 family of Ailric Swain and Adam, who gave them two 
 acres in Wirkesburc, upon the banks of the Dearne, 
 opposite their house at Stainburg, which Adam Fitz 
 Peter had given to them. John de Birkin had a son 
 Thomas, who died without issue, leaving Isabel, his 
 sister and heir, who married Robert de Everingham. 
 This was in the reign of Henry III., and was the 
 marriage above spoken of as the one that made the 
 greater fortune of the Everinghams. Adam Evering- 
 ham came of age and recovered seizin of his lands on the 
 1 2th August, 1252 ; he was succeeded by his son Robert. 
 To Robert succeded his son Adam de Everingham, 
 who had four sons, Robert, Adam, John, and Thomas, 
 among whom he divided his property and died in 1280. 
 On the 7th Kal Apl. (26th March), 1289, the Archbishop 
 presented Magister Hugo Sampson to the Rectory of 
 Birkin, because the patron Adam was under excommuni- 
 cation for laying violent hands upon F. de Eyton, clerk ; 
 but he shortly afterwards received letters of absolution, 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 67 
 
 and on the 4th Kal. Jan. (29th December), 1289-90, 
 he presented Magister Hugo de Colville, who held the 
 Rectory until after the dissolution of the Order of 
 the Templars, vacating it by death or resignation in 
 13 18.'" To chastise a priest seems to have been a mania 
 in the family. On the 26th February, 1 362, a Commission 
 was issued to absolve a later Sir Adam de Everingham, 
 Knight, who had been excommunicated for laying violent 
 hands on Richard de Halghton, rector of a moiety of the 
 church of Darfield. Sir John Everingham succeeded 
 
 * There is some confusion in the matters of this family at this 
 period, which I am not able to clear up. In the 15th Edward I., 
 1286-7, there is an inquest after the death of Robert de Everingham ; 
 Adam de Everingham is son and nearest heir, and is of the age of 7 
 or 8 years. The issues say that Adam de Everingham, father of the 
 above Robert, gave the manor of Sherburn, with its appurtenances, to 
 Robert, and Alice de la Hyde, his wife. By reason of the idiocy of 
 Wm. Walraund, Edward I. seized all his lands, and directed inquisi- 
 tions to be made as to the heirs. Alan Plunkenet claimed on the one 
 hand, as did Alice Everingham and others on the other. Both parties 
 agree to an inquiry, when the judicial return is in favour of Alan 
 Plunkenet, in 1309. The jury declare that Wm. Walraund, the grand- 
 father, procreated no other offspring of Isabella his wife, than William, 
 Robert, Alice, the mother of Adam Plunkenet, and another daughter 
 similarly named Alice, who was a nun and abbess of Romesey, who died 
 professed and without offspring. In 1288-9 there is a presentation to 
 the church of Birkin ; the issues say that the presentation does not 
 belong to the King at present, because the lady Isabella de Everingham 
 gave the manor of Birkin, with all its appurtenances, and with the 
 advowson of the church, to Sir John de Everingham her son ; and he, 
 Sir John, last presented to the church Robert de Everingham his brother, 
 from the presentation of whom Walter de Grey, then Archbishop of 
 York, admitted the said Robert de Everingham to the church, and 
 instituted him in it, who held it for the whole of his life. Isabella 
 Everingham died in 1251, when Sir Adam Everingham was found to 
 be her son and of full age. 
 
68 TEMPLE newsam: its history and antiquities. 
 
 Adam, and presented in 1 349 ; Thomas Everingham 
 having the next presentation in 1364, and was dead in 
 1 37 1, when the presentation was in the hands of Robert 
 Leventhorpe and three other executors. It returned to 
 Sir John Everingham, who presented in 1394. By this 
 time, however, Temple Hirst had passed into secular 
 hands, and the order of men who had changed it from a 
 primeval wood to a cultivated township was for ever 
 dissolved. 
 
 The Knights, who had been brought together from 
 all the northern counties of York, underwent examination 
 from April 27th to the 4th May, 13 10. They were only 
 25 in number, and their names reveal the fact that they 
 were almost entirely Yorkshiremen. Among them were 
 the Preceptor of Ribstan, William de Grafton ; the 
 Preceptor of Faxfleet, William de la Fenne ; the 
 Preceptor of Newsam, Godfrey de Arches, apparently a 
 member of the pious family De Arches, of Thorparch, 
 the founders of Nun Monkton Priory. The Preceptors 
 of Newsam and Faxfleet and several of the knights 
 were examined touching the ceremonies of initiation and 
 the power of absolution, but nothing of a criminal 
 character was elicited from them. Matter of graver 
 accusation against the Yorkshire Templars had mean- 
 while been obtained by means of the inquisitorial 
 proceedings carried on in London. John de Nassington, 
 a priest who knew them well, for he had served with 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 69 
 
 them under Edward in Scotland, although he sought for 
 their defamation, could only say that Milo de Stapleton, 
 of Carlton, and Adam de Everingham, of Birkin, had 
 told him that they had once been invited by the Grand 
 Preceptor of Yorkshire to a great feast at Temple- Hurst, 
 where they were told (it was not said by whom) that the 
 knights assembled there to worship a calf. John de Eure, 
 Sheriff of Yorkshire, said that before the seizure of the 
 Templars, and before any scandal respecting them was 
 in circulation, William de la Fenne, Preceptor of 
 Westerdale, had been invited to his house, and that after 
 dinner he took a book from his bosom and gave it to the 
 Sheriff's lady. She, who must have far surpassed most 
 of her sex in that age, both in letters and theology, found 
 in it a paper containing very heretical propositions 
 concerning Christ and the Christian faith. She handed 
 it to her husband, who, when he had read it, questioned 
 the Preceptor about its contents. William de la Fenne 
 smiled, and said the man who wrote it was a great ribald, 
 but he would not part with the book. William de la 
 Forde, Rector of Crofton, swore that a deceased priest 
 of the Augustine Order had told him that Patrick de 
 Rippon, a Templar, had revealed to him in confession 
 that the knights were guilty of horrid blasphemy and 
 crimes. Being questioned when he heard these 
 things, he said in the city of York, since the seizure of 
 the Templars. Robert de Oteringham, a minorite, 
 swore that after returning thanks, the chaplain of Ribstan 
 
70 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 rebuked the brethren, and told them that the devil would 
 burn them, or words to that effect. The threat was not 
 undeserved, if his subsequent account of the indecencies 
 committed by them were true. He had seen at Ribstan 
 a crucifix laid upon an altar, and said to a Templar that 
 it was disrespectfully placed, and should be raised up, to 
 which the Templar replied, " Put the cross down and 
 leave it in peace." 
 
 Of such stuff was the indictment against the order 
 drawn. It is well to remember that the proceedings 
 were tolerated by Edward II., and that the prosecutors 
 were the Pope and the King of France. Edward 
 stated, and published the statement in his Acta Publica, 
 that he did not believe in the reports of the evil lives of 
 the Templars, yet the miserable imbecile bowed to the 
 demands of the Church, and the prosecution was carried 
 out. Canon Raine observes how bitter was the hostility 
 of the Mendicant Friars to the Templars ; and 
 Mr. Kendrick truthfully supplements the remark by the 
 observation that the Templars were the aristocrats, the 
 Mendicants the plebeians. The dregs had to be used to 
 pollute the cup ; they were very freely used, and their 
 pollution was effectual unto death. 
 
 He fell before their malice, 
 
 For they told his life in shame ; 
 Kings robbed him of his glory, 
 
 And priests falsely tinged his name. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 7 1 
 
 But his deeds were done for heaven, 
 
 And his soul was pure and bright ; 
 Hence the truth has since been given 
 
 To the dauntless Red Cross Knight. 
 
 The distribution of the Templars among the monasteries 
 followed their condemnation. John de Nassington, the 
 relator of the above idle story, was appointed their 
 penancer. This mode of disposing of them is a strong 
 evidence that the Archbishop did not believe the more 
 serious charges against them, and his view is vindicated 
 by the fact that nothing in their conduct while relegated 
 to the monasteries justified the imputations against them. 
 We know that they were annihilated under the pretence 
 that they were a luxurious, effete, and immoral brother- 
 hood, whose virtues had been stifled by wealth and 
 indulgence. We also know that the charges against 
 them were false and malignant, many proofs of which 
 have been established, but the clearest is in the 
 inventories of goods found in their preceptories when 
 taken possession of by the King's officers. 
 
 This Indenture witnesseth that Adam de Hoperton, custodian 
 of certain manors of the Templars and of the Bishop of Chester, in 
 the county of York, handed over to Sir Alexander de Cave, knight, and 
 Robert de Amcotes the custody of the Manor of Neusam (Hirst in 
 same form and manner) with all the goods and chattels of our lord the 
 King found there, viz : — 
 
72 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 NEUSAM. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 44 plough oxen, each I 6j. 35 4 o 
 
 13 Scotch bullocks ... 
 
 II cows, each 10s. ... 5^0 o 
 
 5 steers {boveitos) and 2 
 three-year-old whys 
 {^juvencas)^t2<.Qki()S.Zd. 268 
 
 3 steers {boviculos)^ 3 
 whys {juvenculas), 
 two-year-old, each 5 i 10 o 
 
 4 calves ijntuios), each 
 
 i8f/. ... ...060 
 
 2 boars, each 45. ...080 
 
 5 sues," each 2o^/.... 084 
 
 5 porkers {porcos),Q2ich 
 
 2od. ... ... o 8 4 
 
 25 young hogs (Jiogeitos)^ 
 
 each i2d. ..150 
 
 6 cart horses, of which 
 4 are " Masculos," 
 
 each 83- 2 8 o 
 
 14 plough beasts, oxen 
 or cart horses {affros 
 carucarios)^ each 6s. 4 4 o 
 
 I two-year-old colt 
 
 454 e:'^'Q?,{oves matrices) y 
 by the lesser hun- 
 dred, each 12^. ... 22 14 o 
 
 335 wethers {mulfones), 
 by the lesser hun- 
 dred, each i^d. ... 20 18 9 
 
 247 lambs, by the lesser 
 
 hundred, each 8^.... 848 
 I ass ... , . o 3 o 
 
 HIRST. 
 
 29 oxen, each 12^. ... 17 
 12 Scotch bullocks ... 
 II cows and i bull, 
 each gs. ... ... 5 
 
 9 two-year-old steers, 
 
 of which 2 are 
 
 "Masculos," each 5^. 250 
 4 calves, each 18^.... o 6 o 
 
 I boar ... ... o 3 o 
 
 4 " sues," each 2od. 068 
 12 porkers {porcos), 
 
 each 15^. ... .. 015 o 
 
 10 young hogs {hog- 
 
 getos), each 8^. ... o 6 o 
 
 4 cart mares, each 10 j-. 200 
 
 4 three-year-old fillies, 
 of which I is a mule, 
 
 each 5J-. .. .., i 00 
 
 5 plough beasts at 
 Kellington, each 4^. i o o 
 
 1 colt and 2 fillies, two 
 
 years old, each 4^.6r/. o 13 6 
 
 2 roadster colts {^pul- 
 lanos de exitu), each 
 
 20^. ... o 3 4 
 
 226 ewes {oves matrices)., 
 by the lesser hun- 
 dred, each 12^. ... II 6 o 
 
 288 wethers (iiiultones), 
 by the lesser hun- 
 dred, each 11^. ••13 4 o 
 
 130 lambs, by the lesser 
 
 hundred, each 8^. ... 468 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 73 
 
 2 vestments 
 T dominicale 
 
 1 feriale and i manuter- 
 
 gium for the sexton 
 
 2 albs 
 
 1 tunic 
 
 8 {tualia benedicta) 
 
 2 superpellicia 
 
 1 rochet 
 
 2 altar clothes of fus- 
 
 tian (!) 
 
 1 velum quadragesi- 
 male 
 
 r missal, 2 legends, i 
 antiphonarium 
 
 2 psalters, i gradale, i 
 
 ordinale, i epistolare 
 with antiphonarium 
 of double feasts and 
 {troparto),! martirlo- 
 gium and i chalice, 
 price 5 marks, i text- 
 book(textorium)and 
 I ship forthe thurible 
 
 2 dishes, i copper cross, 
 and I censer 
 
 2 iron candelabra 
 
 2 phials {phiolas) 
 
 2 corporialia ... 
 
 In the Chapel. 
 
 jr s. d. 
 
 016 
 002 
 008 
 
 I dominical vestment... 080 
 I feriale vestment, with 
 
 2 manutergiis and 
 
 frontale ... ... o 10 o 
 
 3 superpellicia) 
 I rochet j 
 
 ...026 
 
 I Portiforium (breviary) 
 
 in 2 volumes ... o 6 o 
 I psalter .. ... o 2 o 
 
 I chalice 
 I thurible, i ship 
 I crucifix, 2 candelabra, 
 and I pix ... 
 
 I chest {ctstd)... 
 
 o 13 4 
 
 In the 
 
 4 brass pots, of which 
 
 one is called "Morel," 
 
 price ,.. ... I 10 o 
 2 little water pitchers 
 
 iarciolas) ... ... o i 4 
 
 2 brass dishes, price ... o 6 10 
 I tripod 
 
 I gridiron {craikulant) 003 
 
 I brass pot ... ... 010 o 
 
 3 smaller brass pots ... 012 o 
 
 1 little water pitcher 
 
 {urciohwi) ... o i o 
 
 2 brass dishes ... o i 6 
 2 tripods ... ... o o 8 
 
 I meat boiUng pot 
 
 icacabum) ... ... o 2 6 
 
74 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 I frying-pan yfrixoriuni) 
 3 forks, and i mortar 
 
 I washing basin {lava- 
 toriuni) 
 
 Large tubs, hogsheads 
 {doled) 
 
 2 tablecloths or napkins 
 
 {niappas), i manuter- 
 gium 
 
 3 mazer-bowls {cipher 
 
 mureos) 
 
 1 mortar with pestle ... 
 
 2 butcher's or carving 
 
 knives {cultellos) ... 
 I large dish or pot {cathe- 
 
 fiairi) of iron 
 I great tub or hogshead 
 
 with 6 barrels 
 I pair of mills for salt 
 
 meat {7nolarum pro 
 
 sahimentis) 
 I saltbox {saisariuui) 
 
 " de peutreo " 
 
 1 tankard bound with 
 
 iron, and 2 tankards 
 not bound... 
 
 3 handbaskets 
 
 2 {algeos) for salt meat 
 
 4 boxes {archas) i kist 
 {cistd) 
 
 In Camera. 
 
 1 box {archa) for alms 
 
 2 boxes in dormitory ... 
 
 3 kists {cistas) .. 
 
 I cloth screen (?) {pan- 
 nuni) for ventilation. 
 
 In the Brewhouse. 
 
 2 lead vats {pluinba) 
 
 T algeum plumbatumpro 
 brasii funderacione 
 
 3 " measures " and i 
 " pek " 
 
 6 (kymelia) 
 
 4 forks .. 
 
 2 leaden vats "infornace" 
 
 o 13 4 
 
 In the Furnace. 
 
 I "maskfat," 5 barrels 
 {cuvas\ I table, 3 
 large tubs i^Qg^- 
 lieads),andio(«/^^^?<y) 
 
 I great barrel {ciivd) 3^-., 
 and 2 smaller 3^. ... 
 I lead-vat {phimbwii) 
 3 „ {algeos) ... 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 75 
 
 In . 
 
 I ( formulam) . . . 
 
 I " gaueloc "... 
 
 3 mattocks {vafigas) ... 
 7 ploughs, with all gear 
 
 iattilis) each 10^. 
 5 carts, of which 3 are 
 
 old and worn {debilis) 
 
 10 harrows {Jiercias) 
 6 sacks 
 
 4 Tables 
 
 5 dung waggons, 5 corn 
 
 waggons, each \Zd. 
 
 Utensils in the Forge... 
 
 c 
 
 
 d. 
 
 3 great vats [algeos) ea. 1 8^^. 
 
 0 
 
 4 
 
 d. 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 I dormitory table ... 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 I large tub i^discuui^^ for 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 bolting flour 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 10 
 
 0 
 
 I lead-vat, in dairy 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 0 
 
 I sevTcinanL (measure for 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 liquids), in dairy ... 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 3 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 0 
 
 I measure 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 6 ploughs, with all their 
 
 
 
 
 0 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 gear ... 
 
 0 
 
 1 2 
 
 0 
 
 
 
 
 2 carts, of which one is 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 old and worn 
 
 0 
 
 
 0 
 
 
 
 
 I hand-cart, with har- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ness... 
 
 
 3 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 0 
 
 3 
 
 0 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In 
 
 THE Hall. 
 
 
 
 
 0 
 
 4 
 
 0 
 
 2 Tables, with "tris- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tellis " 
 
 0 
 
 2 
 
 0 
 
 
 
 
 2 bedroom tables(/«^?/^^7j 
 
 
 
 
 0 
 
 15 
 
 0 
 
 dormitarias) 
 
 0 
 
 I 
 
 9 
 
 
 In 
 
 THE 
 
 Forge. 
 
 
 
 
 0 
 
 6 
 
 0 
 
 ' I anvil, I pair of bellows, 
 
 
 
 
 2 pairs {tauxcarw?i) , 
 and I curved anvil 
 
 In the Granary and the Granges. 
 
 32 quarters of wheat in 
 
 sheaf, by estimation, 
 
 per quarter, 3^. /^d. 568 
 50 qr. white wheat 
 
 {siligo)hy estimation, 
 
 per quarter, 3s. ... 710 o 
 280 qr. great oats, per qr. 
 
 i6d. ... ... 18 13 4 
 
 38 qr. wheat, per qr. 4^. 712 o 
 46 qr. wheat {inixtilis)^ 
 per qr. 3^. 4^/. 
 
 132 qr. great oats, by the 
 lesser hundred, per 
 quarter, 18^. 
 10 qr. of great oats at 
 Kelyngton, per qr. 
 18^. 
 
 7 13 4 
 
 9 
 
76 TEMPLE NEWSAM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 410 qr. small oats, by 
 the lesser hundred, 
 by estimation, per 
 qr. 12^. . ... 20 10 
 
 10 qr., by estimation, 
 of peas in sheaves. 
 
 45 acres of wheat sown, 
 per acre 55 
 
 60 acres of white or 
 winter wheat {siligo) 
 sown, per acre 4s. 
 
 All the hay of the manor 
 is worth 
 
 All the tithes of Whit- 
 kirk, included in the 
 manor, and worth, by 
 estimation in sheaf, 
 50 marks ... 
 
 4 {aucas) each 3^. 
 
 5 waggons, for the King's 
 
 wars, with 3 pairs of 
 shelvings {clayce) for 
 same, 
 
 13 
 
 33 6 8 
 
 56 qr. small oats, per 
 qr. 12^. ... .., 2 18 
 
 35 qr., by estimation, of 
 
 small oats in sheaf, 
 
 at Potterlawe, in the 
 
 Grange, per qr. 12^. i 15 
 22 qr. small oats at 
 
 Kelyngton, per qr. 
 
 i2d. I 2 
 
 6 qr. of barley, per qr. 
 
 3i-. ... ... ... 018 
 
 57 acres wheat sown, 
 per acre 6j'. 8</. 
 
 14 acres white wheat 
 
 {siiiqo) per acre 6^, 
 27 acres of white wheat 
 
 per acre 5^. 
 16 qr., by estimation, 
 of siligo^ in sheaf, 
 per qr. 35. 4^. ... 213 4 
 Stacked hay {intratiini) 
 
 of the value of ... 16 o o 
 2 old boats on the banks 
 of Ayre. 
 
 3 old nets. 
 
 2 waggons 
 
 3 dung forks, 2 {vangas) 
 
 4 spades or spuds 
 itribulos)^ 4 wheat 
 forks 
 
 15 
 
 In witness whereof we have set our seals to this Indenture. Given 
 at Newsam (and also on the same day at Hirst), this 1st Dec, i 
 Edward II., 1311. 
 
 Temple Hirst, like Newsam, was not given to 
 the Hospitallers, and therefore we have not an inventory 
 of its lands. The two manors are each returned as worth 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 77 
 
 180 marks. The church of Kellington was returned as 
 the Temple Church, and at its proper uses was worth 
 £20 a year. Nevertheless it was demised to Dom. 
 Robert de Silkeston by Brother Leonard for one penny 
 paid into his hands, and to return nothing up to the Feast 
 of the Nativity of St. John, which shall be in the year 
 1340. In 1290 Kellington Church, of which the vicar 
 was a Templar, was, according to the old taxation, valued 
 at £Z \ in 1870, according to Crockfords "Clerical 
 Directory," the tithe impropriator received on its account 
 ^1,067 5^., with the rent of 11 1 acres of glebe; the 
 vicar received an income of ^359 per annum, and had 
 38 acres of glebe. The six centuries that have intervened 
 between Dominus Robert de Silkeston and the 
 Rev. Joseph Mann, M.A., have indeed wrought a 
 wonderful change ! 
 
 Among the records of the Remembrancer of the 
 Exchequer in the Public Record Office we have the 
 following documents referring to Hurst : — In a bundle 
 marked T. G. 411 56, first file, Nos. 7, 11, 15, 17, Inven- 
 tories made at Neusom, Wetherby, Rybbestan, and 
 Hyrst; the original Inquisition claimed by William 
 Const, of Ireland, out of the house of the Temple of 
 Hyrst, Wednesday after the Epiphany, 3rd Edward It. 
 In the roll endorsed Ebor. Prime extente per Vic" 
 No. 3, Inquisition of lands in the wapentakes of Osgold- 
 crosse and Barkeston, dated at Potterlowe, Sabbath, 2nd 
 
 / 
 
7 8 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES- 
 
 March, ist Edward II. No. 5, Inquisition of lands, &c.» 
 in the wapentake of Clarhow — viz., the church of 
 Husingovere, lands in North Dighton and various other 
 places, the names of which in the margin are damaged 
 and obscure; dated at Werreby (Wetherby), Sunday 
 after Ash Wednesday, ist Edward II. No. 9, Original 
 writ directing the Sheriff to deliver to Miles de Stapleton 
 the manor of Temple Hirst and the Templars' lands 
 there, also at Birne, Esthirst, Westhathelsey, Middle- 
 hathelsey, the manor of Kellington with the church there, 
 the grange of Potterlowe, &c. No. 10, Indenture con- 
 taining a long inventory of goods at Temple Hirst, some 
 at Potterlowe and at Kellington, dated on Wednesday in 
 Easter Week, ist Edward II. In a roll marked H,C. H. 
 3399, the original writ of Privy Seal directing the 
 Sheriff of Yorkshire to deliver to Adam de Hoperton the 
 Templar manors, with all goods and chattels therein, 
 dated 15th July, 3rd Edward II., with the indenture 
 made accordingly. A file of writs marked H. C. H. 
 6826, relative to the estates. 
 
THE TEMPLARS IN THEIR GRANDEUR 
 AND DECAY, 
 
 They all were mortal ; and ihe breath 
 That flatned fivm the hot forge of death 
 
 Blasted their years ; 
 /udgment of God I that flame by Thee, 
 When raging fierce and fearfully. 
 
 Was quenched in tears. 
 
 But ye, brave knights, whose hands have poured 
 The life-blood of the Pagan horde 
 
 O'er all the land ; 
 In heaven shall ye receive, at length. 
 The guerdo7i of your earthly strength 
 
 And daimiless hand. 
 
 ME have now traced the history of the order of 
 Knights Templars from its foundation ; we 
 have shown how its ranks were recruited, and have 
 endeavoured to give a picture both of the fabric, the 
 various inmates, the internal government, and military 
 discipline of a preceptory ; it now remains for us to give 
 the landed possessions of the order in and around 
 Temple Newsam, to ascertain as far as it is possible the 
 manner in which they were obtained, and to show the 
 position of the master as a landed proprietor. 
 
8o TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 At the time of the Inquisition (1185) the order 
 possessed at Newsam sixteen carucates of land, which 
 had been obtained from William de Viliers, and as we 
 have seen, confirmed to them by Henry de Laci. Six 
 of these carucates and three bovates were in demesne. 
 At Newbiggin they possessed thirteen bovates, held by 
 these men — Baldwin, one bovate for 2s, 6d., and two 
 hens, and twenty eggs, and four boon-days^ in autumn, 
 with one man, and also to wash the sheep on one day, 
 and shear them on the other. Bertram and Osbert, for 
 one bovate, paid 30^., and the said service, &c. ; and all 
 the cottars ought to sow seed, aid and assist to gather 
 the crops, to wash and shear sheep, and to drain the 
 marshes, the same as those who hold a bovate. At 
 Sceltune there are four carucates, held as follows : — 
 William de Granteville has three bovates, for no service ; 
 Humphrey has two bovates for which he pays 4.S , and 
 four hens, and forty eggs, and eight boon-days, with one 
 man in autumn to cut and lead the crops, twice to plough 
 and harrow, also to wash and shear sheep, and to work 
 in the mill. At Pennel, they had two carucates of land 
 by the gift of William Fitz Henry, which they have in 
 
 The old convenience of boon-day labour still continues in the 
 district. I believe it is now mostly extended on the occasion of the 
 change of tenants on a farm. When the new tenant enters, each or 
 many of his neighbours will send a man with a plough and team of 
 horses to plough him the land that, without such aid, might not be 
 brought into readiness for cropping. And with the labour the 
 designation still endures, which is said to have had its origin in the 
 speech of our Saxon ancestors. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 8 1 
 
 demesne. At Cutun, they had six carucates by the gift 
 of Ralph Cambord, four of which are in demesne, and 
 two held by their men. Ralph Tait, one bovate for ^s., 
 and two hens, and twenty eggs, and four boon-days ; 
 Galfrid, his son, one bovate for ^s.^ and similar service. 
 At Levinthorpe, by the gift of John Hingelram, a toft 
 and a bovate, which Richard held for T2d., free of 
 all service; a toft, the gift of William de Hocclum, 
 which the said Richard holds for 1 2^2^., with all service. 
 At Alwarthorp, by the gift of Richard Morvile, six 
 carucates, one in demesne, and five are farmed by his 
 men ; William de Hispania holds two carucates for 
 6s. Sd., and all service ; Siward, two bovates of land for 
 55-., and two hens, and four boon-days, two to cut corn, 
 and the services of two men as long as they shall be 
 engaged with the crops ; Walter Belamy held a bovate 
 for 30^. and the aforesaid service. They also possessed 
 in Newsam, by the gift of Peter de Osmundthorpe, 
 thirty acres of land, which William de Osmundthorpe 
 held for 2s., with all service. By the gift of Thomas de 
 Hoveringham, a certain manse in Herdeslau, which 
 Durandus de Midelton held for 3^-. with all service. By 
 the gift of Rainer Flamang, a bovate in Daltune, which 
 Cole held for 2s. with all service ; and a certain manse, 
 held by William de Skipton for 2s., with all service. By 
 the gift of Henry Flandrensis, they possessed twenty 
 acres of land at Skipton, which Hugh held for 35., and 
 all service. By the gift of Osbert, the archdeacon (who 
 
 F 
 
82 TEMPLE NEWS AM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 in the charter of Jordan Foliot giving the mill of Norton 
 to Pomfret is called the archdeacon, then dapifer of 
 Hugh de Tilli ; ? Osbert de Baines, archdeacon of the 
 West Riding, 1150 — 1174^'), a certain essart which 
 
 The career of this priest, if it could be traced, would reveal a 
 deep, intriguing, and unscrupulous churchman. He at least was the man 
 who moulded the religious life of Henry de Laci, and he appears as 
 witness to many of the Laci charters of benefaction. I have little 
 hesitation in saying that he was the forger of most of them. His 
 domestic connection with Tilli, an official of the Archbishop of York, 
 and a possible recipient of some of the Laci estates, should that line 
 fail, affords a motive for his intrigues. The story of the foundation of 
 Kirkstall is certainly untrue ; I have herein pointed out many doubtful 
 circumstances touching the foundation of the preceptories, Kirkstall 
 and Hurst are said to have been founded in 1152. The lying monk 
 who wrote the chronicle of Kirkstall, informs us, with a stupidity almost 
 incredible, that in the year 1152, "while Stephen reigned iii England, 
 and Roger being Archbishop of York^'' the convent of monks came 
 forth from their first seat at Barnoldswick, already reduced to a grange, 
 to the place now called Kirkstall. Roger was not Archbishop of York 
 until the loth October, 1154, and other circumstances abundantly shew 
 that it was in that year when the monks were driven out of Barnoldswick. 
 Stephen died on the 25th October of that year, and then came the day 
 of punishment for his friends. Local disturbances were everywhere at 
 their height ; and friends had turned their swords against friends. 
 Paynel, lord of Leeds, of whom William Paytefin, lord of Headingley, 
 was sub-tenant, had been in rebellion against Stephen, as also had llbert 
 de Laci. In the summer of this very year, 1 1 54, Paynel had had his castle 
 of Drax destroyed by Stephen, and in the nature of things the Laci 
 estates would be in forfeiture. In all probability, by the very operation of 
 the feudal rule, Paytefin w^ould be involved with his chiefs. It would 
 be a facile thing, then, in the grave crisis which events display, for a 
 church which could forge charters and occupy lands by perjury and 
 fraud — as at Barnoldswick notoriously — to steal these remote nooks of 
 land in West Headingley and the woodland district of Hurst. The 
 theft, for It was undoubtedly a theft in the case of Kirkstall, condoned 
 by Paytefin's necessities at a later time, must have occurred in that 
 period of the year when the local distractions w^ere at Iheir height, and 
 that would be about the time of the fall of Drax Castle. This 
 possibility, moreover, will account for the extraordinary list of witnesses 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 83 
 
 Aliz de Gingelia held for is,, and all service. This 
 probably corroborates the assumption that Newsam was 
 founded in ii 55, as it precludes the alternative date 1175. 
 The circumstances which I have related below render it 
 very probable that Hurst was also founded in the 
 same year. 
 
 The church of Whitekirk is in demesne, except the 
 altar which Paulinus, the priest, holds for three marks. 
 There are fields at Knosthorpe yet known as Pauline 
 Flatts, said to have taken their name from this very 
 priest."^ At Newhus, two mills are in the dem^esne, the 
 
 to the confirmation " at Bruge" of the land of Hurst — Roger de TiUi, 
 an interested person, and a following of irresponsible grooms and 
 menials (see ante p. 50). 
 
 * The above statement must be received with due caution. In an 
 assize, Hilary term, 1205, Maurice de Gant claims against the prior of 
 Holy Trinity, the third part of the advowson of the church ot Leeds. 
 The Prior said the assize ought not to be made, because the third part 
 is not vacant, for he and his convent are the parsons from old time, that is, 
 from the time of Ralph Paynel, grandfather of Maurice, who gave it to 
 them in pure alms to have to their own uses, and confirmed by his 
 charter ; and William his son afterwards confirmed the gift by his 
 charter, which the prior showed, setting forth the confirmation of our 
 Lord the King, and of Thomas, formerly Archbishop of York, and of 
 Thurstan and of Roger. He showed the letters of Thomas, witnessing 
 that he at the presentation of the prior and convent admitted T. clerk 
 in that third part without any reclaim. The judgment was that the 
 assize may not proceed because Maurice does not contradict the 
 confirmation of William Paynel, his predecessor, there to be made after 
 the confirmation of Ralph Paynel, nor can he contradict that Roger, 
 the former Archbishop, did institute Paulinus at the presentation of the 
 prior, nor can he deny the confirmation of the four Archbishops which 
 they have produced. 
 
84 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 one a corn mill, the other a fulling mill. There is 
 another mill at Neuhus, which the men of Scelton hold 
 for 20s,, and all service. 
 
 At Kellington they have eight bovates, by the gift 
 of Adam Suane ; Raimund holding one bovate for 45*., 
 and four hens, and forty eggs. If there was a pasture, 
 and it contained pigs, one pig out of five would have to 
 be rendered. The church of Kellington is in the gift of 
 Henry de Laci, which John de Kellington holds, and 
 pays nothing. It seems that in each case the priest who 
 had held before the donation of his church still survived, 
 and was not displaced. Subsequently the church of 
 Kellington must have belonged to the Templars, for in 
 1338 it reverted to the Hospitallers, who succeeded to 
 the Temple estates generally, and was then worth £20 
 per annum. In the fourth of Edward I. (1275), the 
 Templars of Newsam possessed in Kellington three 
 bovates of land of the gift of Walter de Kellington, and 
 
 This note opens up ground for a very curious speculation. Who 
 was Paulinus, the clerk instituted by Archbishop Roger? The era is 
 that of PauUnus de Ledes, master of the hospital of St. Leonard of 
 York, a clerk whom Henry II., in 1 186, wished to promote to the 
 Bishopric of Carlisle. I have not the slightest evidence that Paulinus 
 de Ledes was Paulinus, the above priest of Leeds, but it is well to 
 note the matter for further investigation. The proof may yet, however, 
 be forthcoming that he was a member of the territorial family De Ledes ; 
 he was one of the Chaplains of Henry II., and certainly had brothers, 
 who received the king's favours. These circumstaaces support the 
 supposition that he was of territorial rank, that is, of the family De 
 Ledes, of North-hall. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 85 
 
 four bovates of the gift of William de Somerville. 
 William de Somerville died before the 25th June, 1243 ; 
 for on that day the King transfers the lands which 
 William de Somerville, defunct, held in Seacroft by 
 Knights service to Walter de Tremblay, the cousin and 
 nearest heir of the said William.'' 
 
 * I am not clear as to the origin of these Somervilles. Among 
 the donors to the chapel of St. Clement, within the Castle of Pomfret, 
 we find Robert de Somerville, who gave in the time of Robert de Laci 
 the third part of a carucate in Seacroft. This is most probably the 
 Robert Fitz Ilbert who lived in and about 11 20. There was also an 
 East Riding family of that name. In 1290 the Jury say that six 
 carucates of land and a messuage in the town of Piasthorpe was one 
 body, and held of Robert de Stoteville for the service of half a knight. 
 The said Robert had three daughters, Alice the eldest, Agnes, and 
 Beatrice the youngest. Isabel, the wife of Robert de Somerville, and 
 John de Craystock are heirs of the said Alice. Roger de Coleville is 
 son and heir of Beatrice, and he gave her part of the said tenure to 
 Alice his sister. And of the said Alice came Matilda, daughter and 
 heir of Alice, married to Wm. de St. Quintin. Agnes, the middle-born, 
 gave her purparty of the service aforesaid to Alexander de Hasthorpe, 
 her son postnato. Matilda and also Wm. de St. Quintin complaining 
 were in seizin of two parts of the service, to wit, of the custody of the 
 heir of Wm. de Hasthorpe, and smiilarly of the custody of two parts 
 of the said tenements, until Wm. de Craystok and Isabella his wife, 
 and Robert de Somerville and Isa his wife, ejected him, Wm. de St, 
 Quintin, and Matilda his wife. The said William and Matilda were 
 ordered to recover their seizin. There had been previous litigation. 
 In 1286, Robert de Somerville and Isabella his wife, one of the 
 daughters and heirs of Roger de Merlay, who held in capite, impleaded 
 William, son of Thomas de Creistok, who married Mary, eldest daughter 
 of Roger, and one of his heirs, and John, son of William and Mary, 
 for his purparty of the manor of Morpath. William came and said 
 that partition had first been made, and that the manor of Wytton 
 and the wood of Schaldefen and Estpark had been delivered to them 
 for her purparty, and it was worth more than the other purparty. 
 
86 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Whitkirk Church was the church appropriated to 
 the preceptory, and the one in which the chief services 
 were performed. It descended to the Knights by gift of 
 WilHam de Vihers, and was consequently one of their 
 earHest possessions. After the year 1 1 62 they appointed 
 its priests and continued to do so until the dissohition of 
 the order. The first recorded instance we have of the 
 appointment of a priest by the master of the Temple to 
 Whitkirk is that of Dominus Roger de Thorpe/"" arch- 
 priest, who was appointed by Robert de Turvill, Magister 
 Militiae Templi in Anglia, on the 13th Kalends Dec. 
 (Nov. 19th) 1288. In the Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 
 Pope Nicholas, made in 1291, the church of Whitkirk, 
 the Vicar of which is a Templar," is valued at £^ 
 yearly. In 1324, the prior of St John of Jerusalem 
 presented to the vicarage. The order of the Templars 
 was then dissolved. 
 
 Beside the church of Whitkirk the brethren 
 maintained a chapel in their preceptory at Newsam, as 
 is shown by the following charter. This chapel continued 
 to exist down to the period of the Reformation. 
 
 * It seems highly probable that he is referred to in the following 
 vague extract given by Whitaker in his Loidis et Elmefe. Walter de 
 Diton, Preceptor de Newsome, and Roger, their chaplain, are witnesses 
 to a deed before dates were inserted. The family of Diton seems to 
 have been connected with the military orders in Yorkshire. In 1285 
 John de Diton held three bovates of land of the Hospitallers in Rolsea, 
 par. Hutton Cranwick. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 8 7 
 
 " Charter of Hawysa de Granteville of a Bovate of Land in 
 ScELTUNE, atld of a Toft in Wynhill. 
 
 " Be it known to all, that I, Hawysa de Granteville de Sceltune, in 
 my lawful widowhood gave, and with my body granted and quitclaimed, 
 and by this my writing confirmed to God and the blessed Mary, and to 
 the brethren the knights of the Temple of Solomon at Newsome worship- 
 ping, for the sustentation of a light to the blessed Mary, in the chapel of 
 the said place, for the good of my soul and the souls of all my ancestors 
 and successors, in free, pure, and perpetual alms, one bovate of land, 
 with a toft and its appurtenances, in the town and territory of Scheltune, 
 worth to the. brethren 4^. rent annually. I also give to the said brethren, 
 and grant, and for me and my heirs quitclaim whatever I had in Wyn • 
 hill ; therefore, neither I, nor any in my name, can, by any right or 
 claim, demand anything afterwards in the said bovate of land, with the 
 toft in Wynhill. In testimony of which I have put my seal to these 
 presents. Witnesses — Robert de Stapleton, Jordan de I'lsle, Alexander 
 de Ledes, Richard his brother, Thomas Hethe, William de Alverton, 
 Thomas de Secrofte, William Scott de Neuton, and others." 
 
 The date of this charter may be approximately 
 ascertained, that is to say, it may be inchided within the 
 years 1250^ — 1284. The name of the first witness 
 authorises this conclusion. Robert de Stapleton, of 
 Thorpe Stapleton, parish of Whitkirk, a hamlet adjoining 
 to Temple Newsam, was a man of some importance in 
 the middle of the thirteenth century as one of the high 
 officials of the Honor of Pontefract. It was he who 
 gave to the preceptory the town of Osmundthorpe, 
 which they held in 1275. Whether he was alive or dead 
 in that year we do not know, but in 1284 when Kirkby's 
 Inquest was taken he was certainly dead, for his heirs 
 
88 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 held his property. The arms of the Stapletons — Argent^ 
 a lion rampant Sable — were in the East window of the 
 middle quire of Whitkirk Church."^ 
 
 * The present church is of late construction, not earHer than the 
 middle of the fifteenth century. No traces of the Templars are to be 
 found in the structure, nor were there any when Dodsworth visited it. 
 The history of the former church is rather curious. Whitkirk is not 
 mentioned in the Domesday Survey ; but in its stead we find mention 
 of the manor of Cipeton, with its berewick Coleton, the possessions of 
 the great Norse chieftain Cospatric. There was then a church there, 
 evidently in the manor of Cipeton. The two places were in the soke of 
 Chipesch (f<^ippax), " The Barterer's Ash," from the Saxon ceapian to v 
 barter, and ^^sc, the Ash. This soke, extending from the Roman 
 Ridge to the very township of Leeds, and including Osmundthorpe, 
 was the possession of the great Earl Edwin and of royal rank. The 
 adoption of such a derivation is no violence to the customs of that age, 
 and I take it, arose from a custom of the Roman days, consequent upon 
 the spirit of trade, which, during the Romano-Celtic days, had 
 made Britain the granary of Europe. The district to the west of this 
 selected Chipesch was in all probability held from the Roman era 
 throughout the whole Angle domination, and largely cultivated, by a 
 Celtic population almost free from denationalisation and living a 
 practically independent life. The use this Chipesch may have been put 
 to is therefore a very luminous glimpse of the old colonial days of 
 Britain. So near to the Roman road, which the Angle troops would of 
 necessity hold, especially in the earlier days when their conquest was 
 least secure and their efforts martial, it might mark a convenient point 
 of rendezvous where trade should prevail and be peacefully carried on. 
 Such reserved points were not uncommon in the Angle polity of the 
 earliest days, being necessary for the lucrative export traffic the Romans 
 had created. From this establishment of trade the step to the 
 establishment of a church was by obvious knowledge of clerical advances, 
 necessarily short. The church of Kippax is of the oldest of our 
 structures, and dedicated to All Hallows, which of itself is a mark of 
 the earliest Angle foundation. At a much later period — that of the 
 advent of the Norseman probably — the other of those trade-posts, 
 Cipetun, was established, not at a tree, but at a town, and it also was on 
 a Roman road, that leading from Swillington. The circumstances 
 which I have applied to the Chipesch may certainly apply to the Cipetun, 
 down most probably to the raising of the church in the wake of 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 89 
 
 It is not an easy thing, if it be not now impossible, 
 to recover the names of the Templars who died on 
 service in the Holy Land. Of the barons who were 
 their comrades we do occasionally catch some glimpses. 
 The crusade of 1241 was fatal to many of our neighbours. 
 William de Fortibus died then, on his pilgrimage to the 
 Holy Land ; he was taken ill in the Mediterranean, and 
 being unable to eat, endured protracted sufferings for 
 eight days, until the Friday next before Easter, when he 
 died. There died also in this campaign Peter Maulay^ 
 Hugh Wake, Robert Marmion, Peter Brus, Eustace de 
 Stuteville (who was succeeded in his inheritance by the 
 wife of Hugh Wake), Baldwin de Bethune, Gerald de 
 Furnival, and many others while fighting in the Holy 
 Land, but of the Templars, regimented and lost as to 
 their individuality, there is no mention. This obscurity, 
 the mark of humble devotion, but little accords with the 
 pride, arrogance, and self-seeking with which the order 
 was so soon to be charged. 
 
 It is in the last quarter of the thirteenth century 
 that we find the alleged signs of the corruption which was 
 
 accumulating wealth. There is, however, this difference between the two 
 circumstances. The church of the Chipesch has the earliest of all 
 forms of dedication, that at the Cipetun, being dedicated to St. Mary, 
 carries with it comparative youthfulness of foundation. Thorpe-Staple- 
 ton,hard by, is probably a reUc of this trading. The Stapleton was the 
 place where men stood to sell goods ; the Saxon word Stapel having 
 the meaning of standing at a market pole or cross. 
 
90 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 said to have begun to debase the knights of the Temple, 
 and degrade them from the proud position their miHtary 
 virtues had raised them to, and which in the miHtary 
 sense they certainly retained. The pride of the chivalry 
 of the West, the favourites of fortune, and the heirs of 
 all men, when envy had singled them out for the attack 
 of the invidious, and wealth and ease are said to have 
 sapped the rigorous discipline once maintained by poverty 
 and complete devotion to their self-imposed duties, the 
 shortcomings their enemies upbraided them with rendered 
 them open to the infamous attacks now often made upon 
 them. Their enemies strove to prove that they were 
 corrupt; but in doing so they were compelled to ignore 
 the standard of morality of the times, and resort to the 
 high standard laid down by the first ascetic founders of 
 the order, and even then they failed completely as 
 against the order. We cannot deny them the right so 
 to judge the Templars ; but when every society in the 
 kingdom, religious and temporal alike, shewed signs of 
 the debasement wrought by increasing riches, and the 
 luxurious habits they inevitably develop, we may 
 maintain that such a course was excessively ungenerous, 
 and proceeded from the most base of interested motives. 
 Moreover, we must not forget that the very era when 
 hostility to the Templars most inflamed the churchmen, 
 those churchmen had to be severely taken in hand by 
 the King for their own shortcomings. The statute ot 
 Mortmain is to-day an evidence of their dishonour. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. Qt 
 
 In the beginning of his reign, Edward I. sent 
 commissioners throughout England to enquire into the 
 mal-practices of the barons and chief landowners, and 
 the extent to which the people were illegally oppressed 
 by them. Their story is a sad one ; but it shews that 
 grasping cupidity and the lust of power were as 
 frequently found in the abbey of the Cistercian monk or 
 the hall of the baron, as in the preceptory of the 
 Templar. In 1275, their report for the wapentake of 
 Skyrack is made. It accuses the Templars of having 
 appropriated to themselves free warren in Halton, Colton, 
 and Newsam ; and, in them, this was a crime, for 
 hunting with either hawk or hound was a game prohibited 
 by the statutes of their order."^ This, however, is not the 
 
 * Hawking was absolutely forbidden to the Templar in the early 
 days, probably on account of the high price of hawks, and because it 
 was the favourite amusement of the secular knights. The reason 
 assigned by the statutes is — " Because it is not seemly in the members 
 of an order to play sinfully, but willingly to barken to the commands of 
 God, to pray often, and daily in their prayers before God to bewail 
 their sins with weeping and tears.'' A Templar might not even 
 accompany one who was going out a-hawking. Moreover, as shouting 
 and bawling were unseemly, he might not go out a-hunting in a wood 
 with bow and cross-bow, nor accompany anyone thus engaged, except to 
 protect him against the heathen. But this stern decree was found not 
 to be able to endure with the changes of the time, and the Templars 
 were compelled to seek its relaxation, which they did at the hands of 
 the King. The charier of their minor privileges of free warren, the 
 original of which is at Ribstan, were granted to them on the 2nd June, 
 1284 ; it gives to brother Robert de Maunford, master of the soldiery 
 of the Temple in England, free warren in all his domain lands of his 
 manors of Newesum, AVetherby, Rybestan, Hyrst, Wythel, and Wester- 
 dale, CO. York, and nobody shall hunt therein without the leave of the 
 master and brethren^ upon forfeiture of ;£io. In this charter there is 
 
92 TEMPLE NEWS AM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 worst accusation, and the sin of it is mitigated by the 
 company they kept ; the Archbishop of York is charged 
 with the same monopoly at Otley. Fhey had in addition 
 to the above backsHdings, acquired a carucate of land in 
 Newton (Potternewton), of the gift of William Scott, 
 and a bovate of land called Okeles Oxegange," but of 
 the latter the jurors could give no satisfactory account. 
 In Mickelay, they had seized (intrusertmt se), three 
 oxgangs of land, of which the jurors knew nothing, and 
 they were accused of omitting to pay the wapentake 
 fines for the villages of Halton, Colton, and Osmond- 
 thorpe, and the land in Mickelay. At the same time 
 their rivals, the Hospitallers, were also shewn to be 
 
 no concession beyond the ordinary right to hunt and the penalty. This 
 was at a time when scores of lords, temporal and spiritual, had to be 
 summoned before the King's Justices for abusing this very right of 
 hunting ; and the obtaining of such a privilege, with its penalty, was in 
 those times and under their circumstances a mere matter of prudence 
 on the part of the Templars. Without it they might have expected to 
 see their lands overrun by bishops who flew hawks, or archdeacons 
 who roamed the country with packs of dogs, and even lower than that 
 in the ranks of the haut ton^ parish priests and curates who kept grey- 
 hounds, and associated with park-breakers, to say nothing wh::tever of 
 the tribe of barons et hoc genus 07?ine, who paid no regard to the rights 
 of those over whom they could domineer. And even in this very 
 matter of hunting, they were not as rapacious as his Reverence the Abbot 
 of Kirkstall. That simple mortal had obtained a charter, 21st Hen. 
 IIL, 1236, which prohibited anybody entering his lands to take or chase 
 brown or fallow deer, hares, foxes, or other beasts, without the licence of 
 the Abbor, and monks. As to Newsam, fancy then the position. Leeds, 
 with its unwarranted as well as warranted sportsmen, was between the 
 highly preserved Kirkstall lands, and those unprotected of the chase- 
 restricted brethren of the Temple. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 93 
 
 g-uilty of similar larcenies. They held four bovates of land 
 in Coldcotes, but it was not known from whom ; and in 
 Parlington, they had appropriated to themselves four 
 loca elemosinata " which were wont to do service 
 to the King. In the enumeration of the estates 
 belonging to the Hospitallers, in 1338, we find they 
 possessed 120 acres of land in Coldcotes, These 
 are said to have belonged to the Templars, and from 
 them the Hospitallers paid 40^. per annum to Sir 
 Thomas de Sibthorpe, as a pension. As we have seen, 
 they held three carucates of land in Seacroft, of the 
 gift of William de Somerville ; but they were not the 
 sole lords of that town, for in 1275 the prior of Holy 
 Trinity, York, is returned as holding there two bovates of 
 land and a half, also of the gift of William de Somerville. 
 
 It was thus, either by favour or by force, that the 
 order of the Templars continued to increase in riches 
 and distinction for more than a century and a half. 
 When the Templar found himself 
 
 Courted and caressed, 
 High-placed in hall, a welcome guest. 
 
 his enviable reputation and influence, as well as the 
 boundless wealth of his fraternity, did not fail to arouse 
 an inexorable enmity in the breasts of those who feared 
 his valour and envied his wealth. Their social standino- 
 is marked by the preference of one of the brethren of 
 
94 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 our own neighbourhood. In 1246, brother Robert de 
 Sykelinghall was the King's treasurer of the New 
 Temple, London, where the moneta " of the King 
 was deposited. With princely revenues, and well nigh 
 absolute power, needy monarchs trembled beneath the 
 Templars' threats, sometimes loudly heard ; but if the 
 impotency of kings by chance compelled them for a time 
 to suffer the defiance, they only awaited the moment 
 when they could combine for the purpose of annihilat- 
 ing a body whose martial skill they could not emulate, 
 but whose power they could not endure. Where they 
 knew force would be of no avail, they determined to 
 accomplish their end by cunning. In January, 1308, 
 the king sent a writ to the sheriff of Yorkshire, Sir John 
 de Creppinge, of Middleton, commanding him to 
 summon twenty-four discreet and faithful knights to be 
 at York on the morrow of the Purification, the day 
 appointed for the capture of the Templars. In their 
 presence he was to open the sealed orders, in the 
 execution of which they were to assist: the motive of 
 this secresy is obvious; it was desirable not only to seize 
 the persons of the knights, but to prevent concealment 
 or transfer of their property. The Templars were seized, 
 and placed in custody in various parts of the country. 
 The most monstrous accusations of blasphemy and 
 heresy were made against the order; false priests and 
 traitorous knights perjured themselves to secure its 
 downfall; and the betrayed Templars, deprived of that 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 95 
 
 unity of action which would have refuted the slanders, 
 and defied the open force of their accusers, found them- 
 selves held up to the scorn and abhorrence of the whole 
 Christian world, and their destruction already decreed. 
 Attempts were made, by means of mock examinations, 
 and confessions wrung from them by the keenest tortures, 
 to cause the knights to inculpate themselves, by 
 admitting among the brethren the practice of certain 
 crimes and the existence of secret compacts with the 
 enemies of Christendom. But violent means, sooner or 
 later, ever fail by reason of their own violence. Those 
 knights who sank beneath the fierceness of their agony, 
 and in the extremity of their weakness and suffering 
 confessed to the assertions of their tormentors, after- 
 wards revoked their confessions, and denounced the 
 monsters who extorted them. Their shouts of rage and 
 indignation found a very audible response in the bosoms 
 of the people of all classes. But this was all too late : 
 the dissolution of their society was decreed, and it was 
 only left to them to suffer. 
 
 On the i2th of August, 1309, the Pope, the creature 
 of Philip of France, the bitter enemy of the Templars, 
 sent two bulls to the Archbishop of York. The one 
 was a general denunciation of the accused, especially 
 those within the province of York; the other was simply 
 a command to institute an official inquiry, which 
 commenced on the 28th of April, 131 1, and ended, in 
 
96 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 chagrin and disappointment to the inquisitors, on the 4th 
 of May. Twenty-five Templars, who had been confined 
 in York Castle since 1309, were examined as to the 
 immoralities perpetrated in their preceptories. William 
 de Grafton, Senr. Preceptor of Ribstan, Godfrey de 
 Arches,''' the Preceptor of Newsam, and their companions, 
 boldly asserted the orthodoxy of their faith ; but their 
 assertion availed nothing- with men who were predisposed 
 to condemn them. They were condemned ; yet the 
 nation refused to accept the justice of the sentence of 
 their enemies. The Templars found a few impartial 
 judges in high places, and their impartiality converted 
 them into friends, lukewarm it is true, but still friends. 
 
 * Of this once potent family, almost all knowledge is now lost. 
 Osbern or Osbert de Arches gave land in Popelton to St. Mary's, York, 
 in or before the reign of Rufus. The next whom we can fix was 
 William de Arches, temp. Stephen ; he and his wife Ivetta founded the 
 priory of Monkton ; he also gave the chapel of Tockwith to Nostel. 
 Gilbert de Arches witnessed Wm. Percy's charter to Whitby ; before 
 1199, he and Thomas de la Rivere were donors to Wellebeck Abbey. 
 In a plea between Henry de Arches and William of London, the jury 
 say that between Thomas of London, father of William, and Gilbert, 
 brother of Llenry, they ought to divide the land of Catesline, and Hay 
 should go to Thomas, but Henry disseised him while he was in the 
 castle of Tickhill. Ivetta de Arches, daughter of the above William, 
 married Roger de Flameville, and secondly Adam de Brus — see the 
 controversy about the cell of Tockwith, between Ivetta and the canons 
 of Nostel. Hubert de St. Quintin married i^gnes de Arches ; she gave 
 the church of Kelynge to the nuns for the souls of her lord, and of 
 Walter and Alan her sons. She married secondly Walter de 
 Fauconberge, and thirdly William Foliot. It is from this period, the 
 close of the twelfth century, that the obscurity begins. The exact 
 position in the pedigree of the preceptor Godfrey I do not know. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 97 
 
 To condemn the accused on such worthless evidence as 
 had been adduced, in opposition to the conviction of the 
 whole nation, which pronounced them innocent of the 
 graver charges, was a proceeding too hazardous to 
 attempt. More evidence of a condemnatory nature 
 must be adduced, and in the hope of securing this 
 evidence, on the 20th June, 13 10, Archbishop Greenfield 
 appointed members of the clergy to examine the menials 
 at the several houses of Newsam, Ribstan, Wetherby, 
 and Hirst. This inquiry was fruitless : the servants 
 exonerated their masters : but the death-knell of the 
 order had been tolled. Avarice and envy had laboured 
 conjointly to bring about its suppression, and their 
 labours terminated in complete success. The Templars 
 were driven out of their homes and prisons, and the 
 neighbouring monasteries were commanded to receive 
 the fugitives ; yet that command appears to have been 
 obeyed tardily, and with much reluctance. The power 
 of the order was gone ; their services, being no longer 
 required, were forgotten, and the Knights were 
 calumniated as an impious and heretical fraternity. 
 William de Grafton, the Preceptor of Ribston, was sent 
 to Selby Abbey, where he stayed some time, afterwards 
 being permitted to enter upon a secular pursuit."^ 
 
 * This is what we read of the permission, and it appears rather 
 incomprehensible as coming from the Master of the Temple." — 
 1330-31 the Master of the Temple, with the assent of his brethren, 
 absolved from his vow William de Grafton, one of the brethren of the 
 order, and granted that having laid aside the habit of the Temple, he 
 may be allowed to turn himself to the secular state, which King 
 Edward II. and the present King have confirmed. — Cal Rot. Pat. 109. 
 
 G 
 
98 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Henry de Kirkby and Robert Langton turned monks; 
 the former, on the 29th September, 1320, taking the 
 vows at Selby ; the latter, on the i8th December, 13 19, 
 entering the Convent of Gisburgh. Kirkstall Abbey 
 and Nostel Priory received others of the outcast 
 Knights, who were glad to fly into such quiet abodes, 
 and so escape the persecutions of their malignant foes. 
 
 And thus fell for ever the celebrated Order of 
 Knights Templars, and with it the Preceptory at 
 Temple Newsam : 
 
 They perished, in one fate aUke, 
 
 The vet'ran and the boy, 
 Where'er the royal arm could strike 
 
 To torture and destroy ; 
 While darkly down the stream of time, 
 
 Devised by evil fame, 
 Float murmurs of mysterious crime 
 
 And tales of secret shame. 
 
 Lord PIoughton — Persecution of the Templars. 
 
 More than five hundred years have now rolled away 
 since the Templars were annihilated, still their memory 
 abides fresh in the minds of men. Immortality of 
 reputation is the reward of the brave ! But the record 
 of their actions is not all that remains even yet to 
 testify to their existence. The town of Leeds still 
 retains traces of the ancient privileges of the Templars 
 of Newsam, some houses, on land said to have belonged 
 to them, being marked with their cross, as a sign of 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 99 
 
 exemption from the obligation to grind at the Soke 
 Mill. Timble Bridge, leading from Leeds to Newsam, 
 is said by Thoresby to be a corruption of Temple 
 Bridge. In the days of the later Plantagenets this bridge 
 marked one of the most thriving districts of the town. 
 In 1379, John of Tymbill, smith, resided there, and was 
 one of the four richest tradesmen in the town. Saving 
 Thoresby s statement, Tymbill's position would almost 
 allow us to regard him as the builder of the bridge and 
 author of its name. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM AS A BARONIAL HALL. 
 
 Ohy they were great ! 
 
 The pride of mtcient lineage treasured up. 
 Trophies of war and ornaments of pomp, 
 These won by valour, those with honour worn. 
 Favours of moitarchs, and the gifts of Heaven, 
 The relics of a glorious ancestry, 
 Are, with the mansion of their great forefathers, 
 A heap of ashes now t 
 
 HE decree which declared the Order of Knights 
 Templars to be for ever abolished in England 
 was promulgated by Archbishop Greenfield from Cawood 
 on the 14th August, 1312. Previous to the promulgation, 
 and indeed immediately after the seizure of the Knights, 
 their estates had been taken into the possession of the 
 crown, and custodians appointed to them. Adam de 
 Hoperton was the first custodian of Temple Newsam; he 
 was appointed immediately after the seizure of the 
 Templars' goods, and his term of office expired on the ist 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. lOI 
 
 December, 131 1, when he placed his charge in the care 
 of Sir Alexander de Cave and Robert Amecotes. But 
 now the king's troubles were about to commence ; he 
 had shorn, or rather flayed, the sheep, and how must he 
 dispose of the fleece ? Avarice prompted him to retain 
 it for his own uses, but there were many potent reasons 
 in this case why the appeals of avarice should not be 
 barkened to. Courtiers were clamouring for a share of 
 the spoil, and clamorous courtiers were persons whose 
 demands Edward II. was always incapable of resisting. 
 Sir Robert Holland, " a poor Knight," who owed his 
 advancement to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, whose 
 secretary he became, obtained the manors of Temple 
 Newsam, Halton, Temple Hurst, and a host of others 
 (see the list in Rot. Pari., vol. 2, p. 29) of the king. 
 As a military adventurer Sir Robert was for a time 
 eminently successful. He had been made justiciar of 
 Chester (1307) and custodian of the Castles of Chester, 
 Rothelan, and Flint ; and the county of Flint, with all 
 its rents and other appurtenances, except the lead 
 wrought from the mine of Englefield and the Kings 
 interest in wards, was given to him to hold during the 
 King's pleasure, paying annually therefor 1,000 marks. 
 This grant was renewed in 131 1. Besides the acquisi- 
 tion of enormous estates Sir Robert was created a baron 
 on the 29th July, 13 14, and afterwards had a licence to 
 make a castle of his manor house of Bagworth, in the 
 county of Leicester. When his old patron Lancaster 
 
r02 TEMPLE NEWS AM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 broke into rebellion, Sir Robert gave, or at least prom- 
 ised, him his support ; but it was either so feebly given, 
 or entirely withheld, that through him is traced the cause 
 of Lancaster's overthrow in 1322. By this his duplicity 
 he lost the King's favour and confidence and rendered 
 himself odious to the nation. His estates were confis- 
 cated after the rebellion had been put down, and the 
 sheriff of York, and the sheriffs of other counties, were 
 ordered to seize his lands and hold them until further 
 orders. Sir Robert surrendered himself to the King, 
 hoping to escape the reward of his treachery, but he was 
 beheaded on the 7th October, 1328, after vainly petition- 
 ing to have his lands restored to him. 
 
 After the confiscation of Sir Robert's estates, 
 Temple Newsam remained for a short time in the 
 King's hands. In 1323 the King appointed Humphrey 
 de Waleden and Richard de Ikene seneschals of the 
 castles and towns of Tykehill and Scarborough, and 
 keepers of the park of Heywra and the Manors of 
 Faxflete, Cowyke, the town of Snaith, the manors of 
 Pollington, Carleton, Hachelseye, Temple Hurst, Barleye, 
 Sandhall, and Temple Newsam, with their respective 
 appurtenances, in the county of York, together with 
 many other manors in other counties. These manors 
 all belonged to the Templars, and such an arrangement 
 seems to indicate, that, when it was made, none of them 
 had fallen into the possession of the Hospitallers. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. IO3 
 
 Next year, however, they had certainly obtained 
 possession. On the 5th August, i8th Edward II., 1324, 
 Thomas Larchier, the Prior, and the brethren of the 
 Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, restore by charter"^' 
 to the King the manors of Temple Hirst, Temple 
 Newsam, Flaxflete, Deneye, in the County of Cambridge, 
 and Strode, near Rochester, with all their appurtenances, 
 which formerly belonged to the Templars, to have and to 
 hold to the said King all and singular, saving always to 
 the Hospitallers and their successors such churches 
 within the Hmits of the said manors as were appropriated 
 to the Templars. This concession is immediately fol- 
 lowed by the King's notice to the sheriff of Yorkshire to 
 take seizin of the manors under the terms of the 
 concession, omitting the churches which the charter 
 excepted ; and shortly afterwards Thomas de Deynill 
 was appointed custodian of the manors and towns of 
 Cowyke, Snaith, Pollington, Carleton, Hachelseye, 
 Temple Hurst, Temple Newsam, and Barley e, with the 
 command that he shall pay the rents and issues 
 therefrom into the King's exchequer. 
 
 After the suppression of the Templars, and not 
 later than 1338, the Hospitallers had become possessed 
 of Wyte-church, with 40 marks yearly ; but the precise 
 period when the church fell into their hands we are 
 
 * Printed in Rot. Farl.y vol. 2, p. 78. 
 
104 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 ignorant of. On the 14th November, 131 1, the king 
 appointed William de H ilium, clerk, to receive all the 
 fruits and obventions belonging to the church, then in 
 the King's hands, the appointment to be held during the 
 King's pleasure. 
 
 It was Edward III., in the first year of his reign, 
 1327, who gave the Temple Newsam estate to the 
 Countess of Pembroke. The deed states that he gives 
 to his dear kinswoman " Mary, who was the wife of 
 Adomar de Valencia, late Earl of Pembroke, the manor 
 of Temple Newsam, in the county of York, which, with 
 its appurtenances, was worth ^70 per annum, and the 
 manor of Temple Hurst, with its appurtenances, worth 
 ^30 per annum. She was to hold the manors in capite 
 for the term of her life; the reversion, after her death, 
 was granted to Sir John Darcy, knight, and his heirs 
 male, in default of whom the reversion went to the king^ 
 
 Mary de St. Paul, the widow and third wife of 
 Aylmer de Valence, second Earl of Pembroke, was the 
 daughter of Guy de Chastillon, Earl of St. Paul Her 
 husband, who occupies a prominent position in the 
 military annals of the reigns of Edward I. and Edward 
 
 II. , died childless; he was slain in France 27th June, 
 1323, at a tournament held in honour of their nuptials. 
 His widow received Temple Newsam, &c., from Edward 
 
 III. in exchange for the castles and towns of Hertford 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTlQUITIl:S. lOS 
 
 and Haverford, and the manors of Higham Ferrers, 
 Monmouth and Hodenak, with their respective appur- 
 tenances {Rot. Orig,y vol. 2, p. 7). Her widowhood 
 seems to have been perplexed by that r- finement of 
 chivalry which treated a woman as a chattel, and gave 
 a widow in marriage at the King's will or convenience- 
 In 1328 the King granted to Roger, son of Roger 
 Mortimer, Mary who was the wife of Aylmer de 
 Valence, late Earl of Pembroke, and at the same time 
 the forfeiture belonging to the king of the said Mary 
 should she marry without leave. She seems, however, 
 to have escaped this adversity, and at the same time to 
 have continued high in the Kings favour. We possibly 
 have a significant explanation of this in 1333, when 
 John de Brittania, Earl of Richmond, is allowed to 
 grant to Mary de St. Paul, Countess of Pembroke, for 
 her life, divers castles, manors, lands and tenements, 
 because she gave to the King all the goods, jewels, and 
 other chattels of Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, 
 late her husband. 
 
 The Countess was the great-grandaughter, mater- 
 nally, of King Henry HI., and is favourably known as 
 the munificent foundress of the College of Mary de 
 Valence in Cambridge, now called Pembroke Hall^, and 
 the Abbey of Deneye, co. Cantab., where she established 
 
 * 1348 Mary de St. Paul may found a house of scholars in 
 Cambridge, and a warden and 30 scholars or more. 
 
106 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 a corporation of Nuns of St. Clare, enjoining the fellows 
 of her college to be constant in their visits as the ghostly 
 counsellors and instructors of the Nuns. After the sad 
 accident which made her, as Fuller says, " a maid, wife, 
 and widow, in one day," she is said to have retired from 
 the world, and devoted her life and great means to 
 charitable purposes. This, however, can scarcely be 
 true, for she was certainly mixed up with some of the 
 territorial, if not political arrangements of her day. She 
 died in 1377 (51st Edward III.), and was buried in her 
 own Abbey of St. Clare of Deneye. 
 
 Before the death of the Countess of Pembroke, 
 Edward III. had found a future owner for Temple 
 Newsam. When William de Bohun, Earl of North- 
 ampton, and Robert de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, went to 
 France in 1337, to treat with Philip of France touching 
 the right of Edward to the crown of that realm, they 
 were accompanied by John Darcy, the Constable of the 
 Tower of London. After his return "the King granted 
 (11 Edw. III.) to John Darcy, the cousin^ steward of his 
 household, for his good service, the manors of Temple 
 Newsam and Temple Hurst, with their appurtenances, 
 in the county of York, and the manor of Torkesay, with 
 its appurtenances, in the county of Lincoln, which Mary 
 de St. Paul, Countess of Pembroke, now holds for the 
 term of her life; to hold to the said John and his heirs 
 male after the death of the same countess." Upon the 
 
tEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. lOj 
 
 accession of Edward IIL, Sir John had been appointed 
 Sheriff of Yorkshire, Governor of York, and was re- 
 constituted Justice of Ireland, to which latter post, with 
 the government of the country, he was attached for 
 many years. He was a man of military renown, to 
 whom the King in 1331 confirmed the manor of Werke, 
 in Tynedale, formerly belonging to John de Balliol. He 
 was created a baron 27th January, 1332. 
 
 John Darcy was the founder of the line of Darcy of 
 Temple Newsam, as well as the Darcys of Ireland, 
 whom the large estates given to him by Edward III. 
 enabled him to settle in opulence. On the ist March, 
 1340; Know ye that whereas lately in recompense of 
 200 marks a year which we have granted to our beloved 
 John Darcy, the cousin Q because they usually called 
 him cousin ; ' he was the same John Darcy le pere)^ for 
 term of his life for his fee, for his retinue with us, &c., 
 we have granted the manors of Albie and Folesham, 
 which belonged to William Marshall, deceased ; we have 
 given to him also the manors of Lowther and Balingary, 
 and all other lands, &c., in Ireland, which belonged to 
 the Earl of Eu." In the i8th Edw. III. 1344, the King 
 permitted John Darcy, le pere^ to impark his woods of 
 Temple Newsam and Temple Hurst, and in the same 
 year he granted him free warren in all his demesne lands 
 in those manors. Sir John married twice — firstly, 
 Emeline, daugher and co-heiress of Walter Heron, of 
 
lo8 TEMPLE NEWSAM t ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Hedleston, co. Northumberland ; and, secondly, on the 
 3rd July, 1329, Joane, daughter of Richard de Burgh, 
 Earl of Ulster, and widow of Thomas, Earl of Kildare. 
 He died 30th May, 21st Edw. III., 1347, and at an 
 inquisition held after his death the jurors stated that the 
 aforesaid John, le pere, held the day that he died the 
 reversion of the manor' of Temple Newsam with the 
 appurtenances to him and his heirs male, &c., in form 
 underwritten, viz., that the manor was sometime in the 
 hands of the Templars as the right of those Templars, 
 who held it of the Honor of Pomfret, in pure and 
 perpetual alms, and after the deposition of those 
 Templars, Edward, late King of England, father of the 
 King that now is, seized into his hands the manor afore- 
 said, with the appurtenances salvo jure ; and afterwards, 
 by composition between the said lord, the King, and the 
 prior and freres of St. John of Jerusalem in England, 
 and it was agreed and granted that the said lord the 
 King should hold that manor with the appurtenances for 
 ever ; and that afterwards Edward, late King of 
 England, granted the aforesaid manor to Mary de St, 
 Paul, Countess of Pembroke, yet living, during all the 
 life of the said countess, the reversion to the aforesaid 
 John Darcy and his heirs male of his body begotten, &c. 
 Also, they say that John Darcy Knight, son and heir of 
 the aforesaid John and Emelina, his wife, is of the age 
 of thirty years, and that John Darcy, le pere, died on the 
 30th of May last. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. lOQ 
 
 His son and successor, John Lord Darcy, distin- 
 guished himself highly as a soldier during the lifetime of 
 his father, and obtained his father's position in the 
 confidence of the King. He was one of the proud band 
 of warriors who at Cressy, in 1346, manifested with such 
 signal success 
 
 The fire that has renowned the EngUsh name, 
 And made it such as every age to come 
 Shall strive to emulate. 
 
 In the same year the King granted him £200 per 
 annum to be received out of the exchequer till he 
 found land to the same value to him and his heirs ; he 
 was promoted at the same time to the rank of a 
 banneret." On the ist October, 1343, the King had 
 appointed him the King's Escheator in Holderness, and 
 then gave him the custody of the manor of Brustwyk ; 
 after the death of his father he was made Keeper of the 
 Tower of London for life; but in the 26th Edw. HL, 
 1352, John Beauchamp, of Warwick, was made keeper 
 " for the treason of John Darcy." According to Lord 
 de Ros, Memorials of the Tower of London^ John Darcy ^ 
 the son, was the 63rd constable, and was succeeded by 
 Bartholomew de Burgersh, though the date of the 
 succession is not given. He married, as his second wife, 
 Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Nicholas Meynill, 
 Lord Meynill ; she was born at Wherleton, co. York, 
 15th October, 5th Edw. HL (1331), and was baptised in 
 
I lO TEMPLE NEWS AM: ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 the church of Holy Cross of the same town. It was 
 from this marriage that much of the influence and 
 importance of the Darcys afterwards arose. John Darcy 
 died in 1356; his widow married again, after an elope- 
 ment which caused some little stir at the time, and died 
 in 1368,'" leaving as heir to the conjoint properties her 
 second son Philip, who assumed the title of Baron 
 Darcy and Meinill. 
 
 It is not probable that either of the above barons 
 held Temple Newsam in fee; indeed it is not clear that, 
 notwithstanding the licences granted to John Darcy, le 
 
 * Her second husband was Peter Maulay of Mulgrave, of whom I 
 have elsewhere had occasion to say: — "This gay Lothario, then fresh 
 to his estates, was hurrying himself into that species of trouble which has 
 ever afflicted his race. He eloped with Elizabeth, widow of John 
 Lord Darcy, a kinsman of the above Earl of Pembroke, and so far 
 incurred the King's displeasure thereby that in 1357 w^e find him giving 
 ;^ioo to frater John de Wooderove, the King's confessor, for the use 
 of the prioress and sisters of the order of the preachers of Derteforth, 
 for the forgiveness of the transgression he had made by this marriage 
 without the King's leave. However he may have acquitted himself as 
 a lover and a benedict, he appears to have been no contemptible soldier, 
 for in 1367 the King appointed him Governor of Berwick-on-Tweed, to 
 hold the office during the King's pleasure." See Historical Mansions of 
 Yorkshire, i. p. 44. Her death is thus recorded. — 42nd Edw. HI. 
 The jurors say that Elizabeth, who was the wife of Peter Mauley (the 
 sixth), held the day that she died jointly with John Darcy, late her 
 husband, the manor of Yarm in Cleveland, the manor and lordship of 
 the town of Asselby, the manor and castle of Wherleton, the manors of 
 Earlby, Hoton near Rudby, Greenhow, Semer, Boynton, and Aldwerk, 
 of her inheritance as daughter and heiress of Nicholas Meynill, Knight, 
 deceased, her father; the aforesaid Elizabeth died 42nd Edw. IIL, and 
 Philip, her son, is her next heir, and is of the age of 15 years and 
 upwards. — Harl. MS. 805. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I I I 
 
 pere, the manor did not remain in the hands of the 
 Countess of Pembroke, who survived them both. As 
 we have seen, she died in 1377, and in that year we find 
 the first formal transfer of the property to the Darcys. 
 
 In the 51st Edward III., John Bygod, the King's 
 escheator, was commanded to give to PhiHp Darcy, 
 Knight, the son of John Darcy, the manors of Temple 
 Newsam and Temple Hurst, which were held of the 
 King by knight's service. Both these manors were held 
 in capite, the former by the service of half a knight's 
 fee, the latter by that of a quarter. Philip Darcy 's 
 possession was resisted by the Hospitallers in 1379-80. 
 He thereupon petitioned Parliament to confirm his 
 tenure. His petition enumerates the gift of the manors 
 to Mary de St. Paul for the term of her life, and after- 
 wards, by patent, the grant to his ancestor, John Darcy, 
 le pere ; he also placed before Parliament the charter, 
 sealed with the common seal of the Hospitallers, 
 witnessing the gift of the manor by the Prior, Thomas 
 Larchier, to King Edward II. Thereupon it was 
 decreed in the Court of King's Bench that the manor 
 indisputably belonged to the heir male of John Darcy, 
 h pere. Again, on the accession to the estates of John 
 Darcy, son and heir of Philip, Henry Crounale, one of 
 the confreres, commenced a new suit in the name of the 
 Prior of St John, in the 4th Henry IV., 1402, at a time 
 when John Darcy was performing military service in the 
 
I I 2 TEMPLE NEWSAM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES- 
 
 county of Oxford in aiding the King to suppress the 
 rebelh'on. Advantage was taken of Darcy's absence in 
 the hope of obtaining judgment by default, but the 
 decision of the court was in favour of him. This John 
 married Margaret, daughter of Henry Lord Grey de 
 Wilton ; it was from his second son that the line of 
 Darcy, of Temple Newsam, descended into the sixteenth 
 century. The two preceptories continued to be the 
 residences of the family to the end of their line. In 
 1467 George, Archbishop of York, and others, obtained, 
 apparently in trust, the manors of Temple Newsam and 
 Temple Hurst, for the life of Joan, late the wife of John 
 Lord Darcy. 
 
 The last of the line of Darcy, of Temple Newsam, 
 is an historical personage of no small importance. He 
 was a veteran who had grown grey in the service of his 
 country. In his youth he had accompanied the Earl of 
 Rivers, who commanded an English expedition into 
 Spain in 1488, which reflected the greatest glory upon 
 the splendid military reputation of England's yeomanry. 
 His conduct on this occasion seems to have won him the 
 royal favour, for he was created a baron, and in after-life 
 we find him continually employed about the person of 
 his sovereign. When the great crisis of the Reformation 
 came, Lord Darcy was one of the first to step into a 
 prominent position upon the troubled scene. His name 
 will be recollected as one of the chief leaders of that 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS IITSTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. II 3 
 
 abortive conspiracy — The Pilgrimage of Grace." It 
 is not, however, within the province of our present 
 purpose to give an account of the conspiracy ; we refer 
 the curious to Froude's History of England^ vol. 3, where 
 the fullest and most interesting narrative is to be found. 
 And yet we shall not scruple to extract the following, as 
 it gives concisely the praise and blame which must 
 attach themselves to his reputation : — Lord Darcy, of 
 Templehurst, was among the most distinguished of the 
 Conservative nobility. He was an old man. He had 
 won his spurs under Henry VH. He had fought 
 against the Moors by the side of Ferdinand, and he had 
 earned laurels in the wars in France against Louis XH. 
 Strong in his military reputation, in his rank, and in his 
 age, he had spoken in Parliament against the separation 
 from the See of Rome ; and though sworn like the rest 
 of the peers to obey the law, he had openly avowed the 
 reluctance of his assent — he had secretly maintained a 
 correspondence with the Imperial court." In June, 
 1537, he was arraigned at Westminster before the 
 Marquis of Exeter, then High Steward, and found guilty 
 of high treason. Although he pleaded that for fifty 
 years he had served the King and his father, his plea 
 was of no avail, for he was beheaded on Tower Hill, 
 and his lands confiscated. 
 
 After the death of Lord Darcy, the King presented 
 Temple Newsam to Matthew Stuart, fourth Earl of 
 
114 TEMPLE NEWSAM ! ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Lennox, who^ in 1570, became Regent of Scotland- 
 The earl married Margaret Douglas, daughter of 
 Archibald, Earl of Angus, and Margaret Tudor, his 
 wife, Queen Dowager of Scotland, and sister of Henry 
 VIII. It was thus within the walls of 
 
 The antique pile by mail-clad Templars raised 
 
 at Temple Newsam, in 1545, that their eldest son 
 Henry, Lord Darnley, afterwards the husband of Mary 
 Queen of Scotland, was born. His unfortunate career 
 forms one of the most sorrowful chapters in the history 
 of England. Through Darnley, Temple Newsam again 
 reverted to the Crown of England, in the person of his 
 son, James I., who, at the commencement of his reign, 
 on May 14th, 1603, appointed Henry Pott to the office 
 of keeper of the manor-house and park of Temple 
 Newsam for life. This arrangement, no doubt, indicates 
 the King's intention of maintaining Temple Newsam as 
 a royal manor ; his mind was, however, soon changed, 
 for, on the 6th August, 1603, he authorises the Lord 
 Treasurer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to draw 
 up a grant to Lodowick, Duke of Lennox, of the 
 manors of Setterington, Temple Newsam, and Wensley- 
 dale, county of York, and of ^600 per annum for life 
 from the lands of the late Earl and Countess of Lennox. 
 Lodowick died without legitimate issue in February, 
 1624, when his English honours became extinct, those of 
 Scotland devolving upon his brother, Esme Stuart, Lord 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM I ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. II 5 
 
 D'Aiibigny, who then became possessed of Temple 
 Newsam. He did not long retain it in his possession ; 
 he sold it to Sir Arthur Ingram, the son of Hugh 
 Ingram, of Thorpe-on-the-Hill, parish of Rothvvell, a 
 wealthy draper of London, who purchased also the 
 manors of Leeds, Kirkgate-cum - Holbeck, Altofts, 
 Warmfield-with- Heath, and lands in Hatfield, Halifax, 
 Birdsall, &c. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM IN MODERN TIMES. 
 
 The modern history of Temple Newsam commences 
 in the career of Sir Arthur Ingram; it therefore becomes 
 our duty to describe his rise, and with it the circum- 
 stances which put him into possession of the ancient 
 manor and mansion. He was one of the sons of Hugh 
 Ingram, a native of Thorpe-on-the-Hill, who, in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, sought his fortune in London as a 
 draper, and found it. This statement, however, requires 
 confirmation, it is copied from the genealogists, but 
 there is a want of evidence to support it. In the very 
 loosely-compiled pedigrees of Hopkinson, Eleanor, 
 daughter of Henry Gascoigne, Esq., of Thorpe, is said 
 to have married Arthur Ingram, Esq., groom of the 
 privy chamber to Charles II., and to have died without 
 offspring. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I I 7 
 
 Of the two sons, Sir Arthur was the younger ; the 
 elder, Sir William Ingram, LL.D., was Secretary to the 
 Council of the North, and a person of some importance; 
 he died on the 24th July, 1623. Although Arthur 
 followed the mercantile pursuits of his father, they 
 enabled him to monopolise the King's steady friendship 
 and patronage, and so attain to political consideration. 
 Before 1604 he had been appointed Comptroller of the 
 Customs within the port of London, and on the 21st 
 October, 1607, that office was bestowed upon him for 
 life. To him, James was a generous patron, for what- 
 ever may have been his deserts, emoluments were not 
 denied to him. The customs furnished him with the 
 means of enjoying an ample revenue. But, notwith- 
 standing this liberality, adversity reached him. In 
 November, 161 1, we find that Arthur Ingram, the 
 great undertaker, has broken for large sums." In 161 2, 
 he obtained the office of Secretary and Keeper of the 
 Signet in the North of England, for life; and in 161 5 
 he was appointed Cofferer of the King's household. 
 This appointment brought him into hostility with the 
 other courtiers, whose envy, perhaps, may have induced 
 them to abandon that decorum of conduct and delicacy 
 of language which their position is supposed to 
 guarantee. The officers of the Green Cloth, and 
 even the Black Guard, objected to the appointment, 
 violently pleading the King's promise that places should 
 pass in succession, and that they would rather be hung 
 
Il8 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 than have such a scandalous fellow over them. The 
 King promised redress ; but though the Queen and 
 Prince took their part, the King confirmed the office to 
 Ingram. Reasonably or unreasonably, his removal was 
 determined upon, " the household being so bent to have 
 him out." In spite of much resistance, he was at last 
 removed, but not until ample recompense had been 
 provided. He was sent to Yorkshire as manager of the 
 King's alum mines, and even there his conduct did not 
 escape sharp censure, and the charge of peculation. He 
 was clearly not a person of high character, this Sir 
 Arthur Ingram, who begged his victuals at the court 
 though his grip on the taxes never relaxed. The 
 allam business " was one which cast much dirt upon 
 his reputation. 
 
 There can, however, be no doubt that much of the 
 obloquy showered upon him was merely the slanderous 
 accusations of disappointed courtiers. Their reason for 
 opposing him is discovered in Lloyd's Siate Worthies. 
 
 Sir Arthur had wit in Italy, where he was a factor, and 
 wealth in London, where he was a merchant, to be 
 first a customer and then a cofferer to the King. So 
 pragmatical a person as this gentleman was necessary 
 among the Custom-house men, who were about to 
 engross all the wealth of the kingdom, and as useful 
 among the Green Cloth men, who shared amongst 
 themselves vast concealments." He is said to have 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 1 1 9 
 
 been discreet, modest, and affable, but wary, watchful, 
 and discriminating ; and when the courtiers called him a 
 " mean fellow," they denounced him because of his 
 plebeian birth, and not because his morality was at all 
 inferior to theirs. In point of ability it was acknow- 
 ledged that he was their superior. 
 
 Sir Arthur was the representative of the City of 
 York in the last Parliament of James I., and the two 
 first of Charles I. In York, he built himself a splendid 
 house, with gardens extending to the city wall, near the 
 north-west end of the Minster, and when Charles I. 
 visited York, in 1642, he was Sir Arthur's guest. He 
 also entirely re-built Temple Newsam, intending to fix 
 in Yorkshire the future residence of his family ; and 
 though Thoresby has perpetuated the story that the 
 room in which Darnley was born yet remains, we shall 
 discredit it under the belief that no fragment of the 
 original house was allowed to stand when the erection of 
 the present fabric was commenced. One of the most 
 curious features of this celebrated building is the 
 singular battlement, which, running round the sides of 
 the house within the quadrangle, forms the following 
 quaint but pious inscription : —All Glory and Praise 
 BE given to God the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost on High. Peace upon Earth, Good-will 
 towards Men. Honour and True Allegiance to 
 our Gracious King. Loving Affection among his 
 Subjects. Health and Prosperity within this House. 
 
t 20 TEMPLE NEWSAM ! ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES- 
 
 The exact date of the erection of the mansion we 
 are not able to give. We know, however, that it was 
 finished before 1635, and as Sir Arthur purchased the 
 property of Esme Stuart, Duke of Richmond, the 
 transfer must have taken place before 1624, when that 
 nobleman died. Whitaker^' says : — It appears that as 
 soon as Sir Arthur Ingram became seized of Temple 
 Newsam he pulled down the old house, which was 
 probably become ruinous, and began to build a uniform 
 and mao;nificent fabric of brick, the shell of which 
 remains nearly entire. The old house, however, was 
 not completely demolished, for Thoresby asserts that the 
 identical apartment in which Lord Darnley was born 
 remained in his time, and was distinguished by the name 
 of the King's Chamber. It is now forgotten, nor can a 
 vestige of any portion of the building earlier than Sir 
 Arthur Ingram's work be discovered. After Thoresby's 
 time, however, an ancient cup was found here, which had 
 evidently belonged to the Templars, the motto on which, 
 if I perfectly understood it, though very indecent, served 
 to vindicate the knights of this house from the most 
 odious charge preferred against them. I should not 
 have mentioned this circumstance, but as a matter of 
 evidence in favour of an oppressed and calumniated 
 fraternity. 
 
 * Loidis et Elmeie. 
 
 5 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 12 1 
 
 Not many years after Temple Newsam was finished 
 a fire broke out, which, according to a paragraph in one 
 of Strafford's letters, burnt it nearly to the ground.-^ 
 This, however, was merely a flying and exaggerated 
 rumour, for the general repair made by the late owner, 
 Lady Viscountess Irwine, proved from the cessation of 
 all marks of fire on the wood work, that the mischief 
 had not extended beyond one wing. This house, of 
 which the original appearance has been judiciously 
 preserved in several successive repairs, is built of brick, 
 and forms three sides of a large quadrangle. Its whole 
 appearance, which bears every characteristic mark of its 
 age, the inscribed battlement, the embayed and spacious 
 windows, and the deep projecting wings, on the whole 
 much resembles a college, and would have resembled it 
 more had not the chapel been converted into a kitchen. 
 In the windows of this room is a long and curious series 
 of armorial bearings from the Lacies, the first lords ot 
 this place, down to the Ingrams. Degraded as their 
 situation now is, they might perhaps with more propriety 
 be inserted in the windows of the hall. Within it would 
 have been inconsistent with modern habits to have 
 retained the original form or finishing of the apartments. 
 
 On Shrove Sunday, 1635, Dr. Mainwaring was consecrated 
 Bishop of St. David's. About that time half of my Lord of Dorset's 
 house was burnt down at Knowl. Also Sir Arthur Ingram's house, 
 Temple Newsham, by York, is almost burnt to the ground, household 
 stuff to the value of ;^4, 000 all consumed and lost. — Letters of Thomas^ 
 Earl of Strafford^ vol. i., p. 525. 
 
122 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 Still, however, there is an air of solemnity about the 
 interior of Temple Newsam strikingly different from the 
 garish lightness of a modern palace. Perhaps there is 
 not a great house in the kingdom where so much 
 attention has been paid to domestic comfort. Here a 
 visitant never feels himself shivering in the midst of 
 cold and comfortless magnificence, never forgets that he 
 is traversing an abode of human beings. 
 
 The collection of paintings at Temple Newsam is 
 very valuable. The series of family portraits, from 
 Sir Arthur Ingram to the present generation, besides the 
 intrinsic merit of several as works of art, forms an 
 excellent study of English costume for more than two 
 centuries. But there are many works of a higher order, 
 from Guido to Reynolds, on which every visitant of taste 
 or science will dwell with delight till he forgets the 
 ordinary measures of time assigned to such enjoyments. 
 
 The library is a very handsome room, divided by 
 Corinthian pillars. It is 24 feet square. In the chapel 
 is an altar piece — The Last Supper — bad both in 
 design and execution. The figure of Christ has the 
 countenance of a clown, the group is wretched ; one of 
 the apostles is in a tye-wig, and another's hair would do 
 exceedingly well for a bag. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 123 
 
 IN THE BREAKFAST ROOM 
 
 32 feet by 27 feet, are — 
 
 A Bacchanalian Piece. The attitude of the naked woman in the 
 foreground is fine ; the figures are well designed. 
 
 An Astrologer. A very fine and effective picture. 
 
 A Dutch Market. By Fan Helniont. 
 
 Landscape. By Asselin. 
 
 St. Margaret. By Guido. 
 
 IN THE BED CHAMBER. 
 
 The Duchess of Grafton,* a portrait. The very first sight of this 
 picture will extort the exclamation — 
 
 " Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye ; 
 In every feature dignity and love." 
 
 The whole figure is excellent. The attitude is astonishingly 
 spirited and elegant ; the pose of the head, the beauty of the face 
 and hair, inimitable. 
 
 Landscape, with Figures. The woman in white is good, but the 
 water very bad. 
 
 IN THE DRESSING ROOM. 
 
 Large Landscapes. They are very fine. 
 Dead Game. The painting excellent. 
 
 Landscape. We apprehend by Bassan ; the expression is strong, but 
 ugly. 
 
 Sea Piece. Fine. 
 
 * The Hon. Anne Liddell, daughter and sole heiress of Henry, 
 Lord Ravensworth, from whom the Duke was divorced by Act of 
 Parliament in 1769. She was one of the leaders of fashionable society, 
 a great encourager of loo, and a particular friend of Horace Walpole. 
 
124 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 IN ANOTHER DRESSING ROOM. 
 
 A Landscape. A curious picture ; the rocks and everything are green. 
 
 A Storm. A fine picture, worthy of close observation. 
 
 A Large Battle Piece. The general expression of the picture is 
 strong and vivid ; supposed to be by Borgogno7ie. 
 
 Group of Horsemen, with Rocks. — A splendid picture, possessing 
 many of the wild and weird charms of Salvator Rosa. 
 
 Lot and His Daughters. The colouring is good, and the attitudes 
 very fine. 
 
 Battle Piece. — Full of bold execution ; Borgognone. 
 Another B attle Piece. Of less worth. 
 
 Sleeping Woman ; Satyrs, &c. Good ; possessing much of the 
 style of Rubens. 
 
 Landscape. Indifferent. 
 
 ANOTHER DRESSING ROOM. 
 
 Boys. Charity and her three children introduced ; the brilliancy of 
 the colours is exceedingly fine ; the boys full of animation. 
 
 Cephalus and Procris. An excellent production. 
 
 Two Battle Pieces. Round ones ; each of them amazingly spirited. 
 
 Two Pieces of Dead Game. Inimitable. 
 
 Two Small Pieces on Copper. In one a decollation by a female 
 figure, with a scimitar in her hand ; perhaps Holophernes. The 
 colour and finishing are alike exquisite. 
 
 Landscape : A waterfall. Very fine. 
 
 Group of Boys. Full of beauty, both in design and execution. 
 Sea Piece. 
 
 Two Small Pictures. Groups of horsemen. Perhaps by Salvator 
 or Borgognone^ as each picture shews traces of their masterly style. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM; ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I 25 
 
 A Calm. A very pretty sketch. 
 
 A Large Landscape. The rocks and trees are rather dark, but 
 expressive. 
 
 IN THE GALLERY. 
 
 (A very fine room, 128 feet by 28 feet.) 
 
 Two Large Battle Pieces. — Exceedingly fine, and suggestive ot the 
 horrors and misery, as well as the excitement of war. 
 
 Landscape, under one of the above ; a calm evening ; very fine. The 
 boor on an ass is exquisitely done ; the colouring natural, the 
 expression and attitude of the figures and cattle excellent. 
 
 Landscape, companion of the above. The figures, rocks, and broken 
 trees are admirably delineated. 
 
 Group of Horsemen on a Bridge. The lights are rather strong, 
 but the expressions faithful and spirited. 
 
 Another Group ; its companion, in merit as well as subject. 
 
 Storm among Rocks, and its companion. 
 
 Fruit. 
 
 A Baptism. The colouring is excellent. 
 
 Descent from the Cross. This is in the style of Albert Durtr. \\ 
 The minute expression resulting from high finishing is amazing ; 
 but the draperies, except the gauze, are dreadful. 
 
 Battle at Sea. 
 
 Two Rocks, with Figures. Very wild and dark, but nobly touched ; 
 if they are not by Salvator they are worthy of him. 
 
 Large Piece of Birds. Spirited ; the colours are excellent. 
 
 A Storm among Rocks and a Raging Torrent. Two large pictures. 
 
 Holy Family. In the style of Carlo Maratti ; the infant is an 
 admirable effort ; the countenance of the Madonna is good, but 
 her draperies are heavy and inelegant. 
 
126 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 A Large Landscape. A Dutch picture ; the light through the trees 
 and on the woman is finely wrought out, but the general blueish 
 cast of the picture renders it somewhat unnatural. 
 
 Hunting the Wild Boar. A very fine picture. 
 
 Two Pieces of Fruit^ &c. Exquisite, both in drawing and painting. 
 
 Two Landscapes. Probably by Nicholas Pousin. 
 
 St. John in the Wilderness. By Guido. 
 
 Landscape, with rocks and buildings. The tree on the left side 
 exquisite ; the keeping fine. 
 
 Landscape, its companion. The trees and buildings equally excellent. 
 
 Prometheus. Vandycke. C>^^^U en 
 
 A Large Shipwreck. Amazingly spirited in the figures ; the general 
 horror of the situation is nobly expressed — 
 
 Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries, 
 The fated victims shuddering cast their eyes 
 In wild despair ; while yet another stroke 
 With strong convulsion rends the solid oak. 
 Ah heaven ! — behold her crashing ribs divide ! 
 She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide. 
 
 A Waterfall. The figures, trees, and general wildness of the scene 
 are brought out with exceedingly great power. 
 
 A Landscape, under the above. A brilliant picture ; the general effec 
 of the calm majesty of the scene, the spirit of the figures, archi- 
 tecture, &c., is incomparable ; the painting is worthy of the 
 pencil of Poiissin. 
 
 Portrait (of a Scotch gentleman). 
 
 Martin Bucer, invited into England by Cranmer, during the reign 
 of Edward VL, and appointed Theological Professor at Cambridge 
 in 1549, where he died two years afterwards. Titian. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I 27 
 
 Portrait of Mr. Scarborough (afterwards Sir Charles), physician to 
 Charles 11. - ^ 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Scarborough, aged 21, date 1615. 
 
 Portrait of a man writing. Great expression. The style is that of 
 Rembrandt. 
 
 Fruit Shop. Excellent. 
 
 Jane Shore. The minute expression given to the naked parts of the 
 figure and the gauze drapery is astonishingly beautiful ; the 
 finishing of the breasts and limbs remarkable. 
 
 EuROPA. The style is that of Rubens^ and the picture is worthy 
 of him 
 
 A Supper. Probably painted by Schalken. The lights are fine. 
 
 Moses Striking the Rock. The colours are bad ; the group and 
 figures Dutch. 
 
 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 
 
 Two Boys' Heads. The turn, attitude, and expression are exceedingly 
 beautiful. 
 
 Two Pieces of Horses. 
 
 r h 
 
 Portrait of the Earl of Holland. By Vandycke. - ■ - ■ 
 
 Holy Family. A large picture in the style of Rubens. Nothing can 
 be finer than the boys, the principal one especially. The head 
 and face of the Virgin are exquisite. A very capital picture. 
 
 Rembrandt's Portrait. By himself. 
 
 Maurice, Prince of Orange. By Meerveli. { t. 
 
 Duchess of Orleans, Sister of Charles II. 
 
 Sir Everard Digby, who suffered for being concerned in Guy Fawkes' 
 plot. 
 
 Smith, one of the Reformers. By Holbein. 
 Two Small Battle Pieces. 
 
128 TEMPLE NEVVSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 The Dead Christ. Exceedingly beautiful. 
 Two Sea Pieces. 
 
 Architecture. An arch and a landscape through it. The arch is 
 particularly good. 
 
 St. Francis (?) holding a crucifix." An excellent picture, by Guido. 
 Joseph and our Saviour. 
 Rachel, Joseph, and Benjamin. 
 Architecture and Figures. 
 
 Christ Praying in the Garden. The colouring and attitude 
 inimitable, but the lights unnaturally diffused. Probably of the 
 school of Carraccio. 
 
 A Figure Praying, its companion. The drapery is vile, but the rest 
 of the picture very good. 
 
 Isabella, Marchioness of Hertford, by Sir J. Reynolds. Ingram, 
 Isabella, Marchioness of Hertford, eldest daughter of Chas. 
 Ingram, 9th Viscount Irvine, of Temple Newsam, near Leeds ; 
 died 1836. Fxhibited at Kensington in 1867. Full length ; in a 
 garden, holding fan in right hand ; white skirt over yellowish 
 dress. Canvas, 94in. by 58in. 
 
 Lord Irwin. A very good portrait, by Wilson^ of Leeds.t 
 
 This is probably the picture that Thoresby's remark applies 
 to: — Aug. 2ist, 1702. Took the opportunity to wait of my Lord 
 Irwin and Mr. Machell (a noted member of Parliament), his grand- 
 father, after dinner to view the hall and gardens. Some pictures in 
 the gallery are considerable, particularly St. Francis, said to be worth 
 
 + During one of his visits to Yorkshire, after he had settled in 
 London, and at the houses of Sir George Savile, Lord Mexborough, 
 Lord Scarborough, Lord Irwin, and others, Wilson painted as many 
 portraits as produced him ;^6oo. — Life of Sir Robert Wilson^ vol. i., 
 p. 26. 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I29 
 
 Dancing Boys. The group is finished with a glow and brilliancy 
 beyond expression ; the attitudes exquisite ; the colours and 
 landscapes charming ; but the lights rather strangely diffused. 
 
 Diana. Clumsy, as ever Rubens painted. 
 
 Sir Arthur Ingram. This portrait was exhibited at Leeds. The 
 portrait is good, but the attitude wretched. Died 1655. 
 
 A Fruit Piece. 
 
 A Small Picture of Many Figures. It somewhat resembles the 
 mariner both of Borgognotie and Bassan. 
 
 A Woman Reading. Dutch, both in figure, drapery, and idea. 
 
 Cattle Piece. Very ably treated. 
 
 Architecture. Very fine and bold. 
 
 Since the time of Sir Arthur Ingram, Temple 
 Newsam has had no history, except that of a baronial 
 hall, where opulence reigned and trouble never reached. 
 By letters patent, dated 23rd May, 1661, Charles II. 
 rewarded his second son with the Scotch Viscountcy of 
 Irwin, for his adherence to the royal cause. Edward, 
 Lord Ingram, fourth Viscount, was lord-lieutenant of 
 the East- Riding, and died in May, 1714. Richard, Lord 
 Ingram, fifth Viscount, married Lady Anne Howard, 
 third daughter of Charles, third Earl of Carlisle. She 
 was a poetess of some repute, but greater ambition ; she 
 published a poetical essay on Popes Characters of 
 Women, for which her ladyship received a flattering notice 
 in Duncombe's Femmead. Her husband was governor of 
 Hull, colonel of the Body Guards, and was appointed 
 
 I 
 
130 TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES 
 
 governor of Barbadoes, but died a few weeks before he 
 should have set out for that island. Henry, Lord 
 Ingram, seventh Viscount, M.P. for Horsham, com- 
 missary for the stores at Gibraltar, and lord-lieutenant 
 of the East-Riding, died without issue. Charles Ingram, 
 colonel of the 2nd Regiment of Foot Guards and 
 Adjutant-General of the Forces, and M.P. for Horsham 
 till his death, in 1778; he married in 1756, Miss 
 Shepherd, a lady of large fortune, by whom he had five 
 daughters, who all bore the additional surname of 
 Shepherd. Charles Ingram, tenth Viscount Ingram, died 
 at Temple Newsam, 27th June, 1778, when the property 
 went to the Marquis of Hertford, who took the name 
 of Ingram, and at his son's death to the representative 
 of the family of Meynell, whose ancestor had married 
 Elizabeth, third daughter of the tenth Viscount. It is 
 still in the possession of their descendant, Hugo Charles 
 Meynell Ingram, Esq., who has so hospitably entertained 
 the Prmce of Wales during his recent visit to Leeds. 
 Mr. Ingram succeeded his father, the late Hugo Meynell, 
 Esq., in 1 801, as heir of his mother. Hugo Meynell 
 and Elizabeth, his wife, had issue, besides the above — 
 Henry, rear-admiral, late M.P. for Lisburn ; Francis 
 Adeline, married in November, 1841, to William 
 Beckett, Esq., M.P. for Leeds. 
 
 It is a remarkable circumstance that the last Prince 
 of Wales should also have been a guest at Temple 
 
TEMPLE NEWSAM : ITS HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. I3I 
 
 Newsam. On the 28th September, 1806, their Royal 
 Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duke of 
 Clarence arrived at Ledstone Hall on a visit to Michael 
 Angelo Taylor, Esq. During their short stay the Prince 
 paid a morning visit to Lady Irwin at Temple Newsam, 
 but was prevented, by indisposition, from accompanying 
 his royal brother to Leeds. The Duke, however, 
 reached the town, and, with Lord Dundas and Mr. 
 Taylor, viewed the extensive manufactory of Messrs. 
 Wormald, Gott & Co., the Cloth Halls, and other 
 principal buildings, with which he expressed great 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Within more recent days Temple Newsam has 
 again extended its hospitality to the royal family. On 
 the 19th May, 1868, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 
 as the representative of the Queen, opened the National 
 Fine Arts Exhibition at the New Infirmary, Leeds. 
 The Prince was then the guest of Mrs. Meynell-Ingram. 
 The occasion of this visit was a great one both for the 
 town and county, and the proceedings, which covered 
 two days, were of much magnificence. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Acre, Assault of, 24, 34, 36 
 Aire, Peninsula of, 49 
 Ailrich, 55 
 
 Ainsfrid, of Newsam, 9 
 Alan, the Chamberlain, 50 
 Albano, Cardinal, 15 
 Albemarle, Wm. de Mandaville, 36 
 Alice, of France, 54 
 Almanthorpe, Robt. de, 58 
 Almoner, Wm. the, 28 
 Alta Ripa, Godfrey, 61 
 Aluric, the Thane, 48 
 Alverstain, Baldwin de, 60 
 ,, Torphin de, 60 
 ,, Alan, son of, 60 
 ,, William, son of, 60 
 Alverton, Wm. de, 87 
 Alwarthorpe, 81 
 Amcotes, Robert de, 71, loi 
 Angus, Archibald, Earl of, 114 
 Arches, Agnes de, 96 
 
 ., Godfrey, Preceptor of Newsam 
 68, 96 
 
 ,, Gilbert, 96 
 
 ,, Henry, 96 
 
 ,, Ivetta, 96 
 
 ,, Osbern, 96 
 Aubeni, Ralph de, 36 
 
 B 
 
 Bacod, Richard, 24 
 BadU, Wm. de, 24 
 Baldwin, a vassal, 80 
 
 Baldwin, King, 12 
 Balliol, Hugh de, 19 
 
 ,, John de, 107 
 Barkeston, 77 
 Barbo, Robert, 24 
 Barleye, 102, 103 
 Barnoldswick, 20, 21, 27 
 Basedale, Nunnery, 20 
 Beauchamp, of Warwick, John, 109 
 Belamy^ Walter, 81 
 Bellaqua, Sir Adam, 58 
 
 ,, Henry de, 58 
 Berelay, now Barlow, 47 
 Basset, Sir Miles, 61 
 
 ,, Richard, 60, 61 
 Walter, 61 
 Bernard, of Clairvaux, 14, 15 
 Bethune, Baldwin, 89 
 Bertram, a vassal, 80 
 ,, Roger de, 58 
 Bigod, Hugh, 21, 27, 28 
 Birkin, 4S, 55 
 , ,, Church, 49, 67 
 
 ,, Effigy in, 65 
 
 , , Family of, d.9, 62 
 
 Adam de, 50, 51, 52, 56, 63, 65, 66 
 
 ,, Alice, 67 
 
 ,, Isabella, 52, 63, 66 
 
 ,, Joan de, 66 
 
 ,, John de, 63, 66 
 
 ,, Matilda de, 62, 65 
 
 Peter de, 50, 51, 52, 56, 65, 66 
 
 ,, Thomas, Son of Peter de, 24, 
 63,6 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Birkin, Wood of, 66 
 Bohun, William de, io6 
 Boon -day Lal)Our, 8o 
 Bouvaincurt, Guy de, 19, 20 
 Braclcy, Henry de, 36 
 Brayton, 45, 47, 48, 59, 6d, 61 
 Brimeham, 27 
 Britannia, John de, 105 
 Bruge, 50, 51 
 Brus, Peter, 89 
 
 ,, Adam, 89 
 Burgo, Thomas de. Ancestry of, 56 
 Burgh, Richard de, 108 
 
 ,, Joan de, 108 
 Burgwallis, 56 
 Burn, 48, 78 
 
 Burgersh, Bartholomew, 109 
 Burstwick, 109 
 Bygod, John, 1 1 1 
 Byram, 44 
 
 C. 
 
 Caldecotes, 9 
 Camblesforth, 47, 51 
 Cambord, Si 
 Camville, Richard de, 36 
 ,, William de, 36 
 Carlisle, Earl of, 129 
 Carlton, 44., 47, 102, 103 
 Carun, Baldwin de, 35 
 Castleford, 7 
 Cauz, Matilda de, 62, 65 
 ,, Robert de, 51, 62 
 Cave, Alexander de, 71, loi 
 Cawood, 100 
 Chastillon, Guy de, 104 
 Chester, Bishop of, 71 
 Chester, John, Constable of, 36 
 Chester, Constable of, 29 
 
 Roger, 29 
 Chorleton, 23 
 Cipetun, 88 
 Clai, Henry de, 24 
 Clan-stations, 42 
 Clare, Richard de, 36 
 Clarhow, 78 
 Clerfai, Wm. de, 28 
 Cliderhow, 28 
 Coldcotes, 93 
 Cole, 81 
 
 Colleton, 9, 23, 91, 92 
 Colville, Magister Hugo, 67 
 Comine, Robert de, 10 
 Constable, Robert, 36 
 
 Cospatric, the Thane, 10, 60 
 Courtenay, John de, 57, 58, 59 
 
 Emma de, 57, 58 
 
 Robert de, 59, 60, 61 
 
 William, 61 
 Cowick, 44, 45, 102 
 Craystock, Isabella. 85 
 John, 85 
 ,, Thomas, 85 
 
 William, 85 
 Creppinge, Sir John, 94 
 Cressy, 109 
 Crofton, Rector of, 69 
 Crosby Ravensworth, Church of, 60 
 Croxebi, Ralph, Parson of, 36 
 Curdes, Battle of, 23 
 Cutun, 81 
 
 D. 
 
 Dalton, 81 
 
 Darcy, Sir John, 104, 106, 107,. 108, 
 
 ITI 
 
 ,, Emeline, 107 
 
 ,, Elizabeth, 109 
 Philip, no. III 
 
 ,, Margaret, 112 
 
 ,, Thomas, Lord, 112, 113 
 Darfield, 67 
 Dargis, Baldwin de, 35 
 Darnley, Henry, Lord, 114 
 Darnetal, in Normandy, 8 
 Deneye Abbey, 106 
 Diton, Walter de, 86 
 Domesday, Account of Newsani, 9 
 Douglas, Margaret, 114 
 Drax, 82 
 
 Dudley, Andrew, 22 
 Dunstan, the Thane, 9 
 
 E. 
 
 Edward, the Confessor, 9 
 Edwin, Earl, 88 
 
 Edwin, King of Northumbria, 7, 11 
 
 P21mete, Kingdom of, 4, 6, 7 
 
 Englefield, 10 1 
 
 Eskholm, 47 
 
 Estpark, 85 
 
 Eugenius, Pope, 15 
 
 Eure, John de, 69 
 
 Everingham, Adam, 63, 66, 67, 69 
 ,, Henry, 52 
 
 John, 66, 67, 68 
 ,, Thomas, 66, 68 
 ,, Isabella, 62, 63, 67 
 
134 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Evetingham, Robert, 52, 63, 66, 67 
 Exeter, Marquis, 113 
 Eyton, F. de, Clerk, 66 
 
 F. 
 
 Fairburn, 56, 65 
 
 ,, Simon de, 56 
 Fawconber^e, Walter de, 96 
 Faxfleet, 68, 102, 103 
 Fenne, Wm. de la. Preceptor of Faxfleet, 
 
 68, 69 
 Fenwick, 56 
 Ferrers, Wm., Earl, 36 
 
 ,, Ingleram de, 36 
 Fitz Eustace, Richard, 29 
 
 ,, Koger, 29 
 Fitz Godric. Wm., 29 
 Fitz Hem-}% Wm., 80 
 Fitz John, Eustace, 29 
 
 Nigel, 29 
 Fitz Peter, Galfred de, 22 
 Fitz Ralph, Drogo, 36 
 Fitz William, William, 29 
 Flamang, Rainer, 81 
 ,, Henry, Sr 
 Flameville, Roger de, 96 
 Foliot, Henry, 24 
 
 ,, Jordan, 24, 28, 5^^, 56, 82 
 
 ,, William, 96 
 Forde, William de la, 69 
 Fortibus, Wm. de, 89 
 Fountains Abbey, 27 
 France, Philip of, 95, 106 
 Furnival, Gerald, 89 
 
 ('.. 
 
 Gamel, the Thane, 48, 49, 51, 55 
 (xant, Alice de, 26 
 
 „ Gilbert de, 26 
 
 ,, Maurice, 83 
 Gascoigne, Henry, 1 16 
 
 ,, Eleanor, 1 16 
 Gateforth, 46, 52 
 Gingelia, Aliz de, 83 
 Ciipton, 9 
 Gisburgh, 98 
 Gisors, 54 
 
 Cjlanville, Roger de, 35, 36 
 Glunier, the Thane, 9 
 Granteville, Hawysa, 87 
 Grafton, Wm., Preceptor of Ribstan, 68, 
 
 . 96, 97 
 Granteville, Wm., 80 
 Gray, Archbishop Walter de, 67 
 
 Greenfield, Archbishop, 97, 100 
 Grey de Wilton, Henry, 112 
 
 H. 
 
 Haddlesey, 44, 45, 46, 78, 102, 103 
 
 Halghton, Richard de, 67 
 
 Hall, a justice-seat, 43 
 
 Hallai, Wm, de, 28 
 
 Halton, 7, 9, 91 , 92, loi 
 
 Hamo de Meinfelin, 50 
 
 Hastings, Arms of, 52 
 
 ,. Humphrey, 59, 60 
 
 ,, Leceline, 59 
 
 ,, Ralph de, 17, 49, 50, 51, 54. 60 
 
 ,, Richard de, 50, 51, 54 
 
 ,, Thomas de, 60 
 
 ,, William de, 54 
 Hastingmede, 54 
 Hasthorpe, Wm., 85 
 Headingley, 20, 82 
 Helias, John, son of, 58 
 Hensall, 43 
 
 Henry II., King, 18, 25, 5:^ 
 Herdeslau, 81 
 Hesel, Church of, 60 
 Hethe, Thos., 87 
 Heywra Park, 102 
 Hillum, Wm. de, 104 
 Hingleram, John, 81 
 Hirst, 13, 17, 18, 78, 97 
 
 ,, Courteney, 51, 60 
 
 ,, Inventory of, 71 
 
 ,. Mills of, 56 
 
 ,, Preceptory of, 42, 78 
 Hispania, Wm., 81 
 Hocelum, Wm , 81 
 Holderness, 109 
 Holland, Robt. de, loi, 102 
 Holy Trinity Priory, York, 29 
 Hodenak, 105 
 Honorius, Pope, 13, 15 
 Hoperton, Adam de, 71, 78, 100 
 Hospitallers, Knights, 12, 15, 21, 22, 76, 
 
 84, 86, 92, 93, 103, 108 
 Hoveringham, Thos., 81 
 Hugh the Abbot, 50 
 Humphrey, a vassal, 80 
 Hurst, Wm. de, 54 
 Hyde, Alice de la, 67 
 
 I. 
 
 Ikene, Richard de, 102 
 Ingram, Lord, 129, 130 
 „ H. C. M., 3 
 
INDEX. 
 
 135 
 
 Ingram, Sir Arthur, ii6, 117, 118, 119, 
 120 
 
 ,, Sir William, 1 17 
 
 ., Charles, 130 
 Ingolvesmelles, 27 
 Inquisition of Temple Lands, 80 
 Insula, Jordan de, 58 
 Irwine, Lord, 121 
 
 J- 
 
 James, Kii.g, 117 
 Jobson, Francis, 22 
 John, King, 19, 22 
 Joppa, 36 
 
 Kellington, 42, 55, 65, 77, 78. 84 
 
 ,, John de, 56, 84 
 
 ,, Walter de, 84 
 Kildare, Earl of, loS 
 Kirkby, Henry de, 98 
 Kirkstall Abbey, 4, ii, 20, 22, 27, 28, 82. 
 92, 98 
 
 Kirkgate-cum-Holbeck, 1 15 
 Kippax, II, 88 
 Knosthorpe, 83 
 Knottingley, 42 
 Kyme, Walter de, 36 
 „ Philip de, 3b 
 
 L. 
 
 Laci, Albreda, 27, 29 
 ,, Hawise de, 28 
 ,, Gilbert de, 23 
 
 ,, Henry de, ii, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 
 50, 51, 52, 65, 84 
 
 ,, Ilbert de, 8, 10, 26. 27 
 
 ,, Robert de, 26, 85 
 
 , , Walter de, 29 
 Lamburne, John de, 36 
 Lancaster, Thos. , Earl of, loi 
 Langton, Robt., 98 
 Lande, Robert de la, 35 
 Larchier, Thos., 103, in 
 Ledes of Northall, 84 
 
 „ Alexander de, 87 
 
 ,, Paulinus, 84 
 Ledsham, 7 
 Ledston, 6, 1 1 
 
 ,, Hall, Prince of Wales at, 131 
 Leeds, 9, 45, 88, 92, 98 
 Lemington, Church of, 60 
 Leofric, a vassal, 56 
 Lennox, Duke of, 114 
 
 Leonard, brother, a Templar, 77 
 Leventhorpe, 8i 
 Leventhorpe, Robt. , 68 
 Lexbi, Richard de, 36 
 Lexington, 51 
 Lincoln, Battle of, 26 
 Lisle, Jordan, 87 
 Lizours, Albreda, 27 
 
 ,, Robert de, 27, 29 
 Loidis Regio, 6, 7, 9, 10 
 London, Thos. de, 96 
 LowMier, 107 
 
 Lungvillers, Clementia de, 56 
 
 ,, John de, 56 
 Lund, a farm house, 46 
 
 ,, B. M. Magdalene of, 55 
 Lusignan, Geoffrey de, 35 
 
 M. 
 
 Malcolm of Scotland, 54 
 Malesart destroyed, 27 
 ,Malherb, Ivan, 66 
 
 ,, John, 66 
 Mandaville, W'^m., Earl of Albemarle, 36 
 Man, William, a vassal, 56 
 Mann, Rev. Joseph, M.A., 77 
 Margaret of France, 54 
 Marisco, Richard de, 22 
 Mar, Hugh de, 60 
 Adam de, 60 
 Marmion, Robt., 89 
 Marshall, Wm., 107 
 Maulay, Peter, 89 
 Maunford, Robt. , 91 
 Mendicant Friars, Hostility of, 70 
 Merlay, Roger de, 85 
 Meynill, Nicholas, 109 
 
 ,, Elizabeth, 109 
 Middleton, 94 
 Midelton, Durandus, 81 
 Mickelay, 92 
 Monk Bretton, 56 
 Monkton Priory, 96 
 Morkar, Walter le, 22 
 Mortimer, Roger, 105 
 Mowbray, Family of, 14, 18 
 
 ,, Alice de, 27 
 
 ,, Nigel, 27, 29, 36 
 
 ,, Robert de, 27 
 
 ,, Roger, 14, 27 
 Munbegun, Roger de, 55 
 
 N. 
 
 Nassington, John de, 68, 71 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Neville, Geoffrey de, 56 Pictavensis, Robert, 24, 28 
 
 Jolande, 58 ,, William, 22 
 
 Margaret de, 56 Pigot, Henry, 36 
 
 Newhus, Newhusum, old forms of name, Pilgrimage of Grace, 113 
 5, 9, II, 23 Pipard, Gilbert, 36 
 of Norse origin, 6, 8Pirou, Robt. de, 54 
 
 Newland, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26 
 Newmarsh, Adam, 58 
 Newsam, charter of confirmation, 2 
 
 ,, domestic economy of, 18 
 inventory of, 71 
 
 ,, preceptor of, 68 
 
 ,, stock at, 40 
 Nicholas the Dapifer, 51 
 Norfolk, Hugh Bigod, Earl of, 21 
 North Deighton, 78 
 Norton, 56, 82 
 Nostell Priory, 29, 98 
 Nottingham, 25 
 Noureddin, 23 
 Nun Monkton Priory, 68 
 
 O. 
 
 Oiry, Hugh de, 36 
 
 Walter de, 35 
 Osbert the Archdeacon, 28, 8f, 82 
 
 ,, a vassal, 80 
 Osgoldcrosse, 77 
 Osmundthorpe, 7. 9. 87, 88, 92 
 Peter de, 81 
 William de, 81 
 
 Ossethorpe, 9 
 Otley, 92 
 
 Oteringham, Robt de, 69 
 Olo Bond, a vassal, 56 
 
 P. 
 
 Parlington, 93 
 Paulinus the priest, 83 
 rayens,Hugh de, Master of the Templars, 14 
 Paynel, Ralph, 83 
 
 William, 82, 83 
 Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 105 
 ,, Wm. , Karl of, 22 
 ,, Countess of, 104, 105, 106, 108, 
 III 
 
 Penda, King of Mercia, 6 
 Pennel, 80 
 Percy, Wm., 96 
 Peytevin, Isabella, 22 
 
 Roger le, 21, 22 
 ,, Thomas le, 22 
 
 William, 82 
 Philip, Prior of Holy Trinity, 29 
 
 Plumer, Roger, a vassal, 56 
 Plunkenet, Alan, 67 
 Pollington, 42, 44, 46, 102, 103 
 Pomfret, 8, 9, 65 
 
 ,, Priory of, 24, 26. 27, 54, 55 
 ,, old name of, 24 
 Potterlowe, 77, 78 
 Pratelles, William de, 36 
 Preston, Adam de, 56 
 Pumfrait, ancient name of Pomfret, 24, 36 
 
 R. 
 
 Ralph, son of Leofric, 56 
 
 the Dapifer, 50 
 Raymond, a vassal, 55 
 Reinevil, Wm., 24, 28 
 Reiner, Sheriff of York, 36 
 Ribstan, 39, 50, 69, 70, 71, 91, 97 
 
 , , preceptor of, 68 
 Richmond, Duke of, 120 
 Rie, Wm. de, 24 
 Rippon, Patrick, a Templar, 69 
 Rivere, Thos. de la, 96 
 Rivers, Earl of, 112 
 Robert Camerarius, 50 
 
 ,, the baker, 50 
 Roger de Pont I'Eveque, Archbishop of 
 York, II, 23, 82 
 „ the Chaplain, 86 
 , , son of Turstan, 50 
 Rohale, Ralph de, 58 
 Romsey, Abbess of, 67 
 Ross, Peter de, 36 
 Walter de, 36 
 Robert de, 58 
 Roman roads, 6 
 Rouen, grant at, 19 
 Rupe, Simon de, 58 
 
 S. 
 
 , 66 
 
 Sampson, Magister Hugo, 
 Sandhall, 45, 102 
 Saucensmar, Gaufrid, 24 
 Matilda, 24 
 Scarborough, 25 
 Schaldefen, 85 
 
 Scott de Neuton, Wm., 87, 92 
 Scrope of Bartun, Robert, 36 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Scrope, Waller, 36 
 Seacrofl, 85, 93 
 
 , , Thomas de, 87 
 Sclby Ahheyj 26, 61, 97 
 
 ,, name of. 47 
 Sibthorj^e, Sir Thomas, 93 
 Silkeston, Dom. Robt. de, 77 
 Si ward, Si 
 
 Skelton, 9, 23, 39, 80, 84, 87 
 Skipton, \Vm. de, 81 
 Skyrack Wapentake, 91 
 Smethale, 66 
 Smitheton, Alan, 58 
 Snaith, 44 
 
 Somerville, Robt., 85 
 
 ,, ■ William, 85, 93 
 Isabella, 85 
 St. Paul, Mary de, 104, 105, 106, 108, 
 Sprotborough, 29 
 St. Omer Tostes, a Templar, 54 
 St. Quintin, Hubert de, 96 
 ,, Walter de, 96 
 Matilda, 85 
 William de, 85 
 StainlDurgh, 65, 66 
 Standard, Battle of, 26 
 Stanford, Robert de, Master, 58 
 Stapleton, Milo, 69 
 
 Robert de, 87, 88 
 Stephen, King, 26, 82 
 Stuart, Matthew, 113 
 
 ,, Esme, 114, 120 
 Steward, Robert the, 65 
 Stubbs, Rev. W., D.D., 54 
 Stuteville, Osmund de, 36 
 ,, Alice de, 85 
 ,, Agnes de, 85 
 ,, Beatrice, 85 
 
 Robert, 85 
 ,, Eustace, 89 
 Suain, Adam son of, 28, 48, 55 
 
 ,, Ailric, 66 
 Suffolk, Earl of, io5 
 Sykelinghall, Robt. de, 94 
 Swillington, 6, 88 
 Tait, Ralph. 81 
 ,, Galfrid, 81 
 Tange, Ralph de, 36 
 Templars, alleged blasphemies of, 69, 7c 
 ,, characteristics of, 5, 12, 13 
 
 dress of, 15, 16 
 ,, domestic ecomony of, 18, 21, 
 37, 3« 
 
 ,, effigy of De Birkin, 65 
 
 Templars, examination of, 68, 95 
 
 ,, general incjuisition of lands, 80 
 ,, grandeur and decay of, 79 
 ,, not monks, 30, 37 
 Temple, a prefix, 10 
 
 ,, buildings, unostentatious, 31 
 ,, rule, severity of, 34 
 ,, institution of the order, 15 
 ,, preceptories founded, 17 
 ,, Masters of, 14, 58, 86, 91 
 ,, Newsam, ancient cup, 125 
 ,, ,, inscription at, 119 
 
 ,, ,, manor Lord by De 
 
 Laci, 22 
 
 ,, ,, fire at, 121 
 
 ,, imparked, 107 
 ,, ,, picture gallery,i22- 129 
 
 III M ,, Princeof Wales at, 131 
 
 Templestowe, Scott's, not Newsam, 31 
 Temple, Walter of the, 28, 29 
 
 ,, Gilbert of the, 28 
 Thorpe-Stapleton, 89 
 Tielli, Oto, 24, 28, 56 
 ,, Ralph, 24, 35 
 ,, Roger, 50, 51, 83 
 ., Wm., 24 
 Tileres, Gilbert, 36 
 Thief-lane, a boundary, 48 
 Thorpe-on-the-Hdl, 115, 116 
 Thirsk, destroyed. 27 
 Thomas, archbishop of York, 83 
 Thorparch, 68 
 Thorpe, Roger de, 86 
 Tockwith, 96 
 Torkesay, 106 
 Tremblay, Walter, 85 
 Troyes, Council of, 14 
 Tudor, Margaret, 114 
 Turstan, 50 
 Turvil, Robt. de, 86 
 Tymbill, John of, 99 
 Uctred, son of Gospatric, 60 
 Ufford, Robt. de, 106 
 Val, Wadon de la, 23 
 V^alencia, Adomar, 104, 105 
 Vesci, Eustace de, 24 
 Veilly, Humphrey, 35 
 Venur, Robert le, 24, 36 
 1 Viliers, Wm. de, 10, 11, 20. 22, 50, 51. 
 80, 86 
 Vesci, Wm., 24 
 Wacelin, Robert, 36 
 Wake, Hugh, 89 
 Wale, vSimon de, 36 
 
138 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Waleden, Humphrey de, 102 
 Walensis, Henry, 24 
 
 Robert de, 56 
 Walraund. Wm., 67 
 
 ., Isabella, 67 
 Robert, 67 
 
 ,, Alice, 67 
 Warren, Earl of, 36 
 Werke, 107 
 Westerdale, 19, 69 
 Wether by, 77, 78, 91, 97 
 Westerdale, 91 
 Wherleton, 109, no 
 Whitkirk, 23 83, 86, 88. 103 
 
 ,, Church of, 7. 
 Wilgheby, Ralph de, 61 
 Winwidfield, 6 
 Wirkesburc, 66 
 Witeness, Church of, 60 
 Wylton, 85 
 Wynhill, 87 
 Wythel, 91 
 Wyrkesburgh, 55 
 Yeddingham, 60 
 York^ l^ing Henry visits 
 „ 119 
 
 , , siege of, 10 
 
4.