Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/272

 244 which may be dated circa 1200 relates to a grant to the Abbey of land situated at Cauldon (p. 52). The boundaries are given, several can be identified, and one of them is "Viam Comitis,"—the Earl's Way. It is evident, therefore, that this place-name had crystallised into permanent use as early as the twelfth century.

Who, then, was the Earl? The earliest mention of Cauldon occurs in the will of Wulfric Spot, the founder of Burton Abbey in A.D. 1004. He is styled "Consul ac Comes Merciorum" in the Burton Chronicle, but, though a very large landowner, it is doubtful whether he ever in strictness held the title of Earldorman of Mercia. If he be excluded there is only one other Earldom which, having regard to the date, can be associated with the "Earlsway," and that is the Palatine Earldom of Chester, created at the Conquest. For two centuries these feudal potentates dominated Cheshire and a large part of Staffordshire and the Midlands. At different dates both Trentham and Dieulacres Abbey (near Leek) were founded by members of this all-powerful house. In Staffordshire they held at one time or another the manors of Alstonefield, Warslow, Chartley, Sandon, Leek, Endon, Rudyard, Rushton, and Alton—all but one in the north of the county. So far as available records go, however, it does not appear that they held Cauldon, which was held by the de Stafford barony in chief from the Crown for many years after the Conquest, and was so held at the presumable date of the grant above mentioned.

The credibility of this tradition being thus established, has it any historical value? It bears testimony to the almost royal state and authority of the Earls Palatine. "Via regia" is the technical description used in mediaeval documents for what were the equivalent of the turnpikes. But in North Staffordshire during the twelfth and thirteenth