Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/286

 the grange was conveyed, or confirmed, to the latter[1]; and twenty years subsequently a fresh charter appears to have been framed and to have received the royal signature, for in the following reign of Edward I., when that monarch laid claim to the land as a descendant of King John, the head of the Staffordshire convent produced a document of 31 Henry III. (1247), at the trial, granting "to God, the church of St. Mary, and the abbot of Deulacres and his successors for ever, the manor of Rossall with its appurtenances and with the wreck of the sea."[2] Sir Robert de Lathum, Sir Robert de Holaund, Sir John de Burun, Sir Roger de Burton, Sir John de Cornwall, Sir John de Elyas, and Sir Alan de Penyngton, knights; Alan de Storeys, Robert de Eccleston, William du Lee, Hugh de Clyderhou, and Roger de Middleton, esquires, who composed the jury in the above suit, decided in favour of the abbot's title, but at the request of the king's attorney, judgment was arrested, and it was pleaded on behalf of the regal claimant that the abbot's allegations seemed to imply that the manor of Rossall was formerly held by the monks of Deulacres in bailiwick of Kings, John and Henry; that thirty years at least of the reign of Henry had elapsed before the predecessors of the present abbot held any fee or free tenement in the manor, which was worth 100 marks per annum; and that this rent had been in arrears during the whole of the time; wherefore the king's attorney demanded that the accumulation of these arrears, amounting to 3,000 marks, or £2,000, should be paid by the abbey to Edward I. The jury stated in their verdict that the manor had been held by the abbot's predecessors as pleaded by the king's attorney, but that during the last seven years of King John, and the first twenty-four years of Henry III., the manor was only worth 30 marks per annum, and in the remaining six years before the date of the charter put in as evidence by the abbot in the first trial, they valued the manor at 40 marks per annum, on which scales the abbey of Deulacres was condemned to pay the accumulated arrearages. In 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII., the grange was valued in the Compotus of the king's ministers at £13 6s. 3d. per annum.

The site of the original Hall has long since been washed away

[Footnote: 1. Rot. Chart. 12 Henry III., m. 3.]

[Footnote: 2. Placit de Quo. Warr. 20 Edward I.]