Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/230

 178 THE ANCESTOR One word more and I leave the abbot's pedigree for the present. We have seen that it rested simply on tradition : we have found that all the evidence is against it. Probably- enough has been said to destroy our faith ; we shall be no more ready to accept it as history than was the court of chivalry. An assertion, I know, has been made that at the trial Grosvenor's descent was handsomely acknowledged, though Scrope was found to have a better right to the disputed arms. There is however nothing in either judgment to justify such a statement. The only words which seem to tell at all in the defendant's favour are those I have quoted from the con- stable's sentence, awarding to him the differenced coat. These speak for themselves : it is clear to me that no such interpre- tation can be put upon them. Now for the facts, so far as they are known to us. The earliest Grosvenor in history lived about a century later than the Conquest. His name was Robert, and he received a grant of land from Earl Hugh. But the earl was not Hugh Lupus; nor was the property Allostock. In 1806, when Dr. Ormerod copied it, the original charter was in the Earl of Shrewsbury's collection.^ Hugh Kevelioc was Earl of Chester from 11 53 to 1 1 8 1. Ormerod originally fixed the date as before 1 1 60, in the belief that the first witness died that year ; but finding that he had misread Brooke, withdrew that date in a subsequent note. By this charter Hugh Earl of Chester grants to Robert Grosvenor the whole town of Buddeworth, a moiety of his vert and venison in the forest of Mara, and a moiety of the custody of his dogs. The witnesses are Richard son of the Earl of Gloucester, William Patric, Ralph son of Warner, Randle the priest of Bunbury, Gamel Peverel and William Malbanc. This was Budworth in the Frith, or Little Budworth, on the border of the forest, in which, to judge by his name, the grantee was previously acting as an officer of the earl. From Robert descend the Grosvenors of Budworth, and I have no doubt the Grosvenors of Hulme and Eaton as well. The pedigree of the former line is anything but clear ; however there is no occasion to follow them very far. Ormerod next cites a precept of Randle (de Blundeville) Earl of Chester (11 8 1- 1 232), summoning Alice, 'widow of the first mentioned Robert,' and William de Stretton, her husband, to answer Robert Grosvenor, grandson of the first Robert, concerning ^ Ormerod, ii. 211.