Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/306

 246 THE ANCESTOR William Aguillon Agatha Aguillon Matilda Aguillon Mabel Aguillon Cicely Richard Jeudewyn Gregory de Cheyny co-heir to Juliane, 1312, Thomas Aguillon Juliane d. a minor in ward Richard de Weston co- heir to Ju- liane, 1 3 12 Matilda mar. Henry de Buk- kestrode co-heir to Juliane, 1 3 1 2 Isabella William de Chedny a minor in 1312 The Aguillons were of old standing in Sussex as knightly tenants of the Honour of Arundel, holding Nutbourne, in the twelfth century under the Aubigny earls/ and afterwards of their Tateshall co-heirs who obtained the Aguillon fees in their ' purparty/ The mention of ' purparty ' reminds one that for purposes of county history no document could be more valuable than the great awards of partition between the co-heiresses of a fief which are entered in full detail on these rolls. For between them were divided not only the manors which the baron had kept in his own hands, but the subinfeudated portions of the fief, that is to say, those knight's fees which were held of him by under-tenants. It is from the descent of these knight's fees that the history of our oldest families must be traced ; and it is precisely this descent that is so difficult to prove owing to the absence of inquests after death in the case of under-tenants. In the present volume we obtain such evidence for the great fief of which the head was the moated mound of ' Richard's Castle ' on the border of Herefordshire and Shropshire. This fief was divided in 1309 between Joan and Margaret, daugh- ters and co-heirs of Hugh de Mortimer, descended through an heiress from Osbern Fitz Richard, lord of the fief in Domes- day Book, from whose father, a Norman favourite of Edward the Confessor, the castle had derived its name. Joan, at the time of the partition, was wife of Thomas de Bicknor ; but the father of her heir was her later husband, Richard Talbot, from whom descended a short line of Talbots of Richard's ^ Compare Tesfa de Nevill, p. 222.