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 2o6 DERBY by Henry VI, to whom, in 1454, he had been Esquire of the Body; Chief Justice of Chester; was P.C. and Steward of the Household to Edward IV and Richard III 1471-85; was present at the Coronation of Richard III;(*) K.G. I483;('') Constable of England for life 16 Dec. 1483, with the fee of the battle of Bosworth, 22 Aug. 1485, where he is said to have set that King's crown on the head of the victorious Henry.('=) Chief Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster (Northern parts) 1485 till his death. He was cr. by charter, 2 7 Oct. I485,('^) EARL OF DERBY,(') and made one of the Commissioners for the other version (Seacome, House of Stanley, p. 25), derived from the Lathoms of Irlam, states that Sir Thomas de Lathom had a da. Isabel by his wife, and an illegitimate son, who was brought to his wife's notice as found under a tree near an eagle's aery, and adopted under the name of Oskatel, but discarded before the death of Sir Thomas, the manor of Irlam, &c., having been settled on him, the bulk of the estates descending to Isabel Stanley: that Sir Thomas had assumed for his crest "an Eagle on wing, turning her head back and looking in a sprightly manner as for something she had lost," but that, on the disowning, the Stanleys, "either to distinguish or aggrandise themselves, or in contempt and derision, took upon them the Eagle and Child." These explanations are clumsy fabrications of a common sort. Ormerod has shown that the crest was used by the Hugh and Philip de Lathom abovenamed, and by Philip's descendants, and although Dugdale states that the oak the eagle built in stood in Lathom Park, Ormerod well remarks that the legend may be more safely referred to ancestral Northmen, with its scene in the pine-forests of Scandinavia. See Ormerod, in Co//. Top. et Gen., vol. vii, pp. 4-8, and the same writer's Parenta/ia, pp. 63-75. (G. W. Watson). (*) See a list of the 35 Peers present at the Coronation, 6 July 1483, of Richard III, ante, p. 19, note " f." C") For an account of the robes given to him and other Knights of the Garter by the King in 1489, see vol. ii, p. 545, note " b." V.G. (') His br.. Sir William Stanley, K.G., who took an equal part with himself in the battle of Bosworth, was executed 16 Feb. 1494/5, for the Perkin Warbeck plot. See an interesting note as to him in Walpole's Historic Doubts, ist edit., p. 87. See also sub viii Lord Lovel of Titchmarsh, and sub John, Lord Tibetot [1443]. (^) On 6 Oct. 1485 he is called the King's "right entierly beloved fader." Shrewsbury, Derby and Huntingdon, and possibly Pembroke, are called "the Catskin Earls." These four are the on/y Earldoms now remaining prior to those of the 17th century, save such as (like Arundel, Rutland, Wiltshire, ^c.) are merged in higher titles, and save also the anomalous Earldom of Devon (1553-56), resuscitated in 1 831. See as to the term " Catskin," sub Huntingdon. G.E.C. and V.G. (*) There can be no doubt that he was made Earl of t/ie county of Derby, and the fact seems never to have been questioned till of late years. Courthope (in a MS. note to this title) states that having inspected the Charter Roll of i Hen. VII he finds that " although there are no words in the charter stating that he was made Earl of the county of Derby, there is the usual clause directing the payment of ^^20 per annum by the Sheriff of Derby and Notts, out of the profits of those counties." It is, however, a curious coincidence that the estates of the family were chiefly in the Imndred of West Derby, co. Lancaster, while they appear to have had no land and no connection with the county of Derby. In one of the Registers (Class xi) of the Duchy of Lancaster (vol. xxi, f. 25) is a patent under the seal of the Duchy, reciting the grant of the
 * £ioo a year, granted by Richard III, whose cause he skilfully betrayed at