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GENERAL DESCRIPTION. |
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of the County of Sussex, now used principally for excise and ecclesiastical purposes. Henry I. gave the estates to Gilbert de Aquila, whose son forfeited them by engaging in a rebellion, when the King re-took possession and settled them on his grandson, who afterwards became Henry II. This monarch assigned them to William, son of King Stephen, who held them until Henry came to the throne and four years later surrendered them back to his lord, conditionally that he should have an hereditary right to all lands belonging to his father, King Stephen, before he became King of England. The King thereupon returned the estates to the family of de Aquila, who appear to have enjoyed them quietly for some years. In the reign of Henry III. the head of this family made himself obnoxious to the King, and, as he went over to Normandy without the Royal license, the King seized all his property, which included his manor of East Grinstead, and in 1234 granted it to the Earl of Pembroke, but seems to have taken it back six years later, when he gave it to Peter de Savoy, who was uncle to his Consort. A few years later the property appears to have once more reverted to the Crown, and the King then gave it to Prince Edward and his heirs, Kings of England, on condition that it should never be severed from the Crown —a condition not long observed.
In the thirteenth century the mother of King Edward I. held the Barony of the Eagle and with it the Borough and Hundred of East Grinstead. The Hundred of East Grinstead was described as an escheat of the Normans, an escheat being a property reverting to the Crown by reason of the failure of lawful heirs or the offences of the owners. The jurors of the Hundred of East Grinstead reported about the same time that there were in the " Barony of Aquila (Latin for an eagle) 62 knights' fees which pertained to the Castle Guard of Pevensey." A " knight's fee," as applied to land, represents no definite quantity, but anything between one and five hundred acres of cultivable land.
King Edward I. paid one visit to his mother's borough. He came from Horsham on Tuesday, June 30th, 1209, |
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