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When, in 1253, Henry III raised an aid for
the knighting of his eldest son, Mabel de Torpel had herself two feudal
tenants, one of whom held from her what was known, or came to be known, as
the manor of Scotgrove; the other tenant, Ralph Bernard, or Fitzbernard,
who was lord of the manor of Kingsdown, held his Ash manor of Mabel by a
one-twelfth part of a knight’s fee.14
It would seen to have been Bernard’s manor and not, as
Hasted thought, the principal Ash manor, that subsequently cane into the
possession of another local family, the Pencompes. A one-twelfth part of a
knight’s fee in Ash was certainly held at one time, probably in the
first decade of the fourteenth century, by Thomas de Pencompe, his
superior lords being the heirs of William de Eynesforde. When Edward III
raised his aid of 1346- 47 for the knighting of the Black Prince, the
heirs of Robert Pencompe paid forty pence for the same fee.15
It could be that this was the manor that had later |
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passed to the Hospitallers and become known as St John’s
Ash.15a
In the mid-thirteenth century, one Thomas de Aesse, otherwise
Ash, held a fourth part of a knight’s fee in the parish which pertained
to the manor of Kemsing, of which latter the lords were Simon de Montfort,
Earl of Leicester, and Eleanor his wife.16 Kemsing manor
had formerly belonged to William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and. de
Montfort’s interest arose from his marriage to Eleanor, who was Pembroke’s
widow. She was also Henry III’s sister, a relationship which did not
prevent her new husband from becoming the King’s most rebellious
subject.
Thomas of Ash’s fee must, it is suggested, have been the
nucleus of the estate for which John de Southesse paid two marks for the
two parts of a fee at the knighting of the Black Prince and which was to
become known as the manor of South Ash. It was recorded on that |