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A Downland Parish - Ash by Wrotham in Former Times by W. Frank Proudfoot

                             Chapter 3 - The Manor of Scotgrove continued  page 24

was one of Henry III's knights, received many marks of favour from the King and was long a marshal of the royal household.  He survived the battles of Simon de Montfort’s  revolt, perhaps luckily for he lost a horse in the King’s service at Kenilworth. He seems in his later years to have left his Fawkham manor house for the grander Rorton Castle, whose owner, Lora de Ros, he married.
   If William lived at Scotgrove, that most likely would have been in his father’s lifetime. What certainly appears is that after his father’s death there was an ostensible, though probably fictitious, dispute over his right to inherit that property. In 1250 his younger brothers Thomas and Robert brought an action against him, in due course compromised by way of a Fine, in which they claimed as the reasonable share of the inheritance of their father two parts in various lands in Fawkham, Ash and sundry other parishes in North-West Kent and in the fourth part of a knight’s fee in Ash, which latter must have been the Scotgrove fee. Clearly, most at any rate of the lands in question had been held by the elder William gavelkind and, equally clearly, the ownership of the manor of Fawkham was not in question; that manor, which was an important one, was held by knight service of the Bishop of Rochester and would have passed by primogeniture. The unusual feature of the proceedings 

was that the younger sons were apparently asserting an interest in the quarter knight’s fee at Ash. They may have been claiming to share in that on the basis that Scotgrove had not been effectively disgavelled by Mabel’s grant. It seems more likely that the opportunity was being taken to bolster up the eldest son’s title thereto and that the proceedings, like so many others of the kind, were never more than a conveyancing device.
   The arrangement reached by the three brothers at the end, and also probably the beginning, of the day was that save for the fourth part of a knight’s in Ash and meadow called Denhull and some rent in Otford, all of which renamed by the Fine to William and his heirs, the claims of Thomas and Robert were acknowledged; in addition, William sold to them for fifteen marks his own share of their father’s lands in Fawkham and Horton and, as well, certain lands that he held of the inheritance of an uncle, Henry de Faukeham, except for a piece of land in Ash called Gocelinesland.4
   A few years later, on the occasion of Henry III’s aid of 1253-54 for the knighting of his eldest son, William de Storteg(r)aue was recorded as holding a quarter fee in Ash from Mabel de Torpel;he presumably was one and the sane as William de Faukeham.

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