Motes.

[The Council have decided to reserve a small space in each Number for notices of Finds and other discoveries; and it is hoped that Members will assist in making this a record of all matters of archæological interest which from time to time may be brought to light in this large county.]

LXXXIV.

THE FITZ CONAN SLAB AT LIVERTON.1

DURING the restoration of Liverton Church, near Saltburn, which took place a few years ago, an interesting sepulchral slab was discovered. It is made of the ordinary sandstone of the district, and is 73 inches long by 24 inches wide at the top, and 13 inches. at the bottom. It bears a fine foliated cross within a circle, and the stem rests upon a platform of three steps. On the sinister side is a sword with a plain cross handle. On the middle of the shaft is a heater-shaped shield-bearing cross composed of six lozenges, that is four for the shaft, with one on either side for the arms. The arms and sword are very inferior in workmanship to the floriated cross, and were possibly engraved by a local mason. The bearings are those of the family of Fitz Conan, which was certainly in possession of the manor of Liverton early in the thirteenth century. The person commemorated is either Henry, son of Conan, who died at an advanced age about 1285, his son, Conan fitz Henry, who predeceased him, or possibly his grandson, of the same name as himself, who came of age on Sept. 22, 1299, and was dead before 1316-17.3

On the death of Henry fitz Conan, the grandfather, the right to the manor of Kelkefeld, now Kelfield, near Selby, part of his property, was in dispute. His daughter, Margery, and her husband, William de Roseles, probably the lord of Newton-in-Cleveland,

1 The Society is indebted to Mr. T. M. Fallow, F.S.A., a member of our Council, for the loan of the block, used for illustrating this article.

2 Guisbrough Chartulary (Surtees Soc. lxxxix.), ii. 183n.

VOL. XVIII.

3

Ibid., p. 184n, and Yorkshire Inqui sitions, iii. 141.

4 Curia Regis Roll, No. 94,_m. 29. Michaelmas Term, 13 and 14 Edw. I. (1285).

ΑΙ

entered upon it on the ground that she was heir. This claim was successfully resisted by Parnell (Petronilla), widow of Conan fitz Henry, who had left a son, Henry, under age and in the King's custody by reason of the manor of Liverton, held of Lucy, heir of Marmaduke de Twenge, who held in chief and was a minor. Parnell further proved that her marriage with Conan fitz Henry had taken place at Sokeburne in the bishopric of Durham, now Sockburn, near Darlington, and that the heir had been baptized in the church there. She is said to have been a Conyers, which accounts for the connection with Sockburn.

The story

In the Books of the Consistory Court at York there is a curious story referring to the Fitz Conan family at a later period, or, as it was then called, Fitz Henry. At the Court held on December 9, 1424, Thomas Mone of Kelfeld, Kelfield in the parish of Stillingfleet, was summoned to show cause why he should not be excommunicated or otherwise punished for defamation. told was a very odd one. Mone alleged that on the previous Ash Wednesday, when it was dark, he had met the ghost (spiritum) of Henry fitz Henry, then lately dead, first in the likeness of a pig, and afterwards in the similitude of a man,' and had had a conversation with him, the gist of which was that the ghost told him to order his son, John fitz Henry, to restore to Robert Henryson of Kelfeld his house. As a punishment, the following penance was imposed upon him. He was to go for three Sundays, with bare head and feet, in front of the procession, round Stillyngflete Church, wearing only his coat and not his doublet, and bearing a candle of one pound weight in his hand. Then he was to stand in the church till after the singing of the holy Gospel, when he was to say this penance: "I do this because I have rashly slandered Henry fitz Henry after his death, and said I met the ghost of the said Henry and talked with him." On the last Sunday he was to offer the candle on the altar of the church. In the same way and for a similar number of Sundays, he was to precede the procession in the Cathedral Church at York.

The coat of arms demands a brief notice. In Nicolas's Roll of Arms of the Reign of Edward III. (page 4), after the arms of

1 "Primo in effigie porci, et postmodum in similitudine hominis."

2 "Diebus Dominicis, nudus pedes et caput, in sua tunica, sine dubleta, precedat processionem circa ecclesiam parochialem de Stillyngflete, unum cereum ponderis unius libre in manu sua publice

deferend'; et hinc dictis diebus Dominicis hujusmodi sic stet in dicta ecclesia usque post decantacionem Sancti Evangelii, et publice ibidem dicat hanc penitenciam, Ago pro eo quod Henricum fitz Henry jam post mortem suam temere diffamavi, et dixi quod ipsius Henrici spiritum obviavi, et loquebar cum eodem.”

Monsire de Northwoode, Ermine a cross engrailed gules, follows this entry, "Monsire de Conan de Kelkefeld port d'argent, etc.," no doubt meaning that the rest of the coat was the same as the previous one. This is proved from an entry in an interesting Fifteenth century book of arms, published in The Ancestor (iv. 241), where John Fytz Henry, of Yorkshire, had assigned to him, Silver a cross sable engrailed. The Stillingtons of Kelfield, as representatives of a branch of the Fitz Henry family, quartered these arms, making the field ermine and the cross gules.' Contemporary examples of the use of lozenges to denote engrailing are met with in the seals appended to the Barons' Letter, which was dated February 12, 1301. William Marshal, lord of Hingham, in Norfolk, bore a bend engrailed, consisting of five lozenges, and the cross engrailed of Eustace of Hache, lord of Hache, in Wiltshire, especially on the counter seal, very much resembles the cross on the Liverton slab. The engrailed cross of John de Mohun, lord of Dunster, in Somersetshire,* more nearly approaches the usual method of engrailing.

2

3

LXXXV.

A PENANCE AT BISHOP WILTON IN 1730.

PENNANCE ENJOYNED TO BE DONE BY John Wood, of the parish of Bishop Wilton, in the jurisdiction of the dean and chapter of York. THE said John Wood shall upon Sunday, being the 20th or 27th of December instant, repair unto the parish church of Bishop Wilton aforesaid, where in the church porch he shall stand penitentially bare-head, bare-foot and bare-legged, having a white rod in his hand, covered with a white sheet from the shoulders to the feet, from the ringing of the first peal or other warning to morning prayer, asking and entreating all such people as pass by him into the church, to pray to God to forgive him; where he shall stand until the reading of the second lesson for morning prayer, at which time the minister shall fetch him into the church with the psalm of Miserere Mei, in English, and place him in the middle alley apart from all other people, which being done, the said John Wood shall say and confess after the minister as followeth :

1 Foster's Visitations of Yorkshire,

1584-5 and 1612, p. 633.

2 The Ancestor, vii. 255, No. 47.

: