castle in Yorkshire, with several others, set the newly restored power of CHAP. 10. the crown at defiance. Ferrers, Derby. With respect to the particular circumstances that had excited the earl of Earl of Derby to this desperate proceeding, it appears that after the battle of Evesham, so fatal to the cause he had espoused, he as well as Simon de Montfort and some others, was excluded by name from the terms of composition on which others of the insurgents were allowed to redeem their lands, and was summoned to appear in person at the court, then specially held for the investigation of the conduct of those charged with having borne arms against their sovereign. Not then being in a condition to disregard such a summons, and at the same time fearful of placing himself at the mercy of a vindictive prince, he sent submissive letters to the king accompanied with a costly cup of gold adorned with precious stones. This valuable present he is stated to have purchased of Michael de Toni, and to have mortgaged his manor of Piry in Northamptonshire to raise the sum demanded for it. In consequence of this submission, backed by so rich a peace-offering and the intercession of his friends, he was permitted to enter into a composition to pay the sum of fifteen hundred marks, at four several payments within twelve months, as the price of the royal pardon. A special patent was accordingly granted him, with warrant of security against prince Edward and others whom he might have previously offended or injured. This patent bore date the 5th of December, 50 Henry III. But while Robert de Ferrers was thus negociating his pardon, he obtained information that his friend Clare, earl of Gloucester, who had been so instrumental in restoring the king to his throne, had now seen with indignation the daily abuses of the royal prerogative, and was secretly encouraging the resistance of the discontented. Eager to support the cause in which he had embarked as soon as he became a man, and with an impetuosity but little subdued as yet by years, he waited not for the open declaration of Gloucester, but instantly appeared in arms, with the confederates above mentioned. Prince Henry, the nephew of the king, and Prince son of the king of the Romans, was sent into Derbyshire with a large body Henry of foreign troops, and this youthful general strictly obeyed the instructions he had received in desolating the estates of earl Ferrers, who had now provoked the utmost severity of his sovereign. On the approach of prince Henry, the valiant earl of Derby appears to have endeavoured to collect his forces in the neighbourhood of Duffield, the castle of which he had rebuilt and fortified; and he was joined by Baldwin de Wake with a large body of men from the marshes of Lincolnshire. There he levied contributions from the neighbourhood, and particularly from the town of Derby, resolving there to await the arrival of the Yorkshire men under the command of the veteran D'Ayville. Prince Henry having demolished the earl's castle at Tutbury, advanced in a northeastern direction across the ridges of the Lower Peak, with the intention of intercepting D'Ayville, who had arrived at Dronfield. The earl saw the necessity of marching northward, and with much difficulty crossed the river Amber, which had overflowed its banks to a very considerable extent. His troops were very much harassed when he effected a junction with ravages Derbyshire. Battle of CHAP. 10. D'Ayville in the neighbourhood of Chesterfield, just as that leader was attacked by the royal army. The conflict was severe. Early in the engagement, D'Ayville, who, being far advanced in years, had not strength equal to his courage and dexterity, was unhorsed by the lance of Sir Gilbert Hansard; but he was instantly surrounded by his followers, who beat back his assailants and conveyed their veteran commander from the field of battle. Thence, without remaining to sustain the attack of their pursuers, or perhaps scarcely aware of the arrival of earl Ferrers and Baldwin de Wake, they made the best of the way across the country to the isle of Axholme, which had been fortified as a place of security for the insurgents by Simon de Montfort. This defection was soon perceived by the brave young earl, who saw the fatal consequences of it in the panic that began to be apparent in the Lincolnshire men, who were no sooner informed of the direction taken by D'Ayville and his followers, than they demanded to be led to the same place of safety. Baldwin would fain have persuaded the earl to a retreat, which seemed warranted by discretion, but he could not prevail upon him to leave the county of Derby to the devastations of a ferocious foe. The night approached. The slaughter had been immense on both sides, but although the earl had succeeded in getting possession of the town, he found that his men were exhausted, and that Baldwin, with the men of Lincolnshire, had taken advantage of the darkness and had left him to his fate. Shortly after midnight, prince Henry, having allowed his soldiers a short interval of rest and refreshment, seized upon the entrances of the town, and having set fire to a few buildings, threatened to destroy the place unless earl Ferrers was instantly delivered into his hands. Some skirmishes ensued in the principal street and market-place, but the inhabitants were chiefly inclined to yield to the demands of the prince, so that the followers of the gallant earl were easily overpowered. The earl himself sought concealment in the cloisters of the church, where some sacks of wool belonging to the traders at the Whitsuntide fair had been deposited, as was frequently the case at that period. A woman betrayed him; whether actuated by treachery, as is stated in an old manuscript, or acting under the authority of the magistrates, is uncertain. He was made prisoner and sent to Windsor castle. The parliament, which was shortly afterwards summoned to meet at Westminster, decreed the total confiscation of his estates, and prince Edmund, the king's second son, was invested with the earldom of Derby. That this prince was put in possession of all the estates claimed or held by earl Ferrers at the time of the battle of Chesterfield, there can exist no doubt, but there is reason to believe that the earldom remained dormant for some years. Earl of Derby. This unhappy, but spirited young nobleman, remained in prison about three years. During that period, his friend Clare, earl of Gloucester, having made a league with Llewellyn, prince of Wales, and while the king marched with a considerable army to suppress the insurgent barons who had assembled their forces in the isle of Ely, suddenly entered the city of London, where he was well received. The tower of the metropolis instantly surrendered to him, and had earl Ferrers delayed the insurrection in Derbyshire for a few months, the baronial confederacy would again have been completely successful, and the government of the kingdom would have been entrusted to the earl of Gloucester, a man of more principle, of CHAP. 10. less ambition, and of higher patriotism than Montfort. The discomfiture Gloucester's of earl Ferrers and his confederates had intimidated the barons on the insurrection. north of the Trent. They would not venture to call upon their tenants, and prince Edward marched through the territories, compelling them and their tenants to join him, and at length encamped at Stratford, a few miles east of London, where he was re-inforced by a large body of foreign troops, newly arrived in the Thames, under the command of the earl of Boulogne. Nothing was left for the earl of Gloucester but to make his submission: he was in a position to demand honourable terms, and having obtained assurances that the city of London should neither be fined nor deprived of its Charter, and that the estates of his friends should not be confiscated, he retired wholly from public life during the remainder of that reign. In the year 1269, on account of the powerful intercession made by the Earl friends of earl Ferrers, the royal precept was directed to prince Edmund, Ferrers. commanding him to make restitution of his the Earl's lands, but it contained a condition that the prince should receive, at one entire payment, on an appointed day, the immense sum of fifty thousand pounds. This condition, in fact, negatived the grant; for it was manifestly impossible for the unfortunate earl to raise a sum, equivalent to nearly a million and a half of our present currency, from his distressed tenantry; and we are astonished when we find a long list of princes and barons mentioned as his sureties, including the name of his captor, prince Henry, the son of the king of the Romans. To these sureties he granted, by way of countersecurity, all his lands and castles, except Chartley in Staffordshire, and Holbroke in Derbyshire. The day appointed for payment, which had been fixed at a fortnight before the festival of St. John the Baptist arrived, and the sureties immediately passed over their title to prince Edmund. It is manifest that there existed no actual intention to restore to the earl his estates; but the king and his advisers did not like to proceed to a direct act of confiscation, which might have created alarm in the whole body of his very unsettled nobility. At the ensuing Easter Term, the earl brought an action in the Court of King's Bench, complaining that although he had been desirous to redeem his land in the manner provided for in those articles of surrender agreed to at the capitulation of Kenilworth, called the Dictum de Kenilworth, yet they were unjustly withheld from him by prince Edmund. This plea was not likely to avail him at a period when those to whom the estates of the insurgent barons had been given influenced the courts of law; but in the second year of the ensuing reign he renewed it, and prince Edmund, being called upon to reply to it, he rested his claim entirely upon the forfeiture of the deed for fifty thousand pounds. In his replication, the unfortunate earl states that the deed was presented to him to sign and seal while he was in Chippenham castle, to which he had been conveyed from Windsor, and that he executed it under the serious apprehension of corporal injury. He adds, that when he had signed it, instead of being set at liberty, he was conveyed by a strong guard of armed men to the castle of Wallingford, where he remained three weeks in restraint, until prince Edward, after - He brings an action for restitution. CHAP. 10. wards king, procured him his liberty.—The royal defendant contented Earl Ferrers' himself with answering that the deed had been executed in the presence suit for resti- of the Chancellor, John de Chishull, and that as the chancellor represented tution. Segrave. the king, it could not be pleaded that the deed was executed by the Earl as a prisoner, every man being free to appeal to the sovereign, in whose presence he stands against compulsion.-Upon this absurd plea, the court dismissed the suit. Thus the extensive manors possessed by the family of Ferrers in the counties of Stafford, Derby, Leicester and Lancaster, became the property of a prince of the blood royal, while the unfortunate earl retained only the castle and manor of Chartley in Staffordshire and the hamlet of Holbrooke in Derbyshire. This elder branch of the Ferrers were subsequently distinguished as the Ferrers of Chartley. The widow of Robert de Ferrers was not deterred by the decision of the court of law from suing for the dowry which had been settled upon her out of her husband's possessions, but prince Edmund put in the same plea as before, and obtained a verdict in his favour. He thought it prudent, however, to be secured from all future process, by a general release of all her right of dower in those lands, and upon condition of such release, he gave her the manor of Godmanchester in Huntingdonshire to hold for life. We cannot close the incidents connected with Derbyshire, during the reign of Henry III. without some reference to the rise of the family of Segrave, which in this and the subsequent reign attained considerable eminence. This family was probably of Saxon origin, and had assumed the name of Segrave from a manor in Leicestershire. Early in the reign of Henry III. we find Stephen de Segrave appointed a justice itinerant in the counties of Nottingham and Derby, and in possession of the manor of Cotes, or Chilcotes, in this county. According to Dugdale, in the year 1231, he obtained the custody of numerous castles and counties, and was allowed the whole profits of those counties for his support in that service, with the exception of the ancient farm rates. Having been for many years of the king's council, and chief justice of the common pleas, he was, on the removal of Hubert de Burg, appointed to the eminent office of justiciary of England. His rapid rise was greatly owing to the favour of Peter de Roches, the bishop of Winchester, who, says our author, finding him a flexible man, made much use of him. The height of power to which Stephen de Segraves had arrived was not seen without the jealousy and indignation of the nobility and of the bishops, particularly as he greatly favoured the usurpations of the church of Rome, and obtained a dispensation from the pope to enable one of his sons, who had been brought up as a clergyman, to hold as many church preferments as he could acquire for him. In consequence of the discontent excited by his conduct, his manor house at Segrave was destroyed, and goods to a great value consumed by fire, and his manor house at Alkmundbury was likewise plundered and burnt. As he was then attending the king on a journey in the county of Huntingdon, he saw flames at a distance, and on enquiring what was the occasion of them, he understood that a new acquisition of his at Alkmundbury in that county was being plundered and destroyed by a party of in surgents. He immediately rode to the spot with a considerable retinue, CHAP. 10. but when he saw that the mob was countenanced by some powerful men, Segrave and heard the reproaches with which his conduct was assailed on every Justiciary. side, he put spurs to his horse and made a hasty return to the king. He endeavoured to disguise the causes of the disaffection, which Henry, easily misled as he might be by the representations of those whom Segrave and the bishop had placed about his person, could not but perceive. Edmund, the archbishop of Canterbury, had obtained much influence over the wavering mind of the king, and this prelate lost no opportunity of representing to him, that it was for his own interest, as well as that of the nation, to remove from his counsels ministers who had become so odious to his subjects. In consequence of this urgent advice, Henry sent his express commands to the bishop of Winchester to retire to his diocess, and ordered Stephen de Segrave, Peter de Rivaulx (the bishop's natural son, who had been appointed treasurer) and many others who had borne sway at court, to appear at Westminster, and to answer for waste and embezzlement of the revenue as well as the complaints of persons injured by them. Being conscious of their guilt, Stephen de Segrave took sanctuary at Leicester His disgrace. abbey and the others sought protection in various monasteries. Fearful of the consequences of surrendering himself, Segrave openly declared that he had been and still was a priest. He applied to become a canon of that religious house, on which he had bestowed some lands he possessed at Stockingford in Warwickshire, and was about to submit to the tonsure, when by the persuasions of the archbishop of Canterbury, who offered him his protection, he ventured to appear at court. Henry, on beholding him, called him a wicked traitor, and alleged against him that it was by his particular counsel that Hubert de Burg was displaced from the office of justiciary and cast into prison. The king added, that Segrave had earnestly advised him to hang Hubert and to banish many of the English nobility; and concluded by insisting upon a strict account of the money which had passed through his hands whilst he was justiciary of England. By the intercession of the archbishop he obtained a pardon, on condition of paying a fine of one thousand marks to the king; but this was not publicly granted until the irritation of the public mind had subsided. He was soon after received again into favour by Henry, who reconciled him with several of the barons whom he had offended, and made him justice of Chester; but he was advanced in years, and his ambitious spirit had been so subdued by the disgrace and danger he had incurred, that, after a short time, he sought retirement in the abbey of Leicester, where he professed himself a Canon Regular, and remained to the day of his death. Gilbert, the second son of Stephen de Segrave, rose to some eminence. He inherited his father's estates, in consequence of the death of his elder brother during the lifetime of his father. The castle of Bolsover was committed to his government, and afterwards that of Kenilworth. He was also appointed justice of the forests south of the Trent, and subsequently one of the justices in the city of London, to hear and determine such causes as had usually been tried before the justices itinerant at the tower. In the year 1254, when returning from Gascony, he was seized at Ponte in Poictou |