heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE CLIFFORDS. 257
In the fifteenth century, John ninth Lord Clifford, known as the
"Black Lord Clifford,"
married Margaret Bromflete, daughter and heiress
of Sir Henry Bromflete, and brought into the Clifford family the title of
Baron Vesci, and great estates at Londesborough.
And, finally, in the sixteenth century, Henry Clifford, first Earl of
Cumberland, by his marriage with Lady Margaret Percy, on the demise of
her brother, Henry Earl of Northumberland, acquired the whole Percy
fee, equivalent in extent to half of Craven. While to complete their
superiority in that district, Henry VIII., at the time of the dissolution of the
monasteries, granted to him the priory of Bolton, with all
belonging, in
the lands thereto
the parish of Skipton, together with the manor of Storithes,
Heslewood, Embsey, Eastby, Conondley, &c., and the manor of Woodhouse,
which last belonged to the dissolved priory of Marton.
Truly, a goodly inheritance, not only in extent but in value ;
for
though every portion thereof had not been brought under cultivation,
yet even from the wide tracts of forest there was something more
substantial to be gained than the pleasures of the chase. They were
under the charge of bailiffs, who (in
each bailiwick, as it was called) had
their staff of foresters, verderers, regarders, agistors, and woodwards, who
collected and annually accounted for the profits of waifs, agistments,
pannage (i.e. money for the pasturage of hogs on the acorns, &c.), husset
(i.e. French "houset," holly, the croppings of which formed a principal
article of winter fodder for cattle as well as sheep, and was valuable, as
appears from an entry in Henry Younge the forester of Barden's book,
A.D. 1437= "Of hussett sold to the amount of "iv. \\\s. viii"'-" at least
50 of our money), also of bark-croppings, turbery, and bee-stock. For in
the old economy of the forest, wild bee-stocks were always an object of
attention, and in France, as well as in England, officers called Bigres or
Bigri, perhaps from apigeri, were appointed specifically for pursuing the
bees and securing their wax and honey. And it is to be remembered
that those rugged districts, now stripped of their woods, are spoken of in
the compotus of Bolton as far from destitute of timber. The manor and
chase of Barden comprised 3,252 acres. The forest of Skipton, which
comprised an area of six miles by four, or 15,360 acres, seems to have
been enclosed from very early times with a pale, a practice, indeed,
introduced by the Norman lord. Here the mast-bearing and bacciferous
trees, particularly the arbutus, were planted
;
and herein were nourished
the stag, the wild boar, the fallow deer, the roe, and the oryx (or the wild
bull), which, indeed, during the winter were fed with beans, even as the
few remaining deer above Bolton are fed still. There was many a "toft
" and croft '' also, as they were called a homestead with a
(i.e. space of
clear ground around it),
where sheep browsed among
and glades.
the brushwood