The Assembling of an Estate: Knole in Sevenoaks, c. 1275 to c. 1525

􀀐 r.chreo logia 􀀑nntiana THE ASSEMBLING OF AN ESTATE: KNOLE IN SEVENOAKS, c. 1275 tq c. 1525 · By F. R. H. Du BoULA.Y, M.A., F.R.HIST.S. IT is well known that a manor could be created and grow, as well as diminish and disappear, by the operation of land-market, family transaction and colonization, but evidence does not often survive to show in detail how this might happen. Knole in Kent is an interesting exception. Indeed, it is an outstanding example not only of a documented medieval property which became a famous modern one, but of human symbiosis, for neither the lord of the great house nor the tenants of Sevenoaks could have flourished without the other. The tenants were there :first, homagers and woodland colonists of the huge manor of Otford which the See of Canterbury had acquired probably in the ninth century. But in the end they, or the most active of them, made Sevenoaks agreeable enough to attract their lord from Otford to live among them, and he in turn through the presence of his great household and vigorous management made Sevenoaks a rewarding place in which to hold property. The process can be studied from both sides through the collection of 130 deeds relating to Sevenoaks properties and families scattered through the Carte Antique et Miscell,anee belonging to Lambeth Paiace Library.1 Its later stages, from about 1450 to 1537, can be seen in 1 Dorothy M. Owen, A Oatalcgue of Lambeth ManU8eripte 889 to 901 (OarttJ Antique et Miscellanee, Lambeth Palace Library, 1968, is an indisoensable reference-book with a scholarly introduction. The first surviving deed of the collection here considered seems to date from 1274 (Oarte Antique et Mi8cellanee, henceforth abbreviated to OM, vol. V, no. 166), and the last is from 1480 (OM, V, 142). Traces of an. ordered, earlier collection appear from the fact that twelve of the deeds, dating between 1274 and 1324, bear contemporary endorsements of Roman numerals, These numerals range between xj and cxxxiiij but correspond neither with the da.tes of the documents, the parties to the transactions, nor the modern catalogue numbers. The most that can be said is that all the deeds thus endorsed save one were in favour of either Robert of Knole or Richard Grovehurst. On the other hand, many deeds in favour of these men bear no endorsement. As to the account-rolls, their general nature and present location are disc11Ssed in my The Lordship of Oanterbury, ix, London, 1966, IZ-13. But since tha.t book was written reorgan.b:ation of the Lambeth Pa.lace archives has made it appropriate to cite the account-rolls kept there as E.D. [Estate Document] rather than L.R. [Lambeth Roll). The numbers have happily not been changed. 1 F. R.H. DU BOULAY greater detail through the Sevenoaks and Knole account-rolls of the archbishopric. The deGcls are not now arranged or catalogued in any intelligible order, but clearly belonged to at least one collection gathered up by Archbishop Bourgchier when he acquired and enlarged the 'manor' of Knole between 1456 and 1480. Most of them do not directly concern Knole itself, but pertain to fragments of property which came ultimately to form part of the greater manor. They show in fact two steady, long-term developments between the late-thirteenth and latefifteenth centuries: the estate-building activities of three leading local families, the Knoles, the Grovehursts and the Brutons, and the formation within Sevenoaks of several composite, identifiable properties, such as Panthurst, Britta.ins, 'Joces' and Riverhead, which themselves came to be called manors and were bought up by the archbishop and aggregated into Knole. In other words, leading local families were by the later thirteenth century forming 'gentry' estates out of very small pieces, the families died out or left Sevenoaks between the midfourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, and their collections as well as further fragments were acquired by one aristocrat after another until in the later :fifteenth century the archbishop emerged as the only important landlord of Sevenoaks and Knole. Doubtless Sevenoaks would not have become a prestigious residential area had it lain on fertile agricultural land. For cereals it was poor ground. But it was suitable for adequate mixed farming, profitably wooded, apt for brewing and some cloth-making, and above all possessed of good park land where undulating grazings interspersed with great trees made a setting for a deer-park and cattle feeding-grounds which could keep the lord's larders well stocked. Sandy soil, moderate altitude and convenient riding-distance from London commended it in time to Henry VIII: 'And as for Knoll [it] sta.ndeth on a sounde, perfo,ite, holsome grounde • . . I myself will lye at Knolle, and moste of my house shall ly at Otteforde ••. '2 These virtues are less evident when Sevenoaks first comes into historical view, in the thirteenth century. It was simply the poor, southerly segment of the large manor of Otford, contained no demesne arable and was settled by tenants who were for the most part small-holders, lightly burdened, and probably a-s much woodlanders as cultivato1s. Lists of tenants in 1297 who owed the archbishop pannage-rents from various parts of his manor of Otford show that the tenants who pastured swine from Sevenoaks were more numerous but had fewer pigs each than those from other parts of the manor.s The properties of tenants s Narratives of the Day8 of the Reformation, ed. J. G. Nichols, Oamden Old Series, lxxvii, London, 1860, 266. • Lambeth E;D. 881. 2 THE ASSEMBLING OF AN ESTATE described in the deeds of feoffment were in small lots, at most a oouple of acres, more often fractions of an acre, and bearing names which ended in -croft, -dene, -grove, -hook, -wood and -moor. Some were pieces within a larger field. Some were enclosed by hedges and ditches. One farm (fundus) appears in 1329 as bounded by a ditch and marked trees.4 Numbers of the sold messuages were built up with dwellinghouses and barns, or perhaps had gardens. Well before 1300 numerous small shops and booths existed in the market-place and could belong to a man holding an overtly trade-name like mercator as well as a man bearing another kind of occupation-name like coopertoi·.6 There is evidence of some local cloth-making in the names of Weaver and Fuller among those transacting property and in the sale or leasing of shares in one o r more fulling-mills on the stream called Bradbourne which drains into the River Darent.6 The area was closely intersected with public and private roads which appear with great frequency as boundaries of the small properties in the deeds of sale: Sevenoaks to Otford, Sevenoaks to Tonbridge, through the middle of Sevenoaks, Sevenoaks to Chipstead, River head to Whitley Wood, and many minor ways from farm to farm. All this property was held in gavelkind tenure, freely alienable and partible between male heirs on the death of the tenant. Why such tenants and heirs should have wanted to alienate is not hard to understand in the light of the charters. Many possessed or stood to inherit only fractions of an already small patrimonial estate. It must not be dogmatically asserted that they had no other resources, but it is selfevident that they could do better for themselves with a lump sum than with the plots of land in question. Many of the later thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century charters of feoffment record the sale of 'all my father's land' ,7 or 'all the holding which I shall inherit from my father'. s In 1280, the son of a mason sold all his share of his father's land in Sevenoaks and Chiddingstone to Robert of Knole, and the share cannot have been great for an entry-fine of Ss.9 Sometimes all or both heirs sold.10 Frequently a man sold his prospective share, or the reversion of a share, in the property of a father, uncle or brother.11 At other times the seller was the widow;l2 or the property was explicitly that which had been already leased out by the father.18 Of course, simple re-arrange- ' OM, V, 164. 6 OM, V, 178; X, 84. • OM, II, 47; X, 63, 88. 7 E.g. OM, X, 62 (of 1280). 8 OM, V, 166; X, 75. 8 OM, X, 60. 10 OM, X, 63. 11 OM, V, 144, 149, 152, 153, 188. 11 OM, X, 42. 11 OM, X, 43. 3 F. R.H. DU BOULAY ment as well as penury could be the motive for such sales, as when the land in question stood adjacent to land already in possession of the purchaser, or when house property in need of repair was sold by joint heirs in return for house property in good order elsewhere in the area, more distant from the centre of the purchaser's own interests.14 Another kind of consideration which was not unique was the seven-year lease of most (but not all) of his paternal inheritance, negotiated in 1298 by William son of Richard Durant in return for a London apprenticeship arranged for him by Henry Bruton.15 Of the same type (sale of pourparty in return for a career-opening) was Robert of Knole's purchase of land in 1284 partly for money and partly for the promise to place the seller, properly fitted out with clothing, 'in a suitable office at my own costs within one month'.16 The office was most likely one in the archbishop's household. The sums received in return for such sales cannot be treated analytically, because the actual amount of land alienated is rarely expressed, and because the consideration given for the sale is either omitted ('for which he has given a certain sum of money'17) or is described as an entry-fine which may or may not correspond to the real purchase-price. For what it is worth, the entry-fines when given range between 5s. and £10.18 More immediately intelligible are the transactions by which lesser men raised money from richer ones by mortgaging land or selling rent-charges. In 1337, Reginald Stydulf and Matilda, his wife, members of a prolific local family, mortgaged to Joan Bruton, daughter of the affluent family to be encountered shortly, three pieces of land which they had bought from the same Joan for £6 13s. 4d. By this means they raised £6 which was to be repaid in three months on pain of losing the land. Since the deed of feoffment was ordered to be held by a trustworthy chaplain for the duration of the mortgage the initial sale was doubtless real and not fictitious.lo From the motives for alienation we turn to the motives for acquisition. Not infrequently the Knoles, Grovehursts and Brutons acquired pieces of land which lay near to property they already possessed, but as far as one can see behind the transactions, the end in view was an increased flow of money-rents, not of produce. The documents are not often specific a.bout what was to be done with the purchases, but the yield of a rent is mentioned often enough, even if obliquely, to suggest strongly than this was the purpose behind the congeries of small u OM, V, 36. u OM, V, 47. u OM, X, 40. 11 E.g., OM, V, 179. See also the remarks on the dangers of accepting entryfines as purchase prices by R. B. Pugh, 'Ca.lend.al' of Antrobus Deeds before 1625', Wilta . .Areh. &, Nat. Hist. Soc., Rccord8 Branch, iii (1947), Intro., p. :iocc.vii. u OM, V, 161, 165. u OM, V, 183. 4 THE ASSEMBLING OF AN ESTATE acquisitions, and the annual payment of money-rents was equally something which we.a done between the three families themselves as well as by the lesser men to the grea.ter.20 The point is most clearly made by one of the rare occasions when Robert of Knole re-leased out some arable which he had himself earlier taken on lease. The object was to gain a rent of 8s. p.a. and to get his obligation of cultivating the ground and paying a corn-rent done for him by his sub-lessee.21 Study of the Sevenoaks deeds shows a consistent build-up of rentpaying estates by the Knoles, Grovehursts and Brutons. For the Knoles there are about twenty documents surviving from 1274 to 1358; about the same number for the Grovehursts between 1282 and 1368; and double this number for the Brutons between 1279 and 1444. There may well have been other documents whioh have not survived. It is not possible to quantify or closely to identify the holdings except to observe in quite a general way that the original Knole property was in the area of what is now Knole Park, to the south-east of Sevenoaks, the Grovehurst property was more widely scattered, both in Sevenoaks and in Kent at large, though some of it was concentrated round Knole and the market-place in the centre of Sevenoaks; and the Bruton estates, too, were widespread in the region but especially concentrated in and about Bradbourne and Riverhead in northern Sevenoaks, where Britta.ins Farm with its old barn still stands in Brittains Lane. The character of these families bears out Professor Postan's supposition that most of the prospering 'gentry' of this era were clerks in the broad sense of functionaries and agents of magnates.22 Robert of Knole's ability to offer placement in an office as part of a deal indicates his association with a large household, and that this household was the archbishop's is virtually certain from the fact that Robert was bailiff of the Liberty 1292-5.28 The Grovehursts were a landowning family with interests in various parts of Kent and, by the middle of the fourteenth century, had not only built up a considerable property of their own in Sevenoaks and elsewhere, but had evidently acquired the collection already made by Robert of Knole and his heirs. In turn the Grovehurst interest in Sevenoaks ended with the death in 1362 of Henry Grovehurst, clerk and rector of Horsmonden in Kent, who left property in London and several places in Kent, including Sevenoaks.24 His heir and thus the successor 20 OM, X, 41 (Richard of Grovehurst has paid John of Knole 30s. 4d. as an instalment of 5 marks annual rent due to John's father Robert, deceased). 11 OM, V, 140. 12 M. M. Poatan, 'The English Gentry of the Thirteenth Century', The N eak Lecture, given on 7th December, 1972, at University College, London. 23 Kent Records, vol. 18 (1964), 50. u Oalendar 'of WiU, enrolled in the Oourt of HWJtings, Londcn, 1258-1688, (ed.) R.R. Sharpe, Part II, London, 1890, 65. The will of Richard Grovehurst, of Tonbridge, made in 1457, shows the family still prosperous in west Kent, but apparently without land in Sevenoaks (P.R.O., Prerogative Court of Canterbury Will Register Stokton, fos. 122 to 123v). 5 F. R.H. DU BOULAY to Knole was Roger Ashburnham, and it is in 1364, in a quitclaim to Ashburnham by Henry Grovehurst's feoffee, that the phrase 'manor of Knole' £.rat ooours.2& To this manor we shall return in a moment. The third family was that of Henry of Bruton, his wives Margery and Matilda, daughters Agnes and Joan, and descendants Philip, William and John. About 1304 Henry was made Archbishop Winchelsey's attorney 'to maintain the liberties of the church of Canterbury and its tenants'26 and, as a married layman, he may well have been a common lawyer. By 1335 the name was generally being rendered as Bretons and in modern times has become fixed as Brittains. I n the mid-fifteenth century as the 'manor' of Bretons or Brytons it was acquired b y the archbishop and leased for £6 or more a year to a farmer who received robes of the archbishop's livery. Further pieces were added to it by Archbishops Bourgchier and Morton who organized a brewery there to supply the household at Knole.27 Thus by a process of private collection there was formed the conglomerate which, with certain additions alluded to below, made up the greater manor of Knole. It followed the pattern of colonization in which the work of little-known men was taken up by fewer and greater men until there was but one effective lord. Out of Sevenoaks (itself the woodland colony of Otford), Knollands had been created as a miscellaneous estate in the hands of Robert of Knole and his heirs; thence, it passed to the Grovehursts, themselves estate-builders; and as it went from hand to hand other aggregations were swept in by purchase. After Grovehurst the Ashburnhams of Lamberhurst bought it,28 and in 1419 it was bought as an investment by Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, who paid £133 6s. 8d. cash for its 800 acres of wood and other land.29 The bishop died in 1437, but since Knole was in 1444 in the possession of a Henry Langley it is hard to resist the conclusion that it was still in the hands of the family (and not the bishopric), and that it was sold for that family's benefit when in the same year it was made over to Ralph Legh, esquire, and Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Langley.so Between then and 1450, it was acquired by James Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, the notorious 'extortioner of Kent', killed by J aok Cade's rebels. In 1456 Archbishop Bourgchier got it for £266 13s. 4d. Here, on the face of it, is a doubling of value in 37 years, but the price- 26 OM, V, 191. u Regist,ru,m Roberti Winchelsey .•• (ed.) Rose Graham, vol. I, 486 (Canterbury &nd York Society, vol. 51, 1962). 17 For the equipment e.nd tasks of this brewery in 1626, see I{ent Records, vol. 18 (1964), pp. 290-91. 18 OM, V, 191; X, 74, both dated o.t Lamberhurst. OM, X, 46 (dated 1307) conveyed it to William, son of Roger Aehburnham. 29 R. L. Storey, Thomas Langley a.nil the Bislwprio of Durham, 1406-37, 1961, 94-5. ao OM, X, 64; V, 65; II, 37. 6. THE ASSEMBLING OF AN ESTATE increase is much more likely the effect of Knole's further enlargement than an enhancement of land-value. Enlargement indeed was taking place under Bishop Langley and Lord Say before ever it came into the hands of the archbishop. In 1429, a group of feoffees abnost certainly representing the Bishop of Durham received by fine for 200 marks an estate in Sevenoaks consisting of five messuages and no less than 1,500 acres. The special interest of this fine is that it conveyed also the homage and services of fifty named tenants, all belonging to Sevenoaks though not at the moment identifiable with any particular part of the settlement.s1 But at a stroke the manor of Knole was in this way nearly doubled in size. In his turn Lord Say got possession of Panthurst and 'Joces' which, with Britta.ins, were the largest named accretions to the original manor of Knole and were acquired mainly for the enlargement of the park.82 'Joces' is a. placename which has disappeared, but it probably derives from John Joce ofBradbourne, who granted his father's land in Sevenoaks to William Moraunt and John of Filston, both important tenants of the manor of Otford, for 40 marks in 1326.ss The estate of 'Joces' passed down the line of landholders: William Moraunt and his son; Thomas Pantier; William Sevenoaks, grocer and alderman of London, who founded Sevenoaks Grammar School; Reginald Peckham, esquire, of Wrotha.m; and Lord Say and Sele, until it came to Archbishop Bourgohier. Panthurst still exists, in the vicinity of Knole Park, and derives from the family of Henry Paneter who was witnessing local charters from 1274 onward, though the family may of course be older. The property likewise came into the possession of Lord Say. In 1450, it was the object of a private arbitration between Emmelina, widow of the recently murdered holder, and John and Thomas Barton or Boteler, father and son, described as yeomen of London and Farnborough (Kent) respectively, who claimed it by inheritance. It was awarded to the Bartons with 10 marks damages, and in 1454 granted wholly by John Barton to his son Thomas as 'the tenement in Sevenoaks inherited from Panteris gentilmen' .34 This gentleman's estate, too, was aggregated into Knole by the archbishop. More interesting than the details of property-descent are the human qualities of the transactions which the documents allow us to glimpse in an imperfect and fleeting way. Regina.Id Peckham, member of a well-to-do Kentish family, who sold 'Joces' to Lord Say in 1447,86 was 31 OM, V, 181. The feoffees were John Thoralby, Nicholas Hulme and Ralph Shakerley, olerka. Hulme was an esta.te-oflioial who acted for the Bishop of Durham and also the archbishop as well as the Countess of Salisbury. The same group, with Henry Langley, were acting in Sevenoaks in 1420 (OM, V, 160; X, 57). 31 P.R.O. Mins. Aoots. (S.C.6) 1130/1. sa OM, V, 157; X, 78; V, 146. BC OM, IV, 21; V, 132, 172. There is a seventeenth-century map of 'Panthurst Park' in the Kent .Axobives Office at Maidstone. 16 OM, v, 154, 170. 7 F. R.H. DU BOULAY in 1448 forced under threat of death to make over a large estate at Seal, near Sevenoaks, to the same magnate.S6 This, the fate of Lord Say in 1450, the successful dispossession of his widow from 'Joces', and indeed the large number of small acquisitions to round out Knole Park made throughout the later fifteenth century, cause the historian to wonder how strong was the compulsory element in many of these purchases which are recorded in the cold formality of feoffment and quitclaim. Hardly a murmur escapes from the records, except the failure of the reeve of Sevenoaks to collect lls. 2d. rents in 1461-2 for lands in the lord's hands causa magne perturbacionis contingentis hoe anno.37 Certainly from 1465 onward a panel of extremely powerful trustees was set up, all of them close friends and servants of Archbishop Bourgchier, to receive pieces of land sold by local men for the enlargement of the Knole estate. The professional feo:ffees included master John Stokes, archbishop's Auditor of Causes, of whom Sir John Fastolf wrote to John Paston in 1456, advising him to keep on friendly terms with such a man;38 also master Robert Kirkham, keeper of the Rolls of Chancery, John Clerk, a Baron of the Exchequer, Sir William Tyrrell, knight, steward of the archbishop's household, and a group of the archbishop's gentlemen famiUares, such as John Brimpston, Nicholas Gaynesford, William Duraunt and .Alexander Wood. Against such an array what could be done by obscure men like William Quyntyn, John Walder, John Brydde or William Merden who possessed acres in or about Knole Park which the archbishop wanted139 Such reflections are interesting if we are tempted to suppose that Henry VIII's forced exchange of lands with Archbishop Cranmer was a unique incident of bullying.4° The assembling of Knole manor may have been represented thus far as the creation of a luxurious residential estate. It was of course this, but if it had been nothing more it would have had to be subsidized by payments from profitable manors in the lord's possession, just as sometimes the archbishop's parks had to be supported by crosspayments from manorial ministers to the parkers. In fact, however, enough accounts survive to show that cash paid in to the lord's household treasury from the 'manor' of Knole usually exceeded that from the manor of Sevenoaks from the 1480s, when Knole became a unified financial organization, until the end of the medieval estate. This may be conveniently expressed in a Table showing annual d!:)liveries of money from the accountants of the two manors, in decennial averages: ae Kent Records, vol. 18 (1964), p. 234. s7 Lambeth E.D. No. 1243. 18 Thti Paskm Letters, (ed.) James Ga.irdner (ed. of 1900-08), vol. i, No. 272. Of. 258, 347. ao E.g., OM, X, 76; V, 89; V, 173; X, 61; V, 138 (all between 1465 and 1469). '° As the present writer short-sightedly thought hl 'ArQbbishop .Cranmer and the Canterbury Tempora.lities', English Historical Review; lxvil (1952), 19-36. 8 r THE ASSEMBLING OF AN ESTATE Gash d,eliverei/, annuaJly from Sevenoaks and Knole to the archbishop Years 1451-60 1461-70 1471-80 1481-90 1491-1500 1501-10 1511-20 1521-30 1531-37 Sevenoaks £ s. d. 24 9 7 23 8 3 21 14 8 19 9 11 20 4 2 22 1 7 22 6 11 22 8 6 18 15 1 Knole (including Panthurst, Brittains, Riverhead, etc.) £ s. d. 20 19 10½ [one year's figure only] 26 13 10 19 17 1 32 7 2 32 14 4 29 9 0 It will be seen that the income from Kno}e was not gained at the expense of Sevenoaks. The reeve of Sevenoaks continued to collect his rents, of which the redditus assisae formed much the largest constituent. In the 1460s and 1470s the various parts of Knole manor accounted separately, and the lack of a good series of accounts obscures the situation, though it is possible to see that the money derived from lettings to farmers. By 1459, Brittains was being leased for £6 108. p.a. to a local man for five years renewable, and 'Joces' and Panthurst to another for £7 6s. 8d. Both the farmers and the bailiff of Knole were spending money on repairs, particularly on new shops constructed from wood and thatch in the market-place and a large new barn at Britta.ins, built by the mason John Comfort on a base of Kentish ragstone and tiled. The neighbouring properties of the archbishop were made to supply ea.eh other with materials: timber from Brittains for the Sevenoaks shops, sand from Sevenoaks to Panthurst, wooden shingles from Panthurst to Knole, thatch from Seal to Sevenoaks market-place.41 The tiles came from Longford in Dunton Green where it so happens that the Marley Tile Company now operates. The individual farmers of Brittains, Panthurst, 'Joces' and Riverhead continued to pay over their annual rent to the bailiff of Knole and to collect their own rents from their tenants, amongst whom an occasional named weaver provides another clue to textile activity.42 The bailiff of n Lambeth E.D. 643. In 1467 there were nine buwhers' and four :fishmongers' shops in Se-venoaks market-place. Since the arohbiehop's household was supplied directly and separately, this argues a lively demand from local inhabitants. In the 147 0s some shops lacked tenants and two belonging to the chantry chaplain were derelict, but the situation improved in the 1480s, as shown above. u Lambeth E.D. 285 (1471-2}: Andrew Story and John Nasshe, weavers, tenants of Brittains. 9 F. R.H. DU BOULAY Knole at the time was Thomas Boone, whose will was proved by the archbishop's Prerogative in 1486.43 It shows him as a sheep-farmer and a man who had bought and leased out house property in various parts of west Kent. The sources combine, in fact, to show an area of a mixed farming and cloth-making economy but also one where a living was to be made by landlords, great and small, of residential property. A new vigour in economic activity is discernible from the moment John Morton became archbishop in 1486. A good deal of money was spent on the repair of Knole manor-house itself, and of shops in Sevenoaks market-place, of which the archbishop possessed thirteen.44 A building called Dranes in Knole Park was renewed and reserved as the slaughter-house for the great household. Repairs were carried out on the archbishop's brewery at Riverhead, and Brittains, which also had a brewery, together with Panthurst, were leased out expressly for the use of the archbishop's household. From this point on, all the recently-acquired properties were brought together under the bailiff of Knole and made to yield higher rents from their tenant-farmers. These were themselves men of higher status than before, like master Henry Edyall, or the Potkyns, gentlemen, who later gave the archbishopric a registrar. Also, from this time the whole Knole complex is alluded to by the archbishop's registrar as manerium sive hospicium nostrum de Knoll.45 The fresh economic vigour of the last twenty years of the fifteenth century is not to be explained as a consequence of conscious policy alone. Along with the high level of cash deliveries to the lord from Knole and the negligible arrears owing from accountants during these years goes indirect evidence of an increased number of tenants. There was new house-building, more shops let in the market-place, a tendency towards higher rents and a need to make new rentals. By the time of the Valor Ecclesiasticus in 1535 Knole had not merely been turned into a stately mansion but had acquired a rent-roll greater than that of its parent manor of Sevenoaks; and this had been done, not by cannibalizing Sevenoaks, but by the vigorous management of an increasingly welltenanted area. " P.R.O. Prerogative Court of Canterbury Will Register Millea, fo. sv. " Lambeth E.D. 1249. Knole house itself is not disouaaed hero, u P.R.O. Min.a. Aoots. (S.C.6), Henry VII, No, 336. 10