LONDON: S. AND J. BRAWN, PRINTERS, 13, PRINCES STREET, LITTLE QUEEN STREET, HOLBORN, W.C. CODLEA 10 JUN 970 D PREFACE. The history of the castle of my natiye town has long been to me a source of interest, and for some time past I have collected all the information respecting it, within my reach. In the pursuit, I met with much that was new and interesting; and, believing that what has been a source of pleasure and amusement to myself, would interest others, I now submit the results to the public. In the accounts of the Sutton family I found much confusion and contradiction. In the early part of the sixteenth century, Edward and John Sutton, father and son, who at this time had taken the name of Dudley, becoming much involved in debt, sold, at different times, the extensive estates which they inherited, and lived in considerable poverty and obscurity. The powerful family of the Dudleys, descended from the Duke of Northumberland, yearning for the prestige which a connexion with the territorial aristocracy gives to the aspirants to court favours, and endeavouring to deduce their descent from this family of the Suttons, with which, I believe, they are not in any way connected, have greatly added to the confusion. By gleaning from the various antiquarian works, and County histories, such facts only as were based upon some satisfactory authority, and rejecting such statements as merely rested upon anonymous pedigrees, and heraldic collections, I have succeeded in clearing up many doubtful points in the history of the family, and correcting the mistakes of previous writers. The many recent publications of letters written during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and the printing of the letters and documents preserved in our State Paper and Record Offices, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, and other sources, have furnished much additional information, and thrown light upon many previously obscure parts of the history. But much yet remains to be done ere all difficulties will disappear. The better to explain the grounds of my several statements, besides the names of the authors from whose works I have taken them, I have added the original authorities upon which they relied. The dates in the more ancient authorities are those of the regnal years of the different sovereigns; and I have found great convenience in adding the dominical years in brackets. Believing that these second dates would be found equally advantageous to the reader I have here printed them. As, however, the different kings commenced their reigns at different periods of the year, it is evident the regnal years will be comprised in two dominical ones, and thus the added year will not always be quite correct; but the advantages of the plan more than compensate for this inaccuracy. When the date is more specific, as when the day of the month is given, or the Feast day of a Saint, which was not an infrequent method of dating ancient documents, the added year is correct. Since the following pages were printed, it has been announced that the Countess of Dudley gave birth to a son and heir on Saturday morning, May 25, 1867; and in the same month, the Rev. Thomas Leigh Claughton, who married the Hon. Miss Ward, was appointed Bishop of Rochester. As the estates descended, either by inheritance or marriage, uninterruptedly, from the Conquest, until the present times, except upon two occasions when they were wrested from the family owners for a short time, but were soon restored to them, we have a kind of social history of the country during the period. Fitz Ausculf receiving from the lavish hand of the Conqueror vast estates taken from the defeated Saxons, and the Paganels bestowing with almost as free a hand, many of the manors in the founding of religious houses. The Someries, more secure in their titles, occupying themselves in hunting and field sports, and quarrelling about their forest rights and boundaries, whilst they contented themselves in benefitting the church by the sums they expended in the purchase of Indulgences. The Suttons, still more secure in the title to their lands, evading their feudal duties, and obtaining annuities and pecuniary grants from the crown, for their military services; |