A carucate was 100 to 120 acres, an oxgang as much land as a team of oxen could plough in a season, 10 to 25 acres depending on the soil but generally reckoned about 15 acres. This gives something between 500 and 700 acres of pasture and 80 to 200 acres of arable land. ³ Given the heavy nature of the soil it is likely that the arable figure would be towards the lower end. It is unlikely that much other than oats or rye was sown.

Glunier and Gamel also held land in Yeadon and de Bruis in Horsforth. De Bruis took his name from Bruis near Cherbourg in Normandy and certainly came with the Conqueror. His son received the Manor of Avondale from David, King of Scotland. The eighth Robert in line became the arachnaphillic King of Scotland and thus an ancestor of the House of Stuart and the present Queen. All the other names are Saxon and Cudworth wrote:

I do not say that the story is untrue. I do say it is not proven. What is reasonably certain, though, is that for about 400 years the descendants of Paul had a home at or near to the house now known as Layton Hall, opposite the present churchyard, and with a fine commanding view of the Aire valley. During those years they made various gifts of land⁵ to Bolton Priory, Kirkstall Abbey and on one occasion to Esholt Nunnery. Slater goes so far as to suggest that by the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 their gifts to the monks had been so large that they had barely enough land left in Rawdon for their adequate support. This shocked his Protestant susceptibilities but it may well be true. Dugdale’s Monasticon’ (1655-73) puts the annual rent of land in Rawdon held by Bolton Priory at £1.6.11. Moreover we know that a younger son, Ralph,⁶had gone to live at Kilpeck in Cleveland by 1520 and about 1624, George, later the first baronet, went to London to make his fame and fortune. A pedigree of sorts can be constructed from Slater but that in Appendix A is based on Foster.

1. See also ‘Rawdon Arms and Crest’ by S.C. Rawdon of Hursley, Hants. (A descendant?)

2. Rawdon or Rawden? There can be some etymological significance. ‘Den’ was a wood; don, a settlement. Old deeds and maps use Rawden. The Rawdon family used Rawdon from about the beginning of the 16th century. W.M. Thackeray in ‘Vanity Fair’ (1847) uses Rawdon when Beccy Sharp becomes Mrs (or perhaps Lady) Rawdon Crawley. Regular use of Rawdon seems to have come in the 1860s, perhaps at the instigation of the Post Office. Rawden Hill, the wood between Arthington and Harewood, is spelled on the O.S. map with an ‘e’. Neither the Harewood Estate Office nor Mrs M. Sheepshanks, formerly of Arthington Hall, knows of any connection with Rawdon or the Rawdon family.

3. Slater put the arable at 380 acres, I think this optimistic; the area of Rawdon U.D.C. before 1937 was about 2,400 acres. The balance in Norman times would be woods and waste, impenetrable and unclaimed.

4. “I, William, Kyng, the thurd yere of my reign,
Give to Paulyn Roydon, Hope and Hopetowne,
With all the bounds both up and down,
From heven to yerthe, from yerte to hel,
For the and thyne ther to dwel,
As truly as this kingright is mine,
For a crossbow and an arrow,
When I sal come to hunt on Yarrow.
And in token that this thing is sooth,
I byt the whyt wax with my tooth,
Before Meg, Mawd and Margery,
And my thurd son, Henry.

I suspect that both the couplet and the doggerel are by Thomas Weaver (1616-93) whom the Dictionary of National Biography aptly calls a poetaster and not a poet. Mrs A.M.W. Stirling in ‘The Annals of a Yorkshire House’ (1911) Vol. 1 page 64 and Vol. 2 page 223 makes the point that this doggerel bears a very striking resemblance to the ancient Roddam Charter of the family of Roddam of Roddam near Wooler, Northumberland (Ancestors of Hilary Clinton?) to whom Mrs Stirling was distantly related. Sir Bernard Burke was described as “uncritical to a degree”.

5. Set out in more detail in Slater p.225 & 6.

6. He was the grandfather of Sir Montague Rawdon (1582-1645), a wealthy London Turkey (i.e. trading with the Levant) merchant and M.P. for Aldbrough, Suffolk in 1628. He was knighted by Charles I for his efforts in the defence of Basing House, Basingstoke. As he had 10 sons there may be descendants in a male line. Sir Montague wrote that his ancestors had mostly been buried at Kirkstall Abbey.