Catalogue description WEST HATCH (WILTS.)

Both West Hatch and Chesterton (Warws.) (BCM/D/5/79) were connected with Eustace de Hatch. John and Christine de Segrave acquired a manor in West Hatch from John de Broughton by an undated charter, and received a quitclaim from John Trymnel and his wife Eleanor in Sept. 1308; there are two further charters of a grant to Eustace de Hatch and his wife Amicia by Eleanor de Westhache of lands which she had inherited from her brother, Robert de Westhache, and a quitclaim of 1289 by Luke de Hatch to Eustace for a small holding in West Hatch which he had granted to Robert and his wife Juliana for their lives. The grant by Eleanor de Westhache was probably c. 1281, as in that year she acknowledged the manor to be the right of Eustace and he granted her one third of two thirds of a capital messuage to hold for life and a rent of 8 marks a year. [Wilts. Fines, 1272-1327, p. 16; GEC vi. 387-90. See also VCH Wilts, xiii. 209-10, which was written without access to the documents calendared below.] in 1249 Robert de Hatch and Juliana had been granted 1 carucate of land and the reversion of another carucate by Hamon de Hatch, who held of Shaftesbury Abbey; the manor later held by the Segraves was also held of the abbey. The arms used by Eustace's wife Amicia were three lions impaled with Trymnel and she may have been the widow of Thomas de Trymnel. Eustace held half of Moreton Morrell, near Chesterton, in the right of Amicia, and also acquired other lands in Chesterton and Harbury. [Robert de Brock of Pachesham granted to Eustace 2 messuages and 6 virgates in Chesterton and Harbury, which Robert had gained by the king's writ against Sir Richard de Loges: above, BCM/D/5/79/2 [GC 885]. Pachesham, in Leatherhead (Surrey), was a manor held by Eustace (VCH Surrey, iii. 295), which may suggest an element of collusion. In 1306 Eustace was holding lands in Chesterton of the heir of Richard de Loges.] In 1305 Eustace sold West Hatch to Thomas de Adderbury for £200 and also granted him all his lands in Chesterton and Harbury; in Jan. 1306 John de Segrave received an acquittance from Adderbury for £20, possibly part payment of a larger sum.

All those disparate facts can perhaps be explained in the following manner. Robert de Westhache and his wife Juliana (who in 1249 acquired 2 carucates in West Hatch) had a son Robert and two daughters, Eleanor and Amicia. Robert died without issue and his two sisters were his coheirs. Amicia married first Thomas Trymnel and had a son John, and secondly Eustace de Hatch, by whom she had a daughter Juliana (named after her grandmother) and who held half of West Hatch and Moreton Morrell in her right. Eleanor sold to Eustace and Amicia her portion of West Hatch in 1281, and Eustace later acquired in 1289 a holding which had been held by Robert and Juliana for their lives. In Jan. 1282 he was granted free warren in Hatch, Moreton and Chesterton. In 1305, shortly before his death, he granted West Hatch and all his lands in Chesterton and Harbury to Thomas de Adderbury, and the grant of Hatch, if not of the other lands, was almost certainly a sale. Adderbury had conveyed Hatch to Segrave, for whom he was perhaps acting as a trustee, by Jan. 1306; Segrave granted it to John de Broughton for regrant to himself and his wife Christine, and in 1308 received a quitclaim from the right heir, John Trymnel, Amicia's half-brother.

Eustace's lands in Chesterton may not have passed to Segrave, since Eustace's daughter if Juliana inherited some lands there on his death in Sept. 1306, and John de Segrave acquired other lands there in 1318. [John Trymnel witnessed a charter in 1318 by which Segrave acquired a holding there.] Meanwhile, West Hatch was in Jan. 1314 granted by John de W Segrave to Stephen and Alice and was held by them in jointure at Stephen's death in 1325. [As tenant of lands late of Eustace in West Hatch, Stephen de Segrave was liable for his debts but was exonerated in Wilts.: BL Harl. MS 4748, f. 30.] in 1330 Alice leased the manor for her life at a farm of £20 to be paid at her manor of North Piddle (Worcs). It presumably reverted to her son John on her death but was not involved in the settlement of 1343-4. At Michaelmas 1353 John leased the manor at £5 a year for nine years, 10 marks a year for a further ten years and £20 a year thereafter, which was to be paid at Caludon (Warws.). West Hatch was not settled in jointure on Margaret Marshal; it passed, like Caludon, straight to John de Mowbray in 1353 and was held by him at his death in 1368 (paying a farm rent), but it does not occur later in the muniments, in inquisitions or in settlements. It was very distant from the rest of the estate and may have been sold, or the rent may have been considered as appurtenant to Caludon.