Parishes: Hydes Pastures

HYDES PASTURES

This small tract of land, containing 426 acres, on the Warwickshire side of the Watling Street is part of the Leicestershire parish of Hinckley and is now included in that county. There was originally a chapel and a small settlement here, (fn. 1) but Dugdale writes of it as depopulated, and Dr. Thomas (c. 1730) records that there was only one house, 'near which are yet to be seen the Vestigia of this depopulated village'. (fn. 2) In 1271 a half-fee in Hyde, Nuneaton, and Sapcote was held of the honor of Winchester by Thomas le Mareschal. (fn. 3) On the partition of that honor after the death of Roger de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, this half-fee passed to his eldest daughter Margaret, wife of Sir William Ferrers of Groby, of whose grandson Henry it was held in 1344 by William le Mareschal. (fn. 4) The overlordship of the half-fee, henceforth said to be in Hyde and Nuneaton (only), descended with the Lords Ferrers of Groby, (fn. 5) coming to the Marquess of Dorset by 1513 (fn. 6) and being held of the king as of the honor of Winchester in 1609. (fn. 7)

The Mareschal interest appears to go back to the 12th century, as in 1202 William Mareschal and Ralph Mallore and Liecia his wife conveyed 2 virgates in Hyde to Richard son of Robert. (fn. 8) Thomas, as already mentioned, held the half-fee in 1271, as did William le Mareschal in 1344, (fn. 9) and the heirs of Thomas in 1371. (fn. 10) The heirs, or at least successors, of the Mareschals were presumably the Bassets of Sapcote, as the tenants of the half-fee in 1388 were said to be Richard Grey of Codnor and Sir Laurence Dutton, (fn. 11) who had married respectively Elizabeth and Alice, the daughters and coheirs of the last Lord Basset of Sapcote. (fn. 12) Alice had previously been married to Sir Robert Moton of Peckleton, (fn. 13) and his son Sir William Moton held land in Hyde when he died in 1392. (fn. 14)

In 1457 John Mareschal, probably a member of a branch of the family who had held the half-fee, granted to John Brome the reversion after his death of 5 virgates, 80 acres of meadow, and 20 acres of pasture in Hyde. (fn. 15) In 1505 John Brome conveyed the manor of Hyde to John Leek, Richard Astell, and Richard Wightman. (fn. 16) The shares of Leek and Astell were bought by Henry Smyth, who died in 1514, and two-thirds of the manor descended with Sherford in Burton Hastings (q.v.) to his son Sir Walter and grandson Richard, and then to the Littletons and Heles. Early in the 18th century this estate seems to have become divided between three coheiresses. (fn. 17) The Wightman share advanced no claims to be manorial and appears simply as tenements in Hyde at the death of Thomas Wightman in 1550. (fn. 18) A later Thomas married Dorothy Crofts, one coheir of the Moton and Basset interest, (fn. 19) and was apparently farming the land of the two-thirds manor when Nicholas Hele died in 1641. (fn. 20)

William Boteler and William Babington had licence in 1413 to alienate to Arbury Priory lands in various places including Hyde. (fn. 21) That priory had 13s. 4d. from rents of pasture in Hyde in 1535. (fn. 22)