The Honour of Old Wardon

Summary

INTRODUCTION.

The concise genealogical history of the Bedfordshire Honour of Wardon down to the middle of the 13th century, which is printed here, forms part of the considerable body of material left by the late Dr. William Farrer in a more or less complete state for the continuation of his ‘Honours and Knights’ Fees.’ At the time of his death in August, 1924, the third volume dealing with the great Honours of Arundel, Eudes the Sewer and Warenne was passing through the press and was published in the following year by the Manchester University Press. It was at first hoped that one or more volumes might be issued, comprising such portions of the unprinted material as are in an advanced state of preparation, but unhappily the prospect of publication on this scale has become remote. In these circumstances Mrs. Farrer very kindly acceded to a request from the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society to be allowed to print the short ‘Honour of Wardon’ in their Publications.

The most essential and original feature of the great scheme of a genealogical history of England in the feudal age, which Dr. Farrer only lived long enough to get well under weigh, is that it ignores all artificial boundaries and treats the natural feudal units exhaustively, following each feudal unit into every quarter where it had members. As most Honours extended into more than one county and the larger ones into many, the scheme as a whole is in its very nature not adjustable to publication county by county. There are, however, exceptions, and among these is the Honour of Wardon. This not very large feudal fief, of some 62 hides of land, lay entirely within the county of Bedford, though the acquisition by its holders after the reign of William the Conqueror of wide lands in Yorkshire and Northumberland, shifted the centre of their interests to the North until an early partition among co-heiresses again divided them.

Although confined to a single county, the Honour of Wardon was far from forming a compact baronial estate. It was not in the interest of the Conqueror to create such estates; and the scattered nature of Anglo-Saxon holdings, which were often transferred ‘en bloc’ to his Norman followers, made avoidance of dangerous aggregations easy.