North Petherton Hundred
A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 6, Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton Hundreds (Bridgwater and Neighbouring Parishes).
A large royal estate at North Petherton constituted in 1084 a hundred assessed at 38 hides, 3 virgates, and ½ ferling. (fn. 1) Most of the estate was granted away by the Crown, including the manor of North Petherton, to which the hundred jurisdiction was later attached. Manor and hundred were granted at fee farm by Henry I to John of Erleigh (d. c. 1162). (fn. 2 Cal. Inq. Misc. i, p. 321. Wm. of Erleigh was the grantee according to Rot.) Henry I (fn. 3) also granted Crandon in Bawdrip at farm, and Adsborough (Tetteberg) in Creech St. Michael, Chedzoy, the former grazing farm (vaccaria) of the royal estate, (fn. 4) Pawlett, and Pignes in Bridgwater in fee. An estate at North Newton, part of the barony of Odburville, came into the hands of the hereditary foresters of Petherton forest or park. (fn. 5) By the later 13th century the whole ancient estate was out of the Crown’s possession with the exception of Petherton park and residual claims to forest jurisdiction on North moor (fn. 6) and until 1298 elsewhere. (fn. 7)
North Petherton hundred, which grew out of the former royal estate, was held by the family of John of Erleigh like the manor of North Petherton (fn. 8) until 1371 when another John of Erleigh was licensed to alienate the hundred and manor to John and Margery Cole. (fn. 9)
Henry of Erleigh (d. 1272) remitted to the prior and convent of Taunton all fines and amercements levied on them or their men of Thurloxton in his hundred court, (fn. 41) and Philip of Erleigh (d. c. 1275) claimed strays in his hundred and manor of North Petherton. (fn. 42)
A P Baggs and M C Siraut, ‘North Petherton Hundred’, in A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 6, Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton Hundreds (Bridgwater and Neighbouring Parishes), ed. R W Dunning and C R Elrington (London, 1992), pp. 178-181. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol6/pp178-181 [accessed 23 May 2023].
