THE GREYS OF RUTHIN AND THEIR LANDS

Late in 1468, a household official of the Earl of Kent sat in Ampthill Castle and translated into a vigorous and utilitarian vernacular the accounts of his master’s English lands in the previous year. He wrote this translation directly into a paper book, which was later bound with vellum. This volume descended through the centuries to the present Lady Lucas of Crudwell. Although there was until 1963 a Lord Grey of Ruthin, president of the League against Cruel Sports and treasurer of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, the barony has been separated from the estates and the earldom of Kent since 1640. After the death of Henry Grey, Duke of Kent, in 1740 without heirs male, the earldom and dukedom were extinguished but the remaining estates and the barony of Lucas of Crudwell, a Restoration creation with no restrictions on female succession, passed to Duke Henry’s elder grand-daughter. The Bedfordshire estate was finally dispersed by the mother of the present Lady Lucas after the war of 1914-18, but the archives remain in Lucas ownership.

In 1468 the holder of these and other lands in Bedfordshire and elsewhere was Edmund Grey, recently created Earl of Kent, and the fourth of his line to be summoned to Parliament as Lord Grey of Ruthin.

The first lord, Roger, had been only a younger son of John, second Lord Grey of Wilton, a magnate of some importance with large estates in Bedfordshire, Derbyshire, Wiltshire and the northern marches of Wales. This John of Wilton, who died in 1323, was married twice, first to Anne Ferrers of Groby, secondly to Maud Basset. By each wife he had one son, and although Henry, the elder of these sons, was duly summoned to Parliament in his father’s title after 1323, the younger son, Roger, Henry’s half-brother, was more favoured by his father. In a series of final concords between 1307 and 1319 John Grey settled upon Roger a rich inheritance; and Henry was excluded, except in the earliest fine, from having even the remainder of the property should Roger die childless.