Brief History of Rotherham
Rodreham 1086 (DB). ‘Homestead or village on the River Rother’. Celtic river-name (meaning ‘chief river’) + OE hm.
Before the Norman Conquest, Acun the Saxon;his English name was Ealhwine, was lord of the manor of Rotherham but William the Conqueror dispossessed him, and gave it to his half-brother, Robert, Count of Mortain under whom it was held by Nigel Fossard.
Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother of William I, and younger brother of Odo of Bayeux. He married Earl Hugh of Chester's daughter, Matilda. He was largest landholder in the country after the King with holdings in 19 counties.
Nigel Fossard born circa 1040 in Yorkshire, was Count Mortain's tenant in chief. Robert Fossard,succeeded as son and heir to the estates of his father, in all the 3 Ridings of Yorkshire.He also founded a chapel at his manor-house of Rossington
His possible granddaughter Emma de Bulmer,born in Hutton-Mulgrave, Yorkshire. had a daughter Isabel who married Geoffrey De Neville, Lord of Ashby sometime before 1174.
Rotherham eventually passed to the family of Vescy, one of whom, in the reign of Edward I., gave it to Rufford Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, together with eight oxgangs of land in the said lordship, and the advowson of one moiety of the church.
The Abbot of Rufford in 1275 maintained his right to all manner of chartered privileges for his house and its tenants on their Nottinghamshire lands, including freedom from every form of secular exactions on all that they bought or sold and on all that was conveyed to them, whencesoever it came, whether by land or water. The right of free warren in all their lordships was also upheld.
Four years later the abbot was equally successful in maintaining his full manorial rights at Rotherham, including assize of bread and ale, tumbrel, pillory, standard measure and gallows, as well as free warren at Rotherham and Carlecotes.
Early in the reign of Edward I John de Vescy granted to Thomas de Stayngreve, Abbot of Rufford, and to his monks eight bovates of land at Rotherham, together with the manor of the same, the advowson of the mediety of the church, the fair, market, mills, ovens, courts, and other appurtenances.
In August 1288 Henry, Abbot of Rufford, obtained a licence to cross the seas to attend the general chapter of his order, and to be absent until a fortnight after Easter. Edward I spent September 1290 in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Northamptonshire; on the 18th he was at Rufford Abbey, where he sealed a variety of documents.
Licence was granted to the abbot in 1291, after an inquisition ad quod damnum by John de Vescy, justice of the forest, to fell and sell the wood growing on 40 acres of his wood within Sherwood Forest. Source: From: 'House of Cistercian monks: The abbey of Rufford', A History of the County of Nottingham: Volume 2 (1910), pp. 101-05. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=40087. Date accessed: 13 August 2007.
Rotherham remained in the possession of the monks of that house until the dissolution of the monasteries, when Henry VIII. granted it to the Earl of Shrewsbury , from whom it hath descended, together with Kimberworth manor, to the present lord and impropriator, Lord Howard of Effingham, a collateral descendant of the illustrious Howards, Dukes of Norfolk.
During the civil wars in the reign of Charles I, Rotherham embraced the popular cause, but in 1643, it was reduced to subjection by William Cavendish, who was afterwards created Duke of Newcastle. After the siege of Sheffield, it fell into the hands of the parliamentarians
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