Baulking

Extract from Skeats's “The Place Names of Berkshire”.

In the Vale of the White Horse. A contracted form. Spelt “BALKING”. (Other spellings: BODELEKING, BATHELKING (1286).) The Anglo-Saxon forms are BEDELACINGE, BATHALACING, BADA-LACING (various readings BATHALACING). Of these, the oldest form is BADALACING or BATHALACING, which must have lost a suffix, owing to its already being quadrisyllabic. The full form would be BADALACINGA, gen. pl.; of which the sense is uncertain, but it probably means “belonging to the descendants of Badala”, and BADALAC is probably a Mercian form of Beaduca, a name composed of the very common prefix BEADU (lit. “battle”), and the known suffix -lac (lit. “play”) as in GUDH-LAC. If this be right, BALKING denotes a place where the family of Beadulac settled. The form BATHALACING may easily have arisen from drawing an unnecessary stroke through the “d”; it first appears with a D in the form BADALACING, in capital letters; but it appears as Badacing in other places.

Five hides in BALKING (Bedelacing, Balking, Bedelakinges, x cent.; Bedeking, Badeking, xii cent.; Baddelekng, Batheleking, xiii cent.; Bauking, xvi cent.; Bawlkin, xvii cent.) were granted by King Edred to Cuthred his servant in 948, and were said to have been given by him to the abbey of Abingdon. Before 1187 the lordship had passed into the hands of the lords of Kingston Lisle (q.v.), the descent of which this manor has followed up to 1824. At Kelly's Directory of about 1847 gives Edwin Martin Atkins as Lord of the Manor.

In 1867 the 3rd Earl of Craven included in his Marriage Settlement the manor of Baulking and it may well have been that this manor could have been a subject of the 1853 Order of Exchange of lands in Uffington and Kingston Lisle between Lord Craven and Martin Atkins. Lordship of the Manor of Baulking carries with it freehold rights over Baulking Green subject to the ownership by adjoining landowners of sheep commons on the Green.

Rights, customs and incidents

If this be right, BALKING denotes a place where the family of Beadulac settled.
Lordship of the Manor of Baulking carries with it freehold rights over Baulking Green subject to the ownership by adjoining landowners of sheep commons on the Green.

Associated manorial documents / archive references

• There are no Manorial documents to be handed over on completion of this Lot.
• The Historical Manuscripts Commission and the Berkshire Record Office have no knowledge of the existence of any documents relating to this Manor.
• Lordship of the Manor of Kingston Lisle (associated ownership?)
• Ten hides in Sparsholt, afterwards called KINGSTON LISLE (Kingeston, Kyngeston Gerard, Kyngeston Lisle, xiv cent.) formed part of the royal demesne both in the reign of the Confessor and in 1086. This land, which was worth £20 and included 200 acres of meadow, remained in the possession of the Crown till the middle of the 12th century, when it was granted to the family of Fitz Gerold, hereditary chamberlains. Warin Fitz Gerold, the original grantee, was succeeded in 1157 by his brother Henry, the tenant in 1166. Henry married Maud de Cheney, and held the manor till his death in 1173, when he was succeeded by his son Warin. By his marriage with Alice de Courci this Warin inherited the manor of Harewood in Yorkshire. He lived till 1218, when his lands in Sparsholt were inherited, not by his daughter Margery, but by his younger brother Henry. His own descendants, however, retained an overlordship. Margery married as her first husband Baldwin de Rivers, and had a son Baldwin, Earl of Devon. His right was inherited first by his son Baldwin, who died without issue, and then by his daughter Isabel, who married William de Fortz, and had two and a half knights' fees in Kingston Lisle and Sparsholt in 1267. On her death her estates were claimed by the descendants in the direct line of Henry Fitz Gerold, the Lords de Lisle of Rougemont, under the terms of the grant made by the uncle of Henry Fitz Gerold, having passed meanwhile to a younger branch. In 1368 Robert de Lisle, Lord Lisle of Rougemont, surrendered his knights' fees here and elsewhere to the Crown. They were granted to William Montagu Earl of Salisbury, who was holding them at the end of the century. On the death of his widow Elizabeth they probably reverted to the king, and Kingston Lisle was thus thenceforth held of the Crown till the end of the 15th century, when the overlordship belonged to Lord Dudley.
• Margaret's daughter Elizabeth, who became the wife of Richard Earl of Warwick, succeeded her in the manor and barony. She had three daughters and co-heirs, Eleanor wife of Edmund Earl of Dorset, Margaret wife of John Talbot, afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury, and Elizabeth wife of George Lord Latimer. Kingston Lisle was inherited by Margaret and her son John in 1444 of the barony of Lisle as descendant of Warin de Lisle and owner of the manor of Kingston. This heir was his son Thomas, who died without issue. Elizabeth, his sister, survived her sister and co-heir Margaret and inherited the manor; her husband Edward Grey, accordingly had a grant of the barony. His son John died in 1505, leaving a daughter and heir Elizabeth. She married Henry Courtenay Earl of Devon, but died without issue and was succeeded by her aunt Elizabeth, the wife first of Edmund Dudley and afterwards of Arthur Plantagenet. Sir John Dudley, her son by her first husband, sold his reversion of Kingston Lisle in 1538 to William Hyde of South Denchworth.
• For three generations Kingston Lisle followed the descent of the Hyde manors in South Denchworth (q.v.). Sir George Hyde, who died in 1623, was succeeded by his son Humphrey, whose son Humphrey was in possession in 1674. He died in 1696, having settled the manor on his son John. John died in 1703 and was succeeded by his brother Frederick, whose son John held the manor in 1716. His widow Jane, with John Hyde who was presumably his heir, sold it in 1749 to Abraham Atkins.
• Abraham Atkins had a son of the same name, who left the manor to his nephew, Edwin Martin, with a condition that he should take the name of Atkins. Edwin Martin Atkins, son of the latter, was in possession in 1824. His son Edwin Martin was succeeded by a son and grandson of the same name.

Five hides at Baulking were granted by King Edred to Cuthred in 948 and were said to have been given by him to Abingdon Abbey. Before 1187 the lordship had passed to the lords of Kingston Lisle, and Baulking followed the descent of that manor until at least 1824. Edwin Martin Atkins was recorded as lord of the manor in about 1847. The manor was included in the 3rd Earl of Craven's marriage settlement in 1867; the supplied record also notes a possible connection with the 1853 exchange of lands between Lord Craven and Martin Atkins, but this is not certain.