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The Honour of Huntingdon is the name given to a series of estates, a feudal barony, in the East Midlands of England, held from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries by the magnate titled earl of Northampton and subsequently earl of Huntingdon. It consisted of manors and holdings across eight adjoining counties of Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, Rutlandshire, and well as the manor of Tottenham in Middlesex.
The honour originated in the East Midland holdings of the Anglo-Danish earl Waltheof (d. 1076), son of Siward of Northumbria (d. 1055), who initially survived the Norman Conquest but was executed in 1076 after participating in an Anglo-Norman aristocratic rebellion against William the Conqueror. After Waltheof's widow Judith of Lens (d. c. 1086), the honour was passed to their daughter Matilda of Northampton. Matilda in turn brough custodianship to her successive husbands Simon I de Senlis and David of Scotland.
Custodianship later in the twelfth century passed between the families of Senlis and Scotland depending of Anglo-Scottish relations. It was partitioned by King Henry III after the death of Earl John le Scot in 1237, its holdings being divided among co-heiresses.
For much of its existence the caput or the chief seat of the honour was Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, particularly after the destruction of Huntingdon Castle by King Henry II in the 1170s.
References[edit]
- Moore, Margaret F. (1915), The Lands of the Scottish Kings in England, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
- Stringer, Keith J. (1985), Earl David of Huntingdon: A Study in Anglo-Scottish History., Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press