Axholme Before Vermuyden – The Land and Its Lords – Manor of Epworth
Before the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden arrived in the 1620s, the Isle of Axholme was a patchwork of manors, commons, and ancient rights. The main manors in the Isle of Axholme were Epworth, in the centre, and Crowle in the North. Lords of manors held sway over land and law, but when titles lapsed or estates were forfeited, ownership reverted to the monarch—an important mechanism that shaped royal interest in the region.
Manorial structures were the backbone of medieval rural life: the lord held legal authority, tenants owed customary services, and the manor court regulated everything from grazing rights to agricultural practice.
Across England, manors could revert to the monarch when a lord died without heirs or forfeited his lands. This was part of the feudal system, in which all land was ultimately held from the Crown. In Axholme, this meant that the Crown periodically regained control of manorial lands, especially when royal interests—such as hunting or drainage—were at stake.
The Isle’s governance was deeply rooted in custom. Manorial courts regulated grazing, peat cutting, and fishing, while the monarch’s agents kept an eye on strategic assets like Hatfield Chase. This legal and territorial framework laid the groundwork for later conflict when Vermuyden’s drainage disrupted centuries-old rights.
Manor of Epworth
The Domesday Record
The Domesday Book of 1086 provides our earliest detailed glimpse of Epworth, then recorded as “Epeuerde.” The entry notes that Ledwin had previously held eight carucates of land to be taxed, with land for twelve ploughs. After the Norman Conquest, Geoffrey de Wirce held the manor with two ploughs, eight sokemen, thirteen villanes and nine bordars working six ploughs between them. The manor also boasted eleven fisheries valued at five shillings and sixteen acres of meadow, along with wood pasture one mile long and one mile broad. The manor’s value had declined from eight pounds in King Edward’s time to five pounds by 1086.
The Mowbray Lordship
Following the Norman Conquest, the Manor of Epworth passed to Geoffrey de Wirce. During the reign of Henry I, it was given to Nigel d’Albini, bow-bearer to William Rufus. Nigel’s son Roger, adopted the name of Mowbray, establishing a family that would rule as Lords of the Manor throughout the medieval period.
The Mowbrays were an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful family with extensive estates across Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. Yet they made Epworth the centre of their activities in the region. The family maintained a manor house at Epworth where significant family events took place: Roger de Mowbray died there in 1266, and several generations were born at the manor, including a son in 1326 and a grandson in 1365. The manor house stood near what is now known as Vinegarth, south of St. Andrew’s Church, and remained visible until the eighteenth century before eventually being demolished.
John de Mowbray, 2nd Baron Mowbray (1286–1322), Roger’s grandson. John de Mowbray met execution in 1322 for supporting Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in rebellion against Edward II.
John had joined the rebellion of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, against King Edward II. After the royalist forces defeated the rebels at the Battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322, John de Mowbray was captured and executed for treason.
The Crucial Charter of 1360
The most significant event in Epworth’s pre-drainage history came in 1360, when John de Mowbray, Lord of the Manor, granted the commons to the freeholders and other tenants by deed, giving them privileges and freedoms over the use of common land, reed gathering, rights over fish and fowl, and such wildlife as could be taken by the commoners for food.
This wasn’t simply a generous gesture—it was a legally binding document that would have profound consequences three centuries later. The charter gave islanders the right to take turves and wood for fuel and building repairs, sods and clay to manure their arable lands, hay in season, and fish and fowl from the waters. They could use common areas for grazing livestock and for retting flax and hemp, crucial activities in the local economy.
Importantly, the deed also stipulated that the Lord of the Manor was relinquishing future rights to enclose these commons. This created a unique legal situation that would become critical when Charles I later attempted to drain the area and claim a third of the land.
When the Mowbray Line Ended
The last male Mowbray, John de Mowbray, sixteenth baron and 4th Duke of Norfolk, died suddenly in January 1476 when he was just 31 years old. He left only his wife and a three-year-old daughter, Lady Anne de Mowbray, who could not inherit her father’s dukedom as a female.
Edward IV’s Control of the Estate
As was customary, little Anne became a ward of King Edward IV, who managed her extensive estates. Edward IV quickly moved to keep this enormous wealth within the royal family by marrying Anne off to his own younger son, Prince Richard, Duke of York, in January 1478 when Anne was just five years old.
Parliament Overrides Inheritance Law
The truly significant moment came after Anne died at Greenwich on 19 November 1481, aged only eight. Normally, her estates should have passed to the rightful heirs—William, Viscount Berkeley and John, Lord Howard, who were descendants of the 1st Duke of Norfolk’s sisters. However, Edward IV was unwilling to relinquish the wealthy Mowbray estates, so in January 1483, Parliament passed an act that gave Anne’s lands to Richard, Duke of York, for his lifetime, overriding reversion to the co-heirs.
Final Reversion to Crown
When Edward IV died in April 1483 and the young Prince Richard (Anne’s widower) disappeared into the Tower later that year as one of the “Princes in the Tower,” the estates effectively remained with the Crown. Richard III briefly restored the Mowbray inheritance to Lady Anne’s nearest relatives, the elderly lords John Howard and William Berkeley, but after Richard III’s death at Bosworth in 1485, the estates came firmly under Crown control again.
