Grantham is sometimes said to take its name from the river, one name of which, as of the Cam at Cambridge, may have been the Grant. The Witham, which rises across the border of Rutland some miles to the south, and flows northward from Grantham, approaching the Trent near Newark, and turning aside to take its own course to the sea by Lincoln and Boston, widened into a small lake or marsh as it drew near to Grantham. The first settlement of Grantham must have been dictated by the sight of a potentially fertile valley. It grew up, so far as we know, neither round an abbey nor beneath a castle, but as a community of agriculturists. The church, which grew to such proportions in its midst, grew probably with the prosperity of the town; while of the castle, which stood on the east side of the town, between it and the river, we know nothing but the name. Grantham was not one of those fortified river towns, like Stamford and Nottingham, which played a part in the campaigns of Edward the Elder and his sister. And its first definite appearance in history is the entry in Domesday Book, where it is numbered with the King’s possessions. It had belonged to Edith, Queen of Edward the Confessor; and included within it there was a right of jurisdiction, granted by a nun named Ælswith to Peterborough Abbey, and now held by Colegrim. The Queen had a hall in the demesne, and the church and its property are mentioned. The history of the manor and soke of Grantham is somewhat complicated, and a full account of it is beyond the scope of this article.[45] When Edward I.’s commissioners visited the town in 1275, to inquire by what warrant lands were held there and privileges exercised, the jurors gave an account of the descent of the lordship, which indicates that the Norman kings, like their successors, treated the manor and soke as grants to be held in dower by their wives or daughters.[46] They said that Maud “regina et heres Anglie”—obviously Henry I.’s daughter, the Empress—enfeoffed William de Tancarville, hereditary chamberlain of the duchy of Normandy, of Grantham and the whole soke, to be held of her in chief, apparently by service of ten knights’ fees, as he sub-enfeoffed this number of knights. The chamberlain’s grandson, Ralph, took part in the rebellion of Normandy against John, and forfeited the possession. John then gave the town with the soke to William, Earl of Warenne, on whose death in 1240 his widow, Maud, a daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, was allowed to remain in seisin. At her death, however, in 1249, Henry III. resumed the property, claiming that the Earl had held it only while the King was pleased to suffer him; and in 1254, when Prince Edward married Eleanor of Castile, it was granted to him, the claims of John, the then Earl Warenne, being overlooked.[47] Edward, however, a few years later gave the town and soke to the Earl, to be held of him by the service of four knights.