The grant was confirmed by a royal charter, in which Henry III. laid stress on the principle that the manor was inalienable from the crown. The lordship and manor seem to have been in different hands from the later part of the reign of Henry II. to this period; but under Prince Edward and Earl John they seem to have been reunited.[48] Earl John died in 1304, and the lordship escheated to the Crown. It was then granted to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who held it till his death in 1324.[49] Edward II. then granted it, or part of it—for here again there seems to have been a temporary divorcement of the lordship from the manor—to John, Earl Warenne, the younger.[50] But he first took care to preclude John from claiming it as his hereditary right by requiring him to quit-claim it to the Crown: this done, he allowed the grant. In 1338, shortly before John’s death, Edward III. gave the reversion of part of the tenement to William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton,[51] after whose death (1360) his son Humphrey was allowed to hold it. In 1363, the castle and town were granted to Edmund of Langley.[52] The manor was possibly retained by the young Earl of Northampton, and the grant of castle and town seems not to have included the soke. In 1399, the manor reverted to the Crown, by the attainder of its holder, the Earl of Northumberland, and was granted to Edmund of Langley. The soke also, on the death of Sir Robert Byron, passed into Edmund’s hands.[53] Edmund died in 1402; and castle and town, with manor and soke, were granted to his son Edward, Duke of York, who died at Agincourt. In 1420 they were given in dower to Katharine of France on her marriage. Edward IV., in 1461, granted the lordship with the manor to his mother Cicely, Duchess of York: his grant included the inn called “le George.”[54] On her death, the manor with its appurtenances was settled on her granddaughter, Elizabeth of York; and from that time till the time of William III., save for an alienation to private owners during the Commonwealth, it was regarded as Crown property, and held in dower by the Queen-Consort for the time being. The Earls of Rutland were stewards of the manor. William III., in 1696, alienated it to the first Earl of Portland, and since then it has remained in private hands, though not in the same family.