first owner of Adlington of whom history has furnished us with any particulars. On the death of Edwin the manor with other of his possessions were given by the Conqueror to that pious profligate, Hugh d’Avranches, surnamed Lupus, whom he had created Palatine Earl of Chester, and who, being more concerned for the pleasures of the chase than the cultivation of the soil, appears to have retained Adlington in his own hands as a hunting seat, for in the Norman Survey it is mentioned as then having no less than seven “hays” (deer-fences or enclosures in which deer could be driven) and four aeries of hawks. It remained in the possession of the Norman earls until the time of John Scot, the seventh and last, who died without male heirs, when Henry the Third, with somewhat indistinct ideas with regard to _meum_ and _tuum_, took the earldom into his own hands, deprived Earl John’s sisters of their heritage, and so sowed the seeds of discontent that produced a plentiful crop of troubles for King Henry’s grandson when he succeeded to the crown. Immediately after this high-handed procedure Adlington is found in the possession of Hugh de Corona, who would appear to have held it by a grant direct from the Crown, for a Crown rental was payable for the manor for centuries. He also held the superior lordship of Little Neston-cum-Hargrave, in the Hundred of Wirral, as well as lands in Penisby, in the same hundred, formerly belonging to the hospital of St. John, at Chester. By his wife Amabella, daughter of Thomas de Bamville, of Storeton, near Chester, he had, in addition to a son, Hugh, two daughters—Sarah, to whom he gave his lands in Penisby, and Lucy, who became the wife of Sir William Baggaley, or Baguley, according to the modern orthography, whose monumental effigy has lately been placed in the old hall at Baguley.[27] In 1316 Hugh de Corona gave the whole of his manors of Parva Neston and Hargrave, excepting a third part of the same held in dower by his wife Lucy, and the tenements held in dower by Margaret, his mother, to John de Blount, or Blound, citizen of Chester, in consideration of an annual payment of ten marks; by another charter, executed about the same time, he granted the reversion of the said third part to the said John, and in the same year the grantee was released from the payment of the ten marks, and an amended grant of the manors “in fee simple” was made to him, with the exception of the dower estates. On the 15th March, 10 Edward II. (1316-17), Thomas de Corona appeared in the Exchequer at Chester, and prayed that these three grants might be enrolled, and they now appear on the Plea Rolls, together with a separate one granting the reversions. Finally, in the 27 Edward III., Thomas de Corona, the grandson of Hugh, quit-claimed to John, son of John de Blound, all title to the manors.