Out of this and another small grant the parvenu manor of “Knightsbridge and Westbourne” was manufactured. Besides these manors of Abbot’s Kensington, and Knightsbridge and Westbourn, another manor, called West-town, was created out of lands called “the Groves,” granted to “his dear and faithful chaplin, Simon Downham,” by Robert the fifth, Earl of Oxford, in 1214. By an inquisition, taken in 1481, we are informed that the Groves, formerly only three fields, had extended themselves out of Kensington into “Brompton, Chelsea, Tybourn, and Westbourne.” “The Groves,” now a manor, passed from Richard Sturgion and William Hall to William Essex. The Marquis of Winchester, Lord High Treasurer of England, purchased it of Thomas Essex, for one thousand pounds, in May, 1570; and the next marquis sold it to William Dodington for seven hundred pounds, who sold it to Christopher Baker for two thousand pounds, and it was afterwards purchased by Walter Cope for one thousand three hundred pounds, who attached the Groves to Abbots Kensington, which he had purchased. {30a} But besides the manors, which the Abbots of Abingdon, and Simon the priest, and the Abbots and Monks of Westminster, had so nicely created for themselves, another, called “the manor of Notingbarons, alias Kensington,” then “Nutting Barns,” afterwards “Knotting-barns,” in Stockdale’s new map of the country round London, 1790, “Knolton Barn,” now Notting-barns, was carved out of the original manor of “Chenesitun.” {30b} And from an inquisition holden in the fifteenth year of Edward the fourth, we find that this manor remained in the hands of the De Vere’s with Earls Kensington, when John the twelfth Earl of Oxford, and his eldest son, Aubrey, were beheaded. This inquisition states, that “John, late Earl of Oxon. was seized to his own use, the fourteenth day of April, anno regni 12 Edw. IV., of the manors of Kensington, and Knotting Barns, in the county of Middlesex, and that afterwards, by a certain Act, made in the Parliament, which began at Westminster, the sixth of October, in the twelfth year of the reign of King Edward the fourth, and by several prorogations continued to the twenty-third of January in the fourteenth year of the King, it was decreed that the Earl should forfeit to the Lord the King all the manors, lands, and tenements which he, or any one to his use had, and that the manors of Kensington were accordingly forfeited. The jurors say the said manor of Kensington is worth, in all issues, beyond outgoings, twenty-five marks per annum; and that from the fourteenth day of April, anno twelve, the issues and profits have been and are taken and received by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, but by what right or title they know not.” {31}