At the time of the Domesday Survey of William the Conqueror, Chatsworth belonged to the Crown, and was held by William Peverel, the entry being as follows: “In Langlie and Chetesuorde, Leuenot and Chetel had ten ox-gangs of land for geld [land for ten oxen]. This belonged to Ednesoure. William Pevrel keeps them for the king. Five villanes and two bordars have two ploughs and one acre of meadow there. Wood, pasturable, one mile in length and one in breadth, and a little underwood. In the time of King Edward it was worth twenty shillings; now, sixteen shillings.” The name of _Chetesuorde_, now altered into Chatsworth, was doubtless originally _Chetelsuorde_, from the name of one of its Saxon owners, Chetel. After the Peverels, the manor of Chatsworth was held by the family of Leche, who had long been settled there before they became possessed of the manor, and who held it for several generations. In the reign of Edward III. one member of this family, John Leche, of Chatsworth, whose father is said to have been of Carden (a line continued by a younger son), was one of the surgeons to the king. In the reign of Henry IV. Sir Roger Leche, knight, held, among other property, lands at Glossop. They also held, among others, the manors of Totley. Shipley, Willersley, Cromford, and the prebendal manor of Sawley. John Leche, surgeon to Edward III., was, it appears, grantee of Castle Warin and other lands, and had a son, Daniel Leche, whose son, John Leche, married Lucy de Cawarden, and thus became possessed of the manor of Carden. The family of Leche of Chatsworth became extinct in the reign of Edward VI., by the death of Francis Leche, who had, however, previously sold this manor to the Agards. One of the co-heiresses of Ralph Leche, of Chatsworth, uncle to Francis, married Thomas Kniveton, of Mercaston, father of Sir William and grandfather of Sir Gilbert Kniveton; another married a Wingfield, and the third espoused Slater, of Sutton, in the county of Lincoln. Francis Leche, to whom we have referred, married Alice, daughter of John Hardwick, of Hardwick, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Leake, of Hasland, a branch of the Leakes, Earls of Scarsdale. This Alice, on the death of her only brother, John Hardwick, without issue, became one of his co-heiresses, with her three sisters—Mary, who married, first, Wingfield, and, second, Pollard, of Devonshire; Jane, married to Godfrey Bosville, of Gunthwaite; and Elizabeth, better known as “Bess of Hardwick,” who married, first, Robert Barley, of Barley—second, Sir William Cavendish—third, Sir William St. Loe—and fourth, Gilbert, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury. This Francis Leche, as has just been stated, sold the manor and estates of Chatsworth to Agard, who shortly afterwards resold it to Sir William Cavendish, the husband of “Bess of Hardwick,” and, consequently, the brother-in-law of Alice Leche.