The town was in ancient times a portion of the very wide possessions of Turchill, the last and most powerful of all the Saxon earls of Warwick. In the Domesday Book the estate is put down as containing two hides, or about two hundred acres of land, the value of which was £4. There is also a mention of two mills situated on the stream within its boundaries. Turchill’s son was robbed of this part of his patrimony, and it was granted by William the Conqueror to a Norman baron, Roger de Montgomery, who was afterwards created Earl of Shrewsbury. In those early days the town, or rather perhaps should we say the hamlet, known as Leamington underwent great vicissitudes of ownership, for although Roger de Montgomery’s son Hugh inherited the estates, his brother Robert, to whom they descended during the reign of William Rufus, called De Beleseme from the name of a castle which belonged to him, was declared a traitor, and all his possessions, including Leamington, were seized, and the latter was given to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. After a few years the possession of it passed to Geoffrey de Clinton, and was by him granted to Gilbert Nutricius of Warwick and his heirs, who held it by the service of half a knight’s fee. For some reason, however, it speedily reverted to the De Clintons, and Geoffrey de Clinton, son of the original owner, gave it to the canon and priors of Kenilworth about the year 1166, in whose possession it remained until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It remained the property of the Crown till 1563, when Elizabeth granted it to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. He dying without an heir male, his title became extinct, and from this period Leamington had many owners, ultimately coming into the possession of the Earls of Aylesford. Although Leamington in ancient times had its vicissitudes, there is little of interest historically concerning it until about the year 1784, when Abbotts made the discovery of a second mineral spring, which caused attention to be focussed on the medicinal properties of the Leamington waters. It is doubtless to the discovery of these springs, and others, may be traced the fact that the town in the first years of the nineteenth century began to be a place of importance and fashion. Long before then Camden, Speed, and Dugdale had mentioned prominently the Leamington Waters; and Fuller in 1662, referring to the same subject, quaintly observes, “At Leamington, two miles from Warwick, there issue out, within a stride, [out] of the womb of the earth, two twin springs, as different in taste and operation as Jacob and Esau in disposition; the one salt and the other fresh. This the meanest countryman does plainly see by their effects; while it would puzzle a consultation of physicians to assign the cause thereof.”