CLAYTON is a member of the present parish of Stoke, though beyond the limits of the Borough. Part of the Township is distinguished by the name of Clayton Griffith, or Griffin, otherwise Clayton parva, and is within the parish of Trentham, to which it was probably annexed as part of the possessions of the Priory there. It comprised in the reign of Edward I. two carucates of land with other revenues, amounting to £2 1s. 8d.* which, with the additions presently noticed, were at the dissolution of Monasteries valued at the annual sum of £7.† Jeffry, son of Jeffry Griffin, died seized of 3 parts of the Manor of Clayton, II. Edw. I. ;§ and subsequently the lordship was held by the Prior and Convent of Trentham, under Roger de Burgillon at the yearly rent of 13s. 4d., according to a recognizance made by Nicholas de Mokeston, Prior, and the rest of the Convent, which rent John Burgillon, who was a Priest, and son to Roger, released, and Margery, his mother, confirmed by Deed, (Temp. Ric. II.)

Thomas Clayton, in 33 Hen. VI. also gave lands in Clayton parva, to Stephen, then Prior of Trentham, in

free alms.

Most part of the lordship of Clayton Griffith is now the property of the Duke of Sutherland, and consists of a large farm called the Hill, overlooking the town of Newcastle, and an extensive ley or pasture adjacent, over which the Burgesses have rights of pasturage in common, regulated by an act of Parliament passed in 1816 for enclosing the Town-fields belonging to that Borough, of which Clayton-field was part.

The township of Clayton, (or Great Clayton,) concern

See the printed copy of Pope Nicholas's taxation, page 252, where it is misprinted Cloxton.

+ Eccl. Survey, vol. 3, page 108. § Cal. Inq. post mort. vol. I.

p. 79.

THE TOWNSHIP OF CLAYTON.

521

ing which more particularly we are called to speak, contains an area of 734 acres. It was recorded in Domesday* (i. e. Claitone) as being holden in chief by Richard the Forester, and by Nigel, as his feudatory; and was afterwards incorporated with the manor of Newcastle. A family who took their name of the place were seated here in the reign of Richard II., but became extinct in the male line, on the death of Thomas Clayton, in 1633. By the marriage of Ellen, one of the two daughters, and heiresses of John CLEATON, (or Clayton,) with Thomas Lovatt, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, part of the estates of the Claytons came to the family of Lovatt, and in 1615, when the copyholds of the manor of Newcastle were surveyed, the Lovatts and Claytons together appear to have been proprietors of more than half of Clayton and Seabridge its adjunct. Part of these estates then belonged to John Clayton, who dying without issue, his nieces and co-heiresses, Mary, wife of John Wynser, and Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Lea, succeeded to his inheritance in coparcenary. This was purchased in 1785, by the late Thomas Lovatt, Esq., in conjunction with his father-in-law Mr.Unett; and this Mr. Lovatt, as the last male representative of the main branch of the Lovatt's, having inherited their estates, transmitted the whole, on his death in 1803, to his only child Anne, who married Hugh Booth, Esq., (nephew of the gentleman spoken of in our last chapter,) and left by him an only child, Mary Lovatt, now the wife of John Ayshford Wise, Esq., a gentleman descended of an ancient house in Devonshire, who occupies the seat of his wife's ancestry, Clayton Hall, a mansion venerable for its antiquity, and of which Mr. Wise has kindly favored us with an engraved view. The village of Clayton is delightfully seated on a woody eminence north of Trentham Park. The township is agricultural and pasture, and,

Page 249, a...

+ See Appendix, p. xlviij.

having neither mines nor manufactures, is thinly populated; but, being distant from the parish church more than two miles, is well entitled to the aid of that rich endowment for providing a chapel of ease for its respectable, though small population, who receive little or no clerical benefit in return for the ample tithe contributions levied upon them by their ecclesiastical head. The people of Clayton mostly resort to the church of Trentham, being rather nearer than Stoke, and have done so from time unknown, so as almost to be reckoned parishioners there. A church was designed to have been founded at Clayton in the time of Henry III., as appears from a writing of that age, which notices a license of Pope Gregory to Jeffry Griffin, clerk, to build a chapel and keep a priest on his estate at Clayton, without prejudice to the mother-church, or that of Saint Mary's and All Saints at Trentham. Whether this pious design was ever accomplished is uncertain, no traces of a church at Clayton having been discovered. About half the township belongs to Mr. Wise in right of his wife, the remainder to the Duke of Sutherland, the lady of Sir William Pilkington Bart., as representative of the family of Swinnerton of Butterton, and a few smaller proprietors. It is principally copyhold. Mrs. Wise's maternal ancestry, the Lovatts, were a branch of an ancient family, (De Luviet or Luvieth,) one of whom is said to have come in with the Conqueror, and of which the principal stock was for many centuries seated at Liscombe in Bucks, but became extinct by the death of Sir Jonathan Lovatt, Bart., in 1812. The Lovatts of Clayton were among the most influential inhabitants of the parish of Stoke in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. They appear to have frequently held the various offices of churchwarden, overseer, reeve of the manor of Newcastle, constable, tax-assessor, &c.; and we are indebted to their family receptacle at Clayton, through the kindness of Mr. Wise, for many of the ancient parochial and public documents noticed in our two last chapters.