Note 217 — Chapter II · JOHN COUNT OF MORTAIN 1189–1199

R. Howden, vol. iii. p. 252. Some of John’s English lands had been seized before the council of Nottingham; no doubt, by virtue of the decree passed at the council in London on February 10. In the Pipe Roll of Michaelmas 1194 the king’s officers accounted to the king’s treasury for the ferms of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Dorset and Somerset, the third penny of Gloucestershire, and the ferm of Eye, for half a year (P.R. 6 Ric. I. m. 6, 13, 16, 4 d); but the sheriff of Devon and Cornwall rendered his account for three-quarters of a year (ib. m. 12); while the forfeiture of John’s private estates in Dorset and Somerset seems to have been dated from Ash-Wednesday, February 23 (ib. m. 13 d); a part at least of the honour of Gloucester, viz. Bristol, had been seized at Mid-Lent, four days after Richard’s landing in England, and the whole not later than Easter (ib. m. 16 d); and for the honours of Peverel and Tickhill a whole year’s ferm was reckoned as due to the treasury at Michaelmas (ib. m. 6). The king’s escheators rendered a separate account of a number of escheats in the honour of Lancaster and in the counties which John had held (ib. m. 2, 2 d); and the sheriff of Dorset and Somerset gathered in for the king a quantity of “arrears of debts which were owed to Count John for pleas and amercements of the men and townships” of those two counties (ib. m. 13). The commission issued to the itinerant justices in the same month of September contained an express order that they should inquire into and report upon all John’s property, real and personal, and all the moneys owed to him, to the intent that the whole might be secured for the king, R. Howden, vol. iii. pp. 263, 264.