Manor of Bicton

Porter

In the Exchequer version of the Domesday Book of 1086, the manor of Bechetone was listed as the 1st of the 16 holdings unded the heading Terrae Servientium Regis ("Lands of the King's servants"). It was held in-chief from the king (by service unknown) by Wills Porto, that is "William the Porter", meaning "gatekeeper" (from the Latin porta a gate). In the Exon version of Domesday Book however this manor is listed with the same tenant, but under the heading Terra Nicolai Balistarii ("Land of Nicholas the Bowman"), thus William held not as a tenant-in-chief but as a mesne tenant from Nicholas. Nicholas also held the manors of Webbery, Greenslinch, Stoketeignhead, Rocombe, Ogwell, Holbeam, Bagtor, Ideford, Staplehill, Buckland-in-the-Moor, Aller and possibly Northleigh. It appears that the Exchequer version of Domesday Book corrected the Exon positioning to show William the Porter as a servant and tenant-in-chief of the king.

Janitor

In the reign of King Henry I (1100–1135) the manor of Bicton was granted by the king to John Janitor, who held the manor by the feudal tenure of grand serjeanty requiring him to provide a county jail, which was an honourable position of trust. The Latin noun Janitor means "door-keeper", generally understood in the sense janitor carceris, "door-keeper of a jail". Thus the tenant took his surname from his form of tenure. The prison was later transferred to a building beneath Exeter Castle in the county capital Exeter, (see Exeter Prison), but the feudal tenant of Bicton was nevertheless for many centuries required to meet part of the repair and maintenance costs of the newly sited jail. The Devon topographer John Swete (died 1821) stated that Dennis Rolle Esq. (died 1797), the proprietor of Bicton at the time of his visit, had paid the sum of £1,000 to the Treasury to be released in perpetuity from his vestigial feudal liabilities. The release was effected by an Act of Parliament in 1787, Public Act, 27 George III, c. 59 summarised as:

"An Act for making and declaring the Gaol for the County of Devon, called the High Gaol, a Public and Common Gaol; and for discharging Denys Rolle and John Rolle Esquires, and their respective Heirs and Assigns, from the Office of Keeper of the said Gaol; and for improving and enlarging the same or building a new one; and also for taking down the Chapel in the Castle of Exeter; and for other Purposes therein mentioned".

John Janitor was followed by his son Roger and then Roger's sons William and John.

Alabaster

During the reign of King Edward I (1272–1307) the manor of Bicton passed to Galfride la Balister, (alias Alabaster, Arblaster and the Latinised form Balistarius, meaning "the Bowman", as in the case of the Domesday Book tenant Nicholas the Bowman) the husband of the daughter of the last in the male line of the Janitor family of Bicton. The canting arms of the family of Alabaster of Bicton were: Azure, three cross-bows bent or. He held by the same tenure and held elsewhere by the grand-sergeanty, as suggested by his name, to "attend the king with his cross-bow and arrows in hunting". Raph la Balister was the tenant in 1229 and was followed by Galfride, Reginald, Galfride, Richard (died 1318) whose son was Walter. Walter la Balister left three children:

Raph Alabaster (died 1351), died without children

Alis Alabaster, died without children

Agnes Alabaster, who married husband unknown and left a daughter and heiress named Joan, who married Raph Sachevill (died 1395)

Sachvill

Raph Sachevill (died 1395) married Joan, the heiress of Bicton. His son and heir was John Sachvill, whose grandson was the last in the male line and left daughters as his co-heiresses. One of the daughters, Johanna Sachville, married John Copleston (died 1497).

Coppleston

Henry Copleston (born 1473), "of Bicton", son and heir of John Copleston (died 1497) inherited Bicton from his mother Johanna Sachville. The Coplestone family took its name from the Devon manor of Copplestone. Pole (died 1635) states that the earliest record of this family he was able to find was in a deed dated during the reign of King Edward II (1307–1327). The great antiquity of this family thus seems somewhat overstated in the traditional Devon rhyme, dismissed by Hoskins as containing "not a word of truth":

"Crocker, Cruwys and Copplestone, When The Conqueror came were all at home".

The exact relationship of the Bicton family to the several Copleston branches of Copleston, Bowden, Instow Upton Pyne, Kingdon and Woodland is not known. Henry's son was Charles Copleston, who married Anne Reigny, the daughter and sole-heiress of Richard Reigny of Eggesford. The family thenceforth made their seat at Eggesford and Charles sold the manor of Bicton to Sir Robert Denys (1525–1592) of Holcombe Burnell

Denys

Bicton was purchased from the Copplestones by Sir Robert Denys (1525–1592), MP, who built a mansion house near the site of the present Orangery, now within the Bicton Botanical Gardens. He was the son of Sir Thomas Denys (died 1561) of Holcombe Burnell, Sheriff Of Devon, Privy Councillor and Chancellor to Anne of Cleves. He received a royal licence to empark, and stocked his new park with deer. He added formal gardens with slopes, terraces and parallelogram ponds. His son Sir Thomas Denys (1559–1613) married Anne Paulet, daughter of William Paulet, 3rd Marquis of Winchester and had issue two daughters, co-heiresses. The eldest was Anne Denys, who by her marriage to Sir Henry Rolle (died 1616) of Stevenstone, brought Bicton to the Rolle family. The younger daughter Margaret Denys (died 1649) married Sir Arthur Mainwaring of Ightfield, Shropshire, carver to Prince Henry, eldest son of King James I.

Rolle

Dennis I Rolle (1614–1638)]] was the son and heir of Sir Henry Rolle and Anne Denys, and was buried at Bicton. His elaborate tomb monument with heraldic achievement is contained within the Rolle Mausoleum, the remnant of the former Parish Church of Bicton to the immediate east of which stands the new church of St Mary built in 1850. The Mausoleum is the private property of Lord Clinton and is not open to the public. The inscription on his monument is as follows:

The remains of Dennis Rolle Esq.
His earthly part within this tombe doth reste
Who kept a court of honour in his breast
Birth, beauty, wit and wisdom sat as Peeres
Till Death mistook his virtues for his yeares
Or else Heaven envy'd Earth so rich a treasure
Wherein too fine the ware too scant the measure
His mournefull wife her love to shew in part
This tombe built here a better in her heart
Sweet babe his hopful heyre (Heav'n grant this boon)
Live but so well but oh! dye not so soon.

Obiit anno D(omi)ni 1638 Aetatis 24 Reliquit filium unum aes quinque

His widow's wish was not met and the couple's son Dennis died soon after his father, leaving only daughters who were excluded from the inheritance by entail. The manor of Bicton, together with all the other Rolle estates including Stevenstone then passed to Henry Rolle (1605–47) of Beam, near Torrington, the elder son of John Rolle (1563-post 1628), MP, the uncle of Sir Henry Rolle (died 1617). He himself died without children and the Rolle estates, now increased by the addition of Beam, devolved following his death in 1647 upon his closest male cousin, 21-year-old Sir John Rolle (1626–1706), MP, of Marrais in the parish of St Mary Week, Cornwall. He was immediately thereupon married to his young cousin Florence Rolle of Bicton, one of the surviving daughters of Denys Rolle. Thus his claim to the Inheritance of Rolle of Stevenstone and Bicton was strengthened and consolidated. The estates stayed in the hands of his descendants until the death of his great-great-grandson John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (1750–1842), who as a young man lived at nearby Tidwell House, East Budleigh, and who died at Bicton House aged 86. His elaborate monument designed by Pugin exists in the Rolle Mausoleum next to the Victorian parish church.

Trefusis, Barons Clinton

In 1822 at the age of 66 the childless Baron Rolle married, as his second wife, his very distant cousin the 28-year-old Louisa Trefusis (died 1885). Whilst Rolle himself was descended from George Rolle (died 1573), the second son of the founder of the family, George Rolle of Stevenstone (died 1552), MP for Barnstaple, Louisa was descended from his 4th son Henry Rolle, who had married Margaret Yeo, the heiress of Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe, Devon. Henry Rolle's great-grandson Robert Rolle (died 1660), MP, of Heanton Satchville, had married Lady Arabella Clinton, one of the two co-heiresses of their nephew Edward Clinton, 13th Baron Clinton and 5th Earl of Lincoln. On the extinction of the senior line of the Rolle-Clinton union on the death of George Walpole (died 1791), 16th Baron Clinton, their heir became the descendants of their daughter Bridget Rolle (1648–1721) who had married in 1672 Francis Trefusis of the manor of Trefusis in Cornwall. Louisa Trefusis, the second wife of Baron Rolle, was 5th in descent from Francis Trefusis and Bridget Rolle, being the daughter of Robert George William Trefusis (1764–1797), 17th Baron Clinton, of Trefusis, Cornwall. A marble bust of Louisa exists in the Orangery at Bicton. Louisa and Rolle shared a love of gardening and created the grand landscaped garden at Bicton, now open to the public as Bicton Park Botanical Gardens. An American traveller Elihu Burritt visited Bicton in 1864 and described her hostess in terms of great praise:

"This lady is a remarkable woman, without equal or like in England...she is a female rival of Alexander the Great. The world that the Grecian conqueror subjugated was a small affair in space compared with the two hemispheres which this English lady has taken by the hair of the head and bound to her chair of state. It seems to have been her ambition for nearly half a century to do what was never done before by man or woman in filling her great park and gardens with a collection of trees and shrubs that should be to them what the British Museum is to the relics of antiquity and the literature of all ages".

Adopted heir

Rolle's second marriage also produced no children, and at his death in 1842 Rolle decided to appoint as his heir Louisa's younger nephew, the six-year-old Hon. Mark George Kerr Trefusis (1836–1907), the younger brother of Charles Trefusis (1834–1904) 20th Baron Clinton. Whether his marriage to Louise had been by chance or design, in fact the Trefusis Barons Clinton would have had an excellent claim to be his closest kin and legal heirs. Thus Rolle had followed his family's ancient practice of keeping the estates "in the family". His will required his young heir to change his name to Rolle, which he duly performed, and to adopt the Rolle arms in lieu of those of Trefusis. However, his design to revive the Rolle family was ultimately unsuccessful as Mark Rolle produced only two daughters and no son, and the Rolle inheritance passed to his male heir, his nephew, Charles John Robert Trefusis (1863–1957), 21st Baron Clinton.

Current ownership

The mansion house was sold by Lord Clinton to Devon County Council and is now Bicton College of Agriculture. The Botanical Gardens were restored by Lord Clinton to their pre-war splendour and opened to the public in 1963. In 1986 he gave them to a charitable trust which sold the gardens to Simon and Valerie Lister, a Devon couple from a farming background who have turned it into a commercial visitor attraction named Bicton Park Botanical Gardens, claimed to be "Devon's most magnificent historic gardens". However, as for the rest of the land comprising the former manor of Bicton, this remains in the ownership of Clinton Devon Estates, owned by Baron Clinton. Part is operated as an equestrian venue known as Bicton Arena (50.6664°N 3.3171°W / 50.6664; -3.3171 (Bicton Arena, Devon)).