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People who are born with the family name Antrobus are thought to be descended from a family who took their name from the place in Cheshire called Antrobus, which certainly sounds plausible. The earliest record to mention the name Antrobus is thought to be in the Domesday book entry where it is spelt Entrebus. An image of the original text is shown below
This entry gives following information about Entrebus in the hundred of Tunendune:
In Tunendune (Bucklow west)
Antrobus. Leofnoth held it; he was a free man. 1 1/2 virgates of land paying tax.
Land for 1 plough. It was and is waste.
Woodland 1 league long and 1/2 wide
Value before 1066, 4s.
There are in fact two entries in the Domesday book that mentions Entrebus, the other being Weaverham, the principle manor near to Entrebus in the Cheshire Hundred of Tunendune. At this time it is probable that the land of Antrobus was unoccupied as it is described as waste. So we can say that the ancestors of people called Antrobus were not original inhabitants of the township of Antrobus and must have moved there in more recent times.
Looking at the history of Cheshire it seems large areas of land in this county had been sparsely populated in the immediate years after the Romans occupation. After the Romans vacated the area the people seem to have reverted back to their original tribal communities, the main tribe in cheshire being the Cornovii tribe, although the population in Britain is generally referred to by this time as Roman Britons. In Cheshire the Cornovii began setting up petty kingdoms, as did many of the original tribal groups around britain, once Roman dominance had vanished. The largest Roman fortified settlement in Britain was in Cheshire, this was called Deva (today's Chester) but it was already abandoned by the time the Romans left. There is evidence of some farmsteads set up in and around Deva, but outside of Deva most of the land was probably dotted with small independent farming communities that did what they could to defend themselves. These are thought to have been difficult times and in the century after the Romans left the population is thought to have fallen sharply. With the arrival of the Saxons in the East and with other British (or welsh) tribes to the West and Norse and Irish invaders to the north, times must have been very tough for the Cornovii people. Their identity as the Cornovii tribe does not seem to have survived long after the Roman departure and today are generally remembered as being part of the welsh people putting up resistance to the increasing Saxon incursions. The land that became the township of Antrobus could well have been a farmstead by this early period. The name for Cheshire in Saxon times was Legeceasterscir, meaning Shire of the City of the Legions, hence encompassing the meaning of Chester's origins as the main Roman city for the Roman troops in the North West. In 616 a Saxon army led by AEthelfrith of Northumbria defeated a Welsh army at the Battle of Chester. This was one of the major turning points in post Roman British history as it signalled the beginning of the end of Welsh British independence in Cheshire, not long after it would become part of Saxon Mercia. The name that would eventually give us Antrobus probably arose sometime between this Mercian period and the Domesday survey. Over the following centuries the Saxons, Danes and Norse would intermittently hold sway over the area and the population would probably have seen the arrival of different incomers with the shift of power from one group to the other. And here a suggestion is that the name of the township could be derived from the personal name Andri or Endri and the word Buski, meaning bush or thicket. Andri may have been a Norse invader, or descended for one of the invading Norse. However the more traditional suggestions are that the name is either Latin in origin, or even arrived with the Normans. The latter is, however, unlikely since the Domesday entry suggests that it was already in use before the Norman conquest.
If the Domesday entry that is given above is considered, perhaps the most notable details it tells us about the township of Antrobus at this time is that 'it was and is waste'. This could have quite significant meaning because this usually means that the land is both uninhabited and unused. So now we know that the land is not even being farmed. One reason for this could be due to some kind of terrible devastation having occurred. Almost twenty years before the Domesday survey we know that such an event did occur that left much of northern England in ruin for over a century. This infamous event occurred in 1069/70 because there had been an uprising against Norman rule in the north. This had been led by the likes of Hereward the Wake and Edgar the AEtheling who had planned to ally themselves with the Danes and overthrow William. In rage William had led a scorched earth campaign throughout much of the north country effectively destroying everything in his path. This became known as the Harrying of the North and resulted in much of the area becoming depopulated. A 12th century account by Orderic Vitalis says:
"The King stopped at nothing to hunt his enemies. He cut down many people and destroyed homes and land. Nowhere else had he shown such cruelty. This made a
real change.
To his shame, William made no effort to control his fury, punishing the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned
to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of hunger.
I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him".
Contemporary writings such as the Anglo Saxon Chronicles suggest that from the Humber to Tees, William's men burnt whole villages and slaughtered the inhabitants. Food stores and livestock were destroyed so that anyone surviving the initial massacre would succumb to starvation over the winter. The land was salted to destroy its productivity for many decades. The survivors were said to have been reduced to cannibalism. The harrowing of the north was so comprehensive that Simeon of Durham was to paint a similarly bleak vision of a devastated land, writing that
"it was horrible to observe in houses, streets and roads human corpses rotting ... for no one survived to cover them with earth, all having perished by the sword and starvation, or left the land of their fathers because of hunger - there was no village inhabited between York and Durham".
Williams's progress during the harrowing did extend into Cheshire and further south into Staffordshire. At the time of the Domesday Survey the counties of Northumberland and Cumbria were largely ignored due to such large areas being considered worthless, such was the level of waste at that time. Nearly two decades after the harrying the Domesday survey shows many of the lands are listed as waste, indicating just how severe the harrying of the north was. As a result of the harrowing and the depopulation of much of the northern half of England, large areas of the land that had been ruined by salt were gifted by the nobility to monastic houses. Over the years much of this land was eventually used for sheep farming to try and make it more productive. This helped to make wool the backbone of medieval England's wealth. Many lands in the north possibly only became populated decades later through a policy of enforced resettlement of people from the south.
Thus we know from the great survey that in the late 11th century Antrobus was probably an unpopulated land. However another clue lies in the statement about its history, It was and is waste - This would indicate that even before 1066 the land had been unpopulated. What ever the reason for the land being waste, the clue this provides is that if the ancestors of the Antrobus family had taken their name from the township, then those ancestors who took the name must have been more recently settled there, possibly only first or second generation settlers.
The earliest record that I have found that refers to someone bearing the Antrobus name can be found at the Chester records office. This is a Quitclaim dated about 1250, in which a Robertus de Anterbus is listed as one of the witnesses; other witnesses include Sir Thomas de Dutton, Sir Geoffrey de Dutton, then Seneschal de Halton and a Roger de Toft, so Robert of Antrobus was amongst prestigious company. This Robert of Antrobus seems to be the same person who is also listed as a witness on a Grant for the same family and it is dated about the same time. We know nothing more about him and we are left wondering where he came from, who were his parents and the biggest question of all, is he an Antrobus ancestor of contemporary Antrobuses. It is likely that this Robert of Antrobus may have owned the land around Antrobus and used the name for that reason; he may not have lived there if he owned other lands, and since surnames were not compulsory at that time, his descendants may not have carried on using it. But all this is conjecture. The earliest reference to someone bearing the name seems to be on some brief histories that can be found on the internet. A mention is made to an Edward Antrobus who was recorded in the County of Yorkshire in 1185, and another Edward Antrobus who appears in Lancashire in 1273. I have not found these two particular records and can not say if they are accurate. If they really did all use the name Antrobus, then it would be very interesting to know how they were connected, if at all.
The earliest Antrobus that is referenced as being an ancestor of people born with the name Antrobus is a William de Anterbus. The family historian, Reginald Antrobus, author of "Antrobus - the story of a Cheshire family" states "William Antrobus of Antrobus in the county of Chester, who is not improbably identical with a "William de Anterbus" mentioned in the Recognisance Rolls of the Palatinate, as having acquired 16 acres of land in Rushton, in the parish of Tarporley, from Reginald de Grey in the year 1360." The William Antrobus he is referring to is the earliest ancestor listed in the lineages produced by the herald's visitations in the seventeenth century.
Two lineages were drawn up during the heraldic visitations in the seventeenth century. The most detailed of these is that produced during the Hertfordshire visitations of 1634. This lineage covers seven generations back to about the middle of the 14th Century, this is an estimation since there are no dates in the lineage. Another early Antrobus linage can be found in the London Visitations. This entry, more or less, corresponds to a section of the Hertfordshire visitations with a few additions and omissions, indicating the two entries were produced by two related families, perhaps they were cousins. Both the London and Hertfordshire visitations took place about 1634 so despite the similarity of the two lineages, the two contributions were almost certainly made by different people. Both of the lineages include ancestors that were from Knutsford in Cheshire, which neighbours the Antrobus district. So both contributors must have been related. An earlier herald's visitation in Cheshire, made in 1580, does not include a lineage for the Antrobus family. There is only one reference to the Antrobus family in this visitation and that is one name in a list of names for all and singular Knights, Esquires Gentlemen, & Freeholders. The name listed is that for a William Antrobus of Chelford. This suggests that before the seventeenth century the family were yeomen and without the right to bear arms. No-one in the Antrobus family had the right to bear arms until Thomas Antrobus was granted that right in 1604 - see the article from March 2013.
So what does this tell us about the Antrobus name? It was being used as a personal name as early as the twelfth century, but these very early names do not seem to be connected with the later and better documented lineages. The disconnected medieval names are, it seems, recorded in different areas in the country, such as Yorkshire, and those using it seem to be of a higher social status. The later lineages are more rooted, being yeoman or husbandmen and other more lowly positions, where only one name is listed in the earlier herald's visitation. It is from these yeomen that most people bearing the Antrobus name today are probably descended. And when did Antrobus become their personal name? It seems unlikely that it was widely used in the early Medieval age, the name seems to only really emerge as a widely used name in the sixteenth century, and this suggests that the adoption for use as a family name would have a occurred no more than a hundred years before then....