The Origin of the Cunnington Surname
This file is a direct copy of a part of "Cunnington Family History", by Elisabeth Cunnington, printed in June 1978.
Elisabeth tells the story of the family which appears in my data starting at Gretton HUN and going to Wiltshire...FAM 54A et seq.
I have not examined or investigated her findings any further, but do not totally agree with her earliest assumptions.
I hope that Elisabeths family have no objection to my use of her work as part of the overall Cunnington Family History
I have to say that the piece you are about to read makes total sense to me regarding the start of the name Cunnington. If you
look at FAMILY 1 Exton you will see that since 1989 I have been trying to trace my line earlier than - THOMAS(1) born c1760, an
Under Game Keeper to the Earl of Gainsborough at Exton, and the next four generations of Cunningtons were Game Keepers, the last
one CHARLES (23) at Warwick as Game Keeper to Sir Richard Cooper before he was killed in 1917 WW1 at Arras.
To quote :-
The name Cunnington comes from the mists of Medieval history,and is derived from the place called Conington in Huntingdonshire (HUN)
- or maybe from the place of the same name in Cambridgeshire (CAM)(note that UK County boundaries have all have been moved so this may
not be strictly true in the year 2021
Reaney (8)says the name comes from King Town, old English Cunning, Cyning, in modern English King, and ton, town, fence, enclosure,
homestead, village , as Cyningestun or Kingston in Surrey UK. However Hassall (9) says definitely that it means Kings Manor, Cyninges tun
means royal manor.There are many variations of the name. The u sound in middle English was written as o to avoid confusion with n, hence Conington
or Connington (written) pronounced as Cunnington.
During the 13th century, Christian names were becoming common, and by the 15th century they were hereditary (9). "De" in front of a name
at this time meant that a person came from the place - but NOT that he was Lord of the Manor !
In the village of Conington HUN was Conington Castle..the Wiltshire Cunningtons liked to think that the family once owned this castle.
This does not happen to be true, although the history of the ownership of the castle and of estates in RUT suggests the link to the Cunningtons of
Exton. The known facts imply that it is more likely that the family name came from HUN rather than the village in CAM - however the villages are
geographically not too far apart and one can only wonder about the reason for them having the same names.
Conington Castle was a royal manor in Saxon Times. In 957 the Saxon King Eadwig granted 9 manse at Conington to his thegn Wulfstan (10). This was
in keeping with the practice of the Saxon Kings in the two centuries before the Conquest to alienate parts of their royal demesne land through gifts to
subjects (11)
These lands at Conington passed to Turchill the Dane, who died in England in 1039. HUN was one of the Counties under Danish influence at this time.
King Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) gave Turchills' lands to Earl Waltheof, who was the last Saxon Lord of Conington. Waltheof held many other estates,
among them the manor of Exton in RUT, and he was married to Judith, a niece of William the Conqueror.
Conington appears in the Domesday Book as "In Coninctune Turchill had 9 hides (assessed) to the geld. There is land for 15 ploughs. Of this land 2 and 1/2
hides are in the demesne. There are now 2 ploughs, and (there are) 26 villeins having 13 ploughs. There is a church and a priest, and (there are) 40 acres of
meadow. In T R E (see below)it was worth 9 li (and it is worth the same now). Of this land 6 hides belonged to the Church of St Mary Torny (Thorney - CAM).
Turchill held them of the abbot and made a voluntary payment (karitatem) therefrom, but the men of the hundred do not know how much.
The Countess Judith holds this land."
Some explanation of the above may be useful ! T R E means Tempore Regis Edwardi ..i e in the time of King Edward. The Domesday Book indicates very clearly
the policy of William the Conqueror,who considered himself as having come to England as the legitimate heir of Edward, his cousin, and not as a conqueror.
Harold was regarded as a usurper and he was called Earl, not King, in Domesday. William intended to preserve the Anglo Saxon and Anglo Danish laws and customs,
and the Norman newcomers were described as the heirs of their Saxon predecessors in all titles to lands !!
.....how often even today do we still see such fictions in an attempt to cloak a conquest with some appearance of legitimacy !
The geld was a general land tax dating from King Ethelred the second in the 10th century(11) A hide varied. In the 11th century it was about 120 acres in
the Eastern counties and CAM, meaning Coninctune was about 1080 acres. Each County in Saxon times was supposed to contain a round number of hides, and
the hides were used to calculate the land tax. The figures for ploughlands were conventional and artifical - roughly 8 oxen oxen made a ploughing team.
The demesne lands were the Lord's personal property and it was the villeins duty to use their own oxen teams to help plough the demense land on a certain
number of days in the year. Villeins were the villagers, the backbone of the manorial economy, and serfs were one step down in the class structure of the day.
Meadow land meant land bordering a stream and liable to flood, and was land which produced hay.
After Waltheof was executed for alleged rebellion in 1075, the Countess Judith continued to hold some of his lands, including Conington and Exton.
Maud, Judiths daughter, inherited the lands and in about 1109 they passed to her second husband David, son of Malcolm III, King of Scotland.
The Kings of Scotland were also Earls of Huntingdon. David I (1124-1153) (as an English Earl and King of Scotland) held lands stretching far into England,
to Carlisle and to Lancaster. His grandson, William the Lion, who suceeded to the Scottish throne in 1165, transferred the Earldom of Huntingdon to his brother
David in 1185, and David's son, John le Scot, inherited his fathers estates in 1219. When John le Scot died in 1237 his lands were partitioned, Conington and
Exton going to his sister Isabel, the wife of Robert de Brus.....NOT the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce,who was crowned in 1306, but certainly of the same family.
John de Brus was a descendant of Robert and Isabel, and he died in 1346, leaving four surviving daughters to inherit the lands at Conington and Exton.
The eldest daughter, Agnes, married about 1353 to a Hugh de Wesenham, and the other three daughters were put into Nunneries - but one of them, Joan, escaped and
married Nicholas Grene,who then challenged Agnes and Hugh's right to the property. After some dispute, the lands were divided with Conington going to the de Wesenham
family, and Exton to the Grenes.
The last de Wesenham, Robert, died childless in 1477, and his heirs were descendants of his sisters Cecily and Joan. Joan's daughter Mary had three husbands, one
of whom was a William Cotton. Robert de Wesenhams elder brother Thomas had made a Will settling Conington Manor on Thomas Cotton, son of Mary and William, and the
manor remained in the Cotton family until 1752 when Sir John Cotton died without male issue. ( Note that this family included the famous antiquary Sir Robert Cotton, M P
for Huntingdon 1604-1611, whose MSS are treasured by the British Museum Library)
The lands at Exton passed from the Grene family to the Harrington family, and ultimately to the Earls of Gainsborough, who own them today.
There are memorials at both Conington and Exton churches to the de Brus families
Conington is in the fen country, and there is a fen of the same name to the east of the village. The fen was used to graze sheep and cattle and it was not drained
until about 1639, and the greater part of it was not ploughed until the 19th century.
The village was visited by Elisabeth in 1976, and she notes :
It is a small village to the east of the old Roman road (Ermine Street), surrounded by flat wooded countryside. There is a range of hills west of the fens, on which is
a spur called Conington Round Hill, formerly Conington Down, and on this spur is an ancient earthwork, which (in 1976)has still to be dated. The Church is on Conington
Lane, near the site of the castle (12) a little way from the village. Also, close to the village is a mound called Bruces Castle, where Sir Bernard de Brus built a
moated enclosure soon after 1242. This was abandoned by the late 16th century, and Sir Robert Cotton built a new castle (date not known)on the present site near the
Church. Cottons' castle became ruinous in the early 18th century, and was sold in 1752 (after the death of Sir John Cotton) to Sir John Heathcote who had restored it
by about 1800 - the building remained then until 1972, when the present (in 1976) Heathcote demolished it as too expensive to maintain. Another feature in the village
is the Crown and Woolpack Inn, said (10) to have been frequented by the infamous Highwayman, Dick Turpin."
Bibliography :
8 Reaney..Dictionary of British Surnames, pub 1957
9 W O Hassall..History through Surnames, pub 1967
10 Victoria County History of Huntingdonshire
Volume 1 page 351 pub 1926
Volume 3 page 144 pub 1936
11 F N Stenton..Anglo Saxon England 2nd edition pub 1947
12 R Welldon Finn..Introduction to the Domesday Book, pub 1963
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