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 yet to examine and investigate 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 been moved so this may not be strictly true in the year
2000)

Reaney (8)says the name comes from King Town, old English
Cunning, Cyning, ie 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
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. T R E 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 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 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
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 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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