When visitors think of Hawkesyard today, they naturally picture Nathaniel Lister’s Gothic house or the later Dominican Priory. Yet four centuries before either existed, Hawkesyard was already home to one of Staffordshire’s most influential medieval gentlemen.
Simon de Rugeley lived during the reign of Edward III, a king whose fifty-year reign transformed England through war, government and Parliament. From his home at Hawkesyard, Simon became one of the small group of county gentlemen upon whom the Crown relied to govern Staffordshire. His career demonstrates how a local landowner could play an important part in national affairs while remaining firmly rooted in his own community.
Building the Hawkesyard Estate
By the early fourteenth century the Rugeley family had established their home at the medieval hall beside the River Trent. The surrounding estate stretched well beyond the moated residence itself, embracing farmland, woodland and pasture across the western side of the parish.
Simon continued to strengthen those holdings. Contemporary records show him acquiring additional land in Handsacre and Longdon, gradually consolidating the family’s position.
One royal grant was especially significant. In 1337 Edward III granted Simon permission to enclose one hundred acres known as le Haukeserd as a private deer park.
The park formed only part of the wider Hawkesyard estate. It occupied the higher sandstone ridge overlooking the medieval hall, providing both a practical source of venison and a visible symbol of wealth and status. More than four centuries later Nathaniel Lister selected this very parkland as the site for his new house. The medieval hall beside the Trent disappeared, but the park continued to shape the landscape that visitors recognise today.
Edward III’s Man in Staffordshire
Today the office of High Sheriff is largely ceremonial. In Simon’s day it was one of the most powerful positions in county government.
As Sheriff of Staffordshire and Shropshire, Simon acted as the King’s chief representative across the two counties. He presided over the county court, collected royal revenues, enforced the King’s writs, supervised parliamentary elections and ensured that royal justice was carried out.
If serious disorder occurred within the county, responsibility ultimately rested with the sheriff. Had a notorious outlaw such as Robin Hood been operating in Staffordshire rather than neighbouring Nottinghamshire, it would have been Simon’s duty to organise his pursuit and bring him before the King’s courts.
His responsibilities did not end there.
Simon also served on royal commissions, including the Commission of Array during the opening years of the Hundred Years’ War. These commissions were responsible for assessing the county’s military resources and ensuring that Staffordshire supplied the men, horses and equipment demanded by Edward III for his campaigns.
He also represented Staffordshire in Parliament. Medieval Members of Parliament were not career politicians but experienced county gentlemen chosen to present local concerns, advise the Crown and consent to taxation. Parliamentary service was another responsibility of trusted local landowners rather than the prestigious political career it would later become.
Taken together, these appointments show that Simon belonged to the small circle of Staffordshire gentlemen upon whom Edward III depended to administer the county. He was not one of England’s great barons, but he exercised real authority on the King’s behalf.
A Meeting with the King
One surviving record offers a remarkably personal glimpse of Simon’s relationship with Edward III.
Among his possessions was the King’s Pool near Stafford, held directly from the Crown. In return for an annual rent of two marks, Simon owed a ceremonial service unlike any other. On the King’s first arrival at Stafford, he was required to hold Edward III’s stirrup while the King mounted his palfrey.
The duty lasted only moments, yet it symbolised the relationship between the Crown and one of its trusted county gentlemen. Medieval land was often held in return for service, and not every service involved military duty. Some were ceremonial acknowledgements of loyalty and tenure.
Whether the occasion arose once or many times, the obligation reminds us that Simon’s connection with Edward III was more than administrative. The lord of Hawkesyard almost certainly stood in the King’s presence, performing a duty that linked his Staffordshire estate directly with the royal household.
Simon’s Legacy
Simon died in August 1349, leaving his estates to his fourteen-year-old son, Humfrey. The inquisition compiled after his death records houses, gardens, meadows, pasture, woodland, rents, a dovecote and extensive lands at Rugeley, Handsacre and Longdon. Together they reveal the wealth and standing of one of Staffordshire’s leading county gentlemen.
Yet Simon’s descendants did not remain at Hawkesyard. Within a few generations the family had sold the medieval manor and established themselves elsewhere. Without the resident family to preserve its history, the old hall beside the Trent gradually fell into ruin before disappearing altogether. Hawkesyard itself entered a new chapter when Nathaniel Lister built his Gothick house within the old deer park, followed in turn by the Spode family and, later, the Dominican Priory. Their buildings and achievements came to define Hawkesyard, while the medieval family who had first made the estate important slipped almost entirely from local memory.
As a result, Simon himself had to be rediscovered. His story survives not through standing buildings or local tradition, but through scattered medieval records—royal grants, inquisitions, commissions, parliamentary records and land transactions—which, when brought together, reveal the remarkable career of Edward III’s trusted Staffordshire gentleman.
Although little now remains of the Hawkesyard that Simon knew, his influence can still be traced. The deer park that he created gave Hawkesyard its enduring identity, and it was within that medieval landscape that Nathaniel Lister chose to build his new house more than four centuries later. Hawkesyard’s story, therefore, did not begin in the eighteenth century, but with the medieval estate that Simon de Rugeley established and helped shape.