Lounsbury ante.] This is merely a regular part of the form of a grant.
Any enrollments of grants--such as those noted on the preceding
page--will give examples of the use of this phrase. Further, the form of
grant practically always includes a characterization of the grantee as
"dilectus vallettus," "dilectus serviens," "dilectus armiger," etc.




MARRIAGE


The wives of the esquires came chiefly from two classes--first, the
"domicellae" of the queen's retinue, and second, the daughters and
heiresses of country gentlemen. Esquires who married wives from the
second class frequently owed a great part of their importance in the
county to the estates which their wives brought. So, frequently in the
county histories occurs an account of some esquire whose family and
antecedents the writer has been, unable to trace, but who was prominent
in the county--sheriff perhaps or Knight of the Shire--as a result of
the lands he held in right of his wife. An example of this is Helmyng
Leget, who was member of Parliament for Essex in 7 and 9 Henry IV, and
sheriff in 1401 and 1408. He had married Alice, daughter and coheir of
Sir Thomas Mandeville and received the estates of Stapleford-Taney,
Bromfield, Chatham Hall in Great Waltham and Eastwick in Hertfordshire.
[Footnote: Morant's Essex vol. 2, p. 75; vol. 1, part 2, p. 179.]
Similarly John de Salesbury, who had received from the King a grant of
the custody of the estates of John de Hastang defunct, and of the
marriage of the latter's daughter and heir Johanna, married the lady
himself and held in her right extensive lands. [Footnote: Pat. Roll 292,