ROCKINGHAM, (Northamptonshire) 65 cm. 83 mm. from London, stands on the r. Welland, and gives titles of E. and Baron to
the family of Watson, in which the estate is vested. It has a ch. sc. a Mt. on Th. and a Fair Sept. 8 for 5 days. Its
forest, reckoned one of the largest and richest of the kingdom, in which William the Conqueror built a castle, extended,
in the time of the ancient Britons, almost from the Welland to the Nen; and was noted formerly for ironworks, great
quantities of slags, i.e. the refuse of the iron-ore, being met with in the adjacent fields. It extended, according to a
survey in 1641, near 14 m. in length, from the W. end of Middleton-Woods to the T. of Wansford, and 5 m. in breadth from
Brigstock to the Welland; but is now dismembered into parcels, by the interposition of fields and Ts. and is divided into
3 bailiwicks. In several of its woods a great quantity of charcoal is made of the tops of trees, of which many waggon-
loads are sent every year to Peterborough. There is a spacious plain in it, called Rockinghamshire, which is a common to
the 4 Ts. of Cottingham, Rockingham, Corby, and Gretton. K. William Rufus called the council here of the great men of the
Km. K. John's son, Richard E. of Cornwall, was constituted governor of the castle, and warden of the forest, as was his
son, Edmund E. of Cornwall, who had also the manor of the T. which, after his death, was assigned to his relict, Margaret,
as part of her dower by K. Edw. I. K. Edw. II. gave this T. and manor to his son, John, when he was created E. of Cornwall
in Pt. from which time it went along with the said earldom, and still continues so, unless it was with the castle
alienated to Sir Lewis Watson, the E. of Rockingham's ancestor.