Peuerell :

This family is said to have been possessed of Tinchebrai in Normandy : but the name is clearly not territorial, as we never find the Norman de prefixed to it. "Sir William Pole, speaking of the branch settled in Devonshire, says it was Peverell, or Piperell; and in Domesday we find it continually spelt Piperellus: Terra Ranulfi Piperellus. This does not, however, illustrate its derivation. I have a fancy—I confess that it is but a fancy—that, like Meschinus and similar appellations, it had a personal signification; and that it is a corruption of Puerulus, which is almost identical with Peuerellus, as we find it written in the Anglo-Norman Pipe and Plea Roll."—J. R. Planche.

Ralph and William Peverel are both found among the tenants in capite of Domesday, but very unequally portioned. While Ralph's barony comprised sixty-four knights' fees, William held one hundred and sixty-two, including the Honour and forest of the Peke in Derbyshire, with the greater part of the town of Nottingham. He was likewise entrusted with the custody of its castle, then newly built "on the site of the old Danish fort that had previously crested 'the dolorous rock' (as it is called by an ancient writer) overhanging the river Lean."—Ibid.

The Conqueror's singular favour towards him is easily explained. He was, by all accounts, his son ^[1] by a noble and beautiful Saxon lady, the daughter of Ingelric, whom he had given in marriage to Ralph Peverel, on condition that her base-born child should bear her husband's name. Another and more probable version makes her already Ralph's wife at the time this son was born. "Ingelrica (as Leland calls her), to atone for past vices, founded at Hatfield Peverell a college of secular Canons, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. Here she spent the remainder of her days, till her death in 1100, and was buried in the chancel, where her effigy, cut in stone, was to be seen (in Weever's time) under one of the windows. Her legitimate son by Ranulph, William Peverell, converted, in the time of Henry I., this college into a Priory of Benedictines, as a cell to St. Albans Abbey."—Morant's Essex. Besides this second William—styled William of Dover—Dugdale asserts that she had two other sons born in wedlock, Hamon, and Pain. But we will first pursue the fortunes of the bastard brother.

William Peverell of Nottingham, as he was termed, chose the site of his caput baronies as an eagle in the air might have done, in one of the wildest and most inaccessible recesses of the Peak. He built his castle on the brink of a threatening precipice overhanging the yawning chasm known as the Devil's Cavern, from whence a mountain torrent bursts forth in showers of spray. On all sides but one the rock is impracticable; and the single passage by which it can be approached is a narrow ridge, guarded on either side by a bold escarpment, which, in these degenerate days, few people are found adventurous enough to cross. This Castle of the High Peak—"the true vulture's nest of a robber knight"—gives its name to the neighbouring town of Castleton. Peverell's usual residence was riot, however, in this lofty eyry, but in the important Midland fortress that had been committed to his charge. Nothing more remains to be told of him, except that he was the founder of Lenton Priory, and died in 1113.

His son—a second William—led the men of Nottingham at the famous battle of the Standard, and was through life the firm friend and champion of King Stephen, with whom he was taken prisoner at Lincoln in 1141. His castle of Nottingham was delivered into the hands of William Painell. But in the year following, he was again at liberty, and had surprised and re-captured his castle, his soldiers stealing in through the underground passage since known as Mortimer's Hole. It was Henry II. that finally dispossessed him of his inheritance. He was accused of having, with the connivance of the Countess of Chester, poisoned her husband, Ralph Gernons, and "fearing," says Dugdale, "the severity of, the King for that foul crime, he fled to a Monastery of his own Patronage (which doubtless was Lenton), where he caused himself to be shorn a Monk; but being privily advertised of King Henrie coming that way from York, he quitted his habit, and privily fled away, leaving all his Castles and possessions to the King's Pleasure." This story, with the date 1155, is circumstantially given by Matthew of Paris, Matthew of Westminster, and several other authorities. "But how are we to reconcile it with the fact, that Henry, before he ascended the throne, most probably in 1152, and certainly not later than 1153 (the year" of Ranulph's death), gave to this Ranulph, Earl of Chester, the very man Peverell is accused of poisoning, the castle and town of Nottingham, and the whole fee of William Peverell (with the exception of Hecham) unless he, William Peverell, could acquit and clear himself of his wickedness and treason. This important document is printed at length by Sir Peter Leycester in his Prolegomena (v. Ormerod's Cheshire, vol. i.). Should we not therefore be justified in believing, upon this evidence, that Peverell was dispossessed of his estates, not for assisting to poison the Earl of Chester, but for supporting Stephen manfully and faithfully against Henry and his mother?"—J. R. Planche.

Hecham or Higham in Northamptonshire, the one estate excepted from the general confiscation, was, with some other lands, suffered to pass to William Peverell's daughter and heir, Margaret; and still, as Higham Ferrers, retains her husband's name. So far Dugdale; but here again Mr. Planche tries to prove that no such person as Margaret ever existed, and that Earl Ferrers entered into possession of this part of Peverell's property by less lawful means.

I have said that Dugdale furnishes William Peverell with three legitimate half-brothers, Hamon, William of Dover, and Pain. Eyton, in his History of Shropshire, maintains that they were not his brothers, but "of unknown origin"; and on the authority of the Monasticon, adds a fourth to their number, Robert, the last born. All (except this rather problematical youngest brother, of whom we know nothing but the name) were richly endowed.

Hamon, the eldest, married a great Shropshire heiress, Sibil, daughter of Gerard de Tournai, and was one of the barons of Roger de Montgomery; but left no legitimate children; and at his death (before 1138) appointed his brother's son, William Peverell the younger, and Walchelin Maminot his heirs, "though we have not," says Eyton, "a hint as to his relationship with the latter." He is conjectured to have been the son of his sister.

William of Dover was so named as castellan of the renowned fortress, always spoken of by old writers as "the lock and key of the kingdom." He, too, according to Eyton, had no heir to his barony but the nephew already mentioned. Dugdale gives him a son of the same name, styled "of Essex": but it is doubtful whether this was not the same person that he elsewhere enters as William Peverell of London, holding a separate barony.

Pain ^[2] was a celebrated soldier, "highly famed for his martial enterprises," who was standard-bearer to Robert Court-heuse in the Holy Land, and received from Henry I. the great Honour of Brunne in Cambridgeshire, that had been forfeited by Robert Fitz Picot for conspiring against the King's life. His wife, it is said, was Robert's sister; and he is generally believed to have been the father of the younger William Peverell (who became the heir of his two uncles), and of four daughters. But Eyton declares he was but another uncle, and that William and his sisters were the children of Robert Peverell, the youngest of the four brothers, and of his wife Adelicia (v. Mon. Angl., vol. ii. p. 601, No. viii.).

Whether son or nephew, on this fortunate heir, William, styled of Dover and of Brunne, centred all the possessions of the family, for in 1138 he held the three baronies of Hamon, William of Dover, and Pain. He is described as "a man of military genius, crafty and fierce," and very powerful in Shropshire and the Marches. "He had," says Ordericus, "four castles, namely Bryn, Ellesmere, Overton, and Geddington; and elated at this, he augmented the force of the rebels." This was when he raised his vassals in Shropshire and Cambridgeshire, and joined the first outbreak against Stephen. "After this, and in 1144 (as I suppose), William de Dovre appears in Wiltshire. He built a castle at Cricklade, subdued the country north and south of the Thames; harassed Stephen's partisans in every direction, especially those who occupied Oxford and Malmesbury. Similar was his work in the year 1145, when he caught the Castellan of Malmesbury, one of Stephen's ablest Lieutenants, in an ambuscade, and handed him over a prisoner to the Countess of Anjou, as the Stephanite Chronicler calls the Empress."—Eyton.

Two years after this, "sickened with civil war," he took the cross, and after performing many glorious deeds in the Holy Land, there fell in battle against the Moslem. He left no children, and his inheritance was shared by his four sisters, Maud, wife of Hugh de Dovor of Chilham, Kent; Alice, wife of Hamo Peche; Roisia, wife of Rollo de Harcourt; and Ascelina, wife of Geoffrey de Walterville.

Of William Peverell of London (who, by the way, is the only son conceded by Eyton to Ralph Peverell), Dugdale tells us only that William de Tregoz farmed his lands under Stephen, and that in 1186 they were in the King's own hands.

There must have been many collateral branches of this mysterious family. The name certainly continued in Shropshire for two hundred years. Hugh Peverell occurs in the reign of Coeur de Lion: Peter Peverell in 1255: and in 1331 Edmund, son of Robert Peverell of Pitchford, died, leaving his son John, then a year old, as the last male heir. Margaret, sister and heiress of this John, then of Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire, married William de la Pole. In Devonshire, the last Baron of Dover and Brunne and his eldest sister, Maud de Chilham, "did enfeoff the ancestor of Hugh Peverell of Sandford in the Lordships of Sandford, Haure, and Carswell." This was Samford-Peverell, "the auncyent dwelling" of William Peverell 8 Hen. II.—Pole's Devon. "Hugh Peverel de Saunford" was summoned to parliament in 1260. "Thomas Peverell of Park, who was also of Ermington and Sandford in Devon, was Sheriff of Cornwall 13 Richard II, and Sheriff of Devon 20 Richard II.; Richard, his son, was Sheriff of the same county 14 Henry IV.; and dying without issue male, his lands went in marriage with his daughter to Basset of Umberleigh, Botreaux, and others. These Peverells are especially memorable here by two crosses of moorstone in the highway, set up by them, still extant, and called Peverell's Crosses."—Gilberts Cornwall. Another Devonshire manor, Aller-Peverell, keeps the name, and in Hampshire we find Burton-Peverell. Andrew Peverell was one of the Hampshire knights summoned to serve against Llewellyn in 1264. "A family of Peverell held Bradford-Peverell in Dorsetshire of the Honour of Boulogne from the time of Edward I. till Henry VIII.: but bore different arms from those of the baronial Peverells.—Hutchins' Dorset. Finally, in Sussex, Tarrant-Peverell, and Sompting-Peverell, till late in the fourteenth century, belonged to the owners from whom they received their name.

Perot :

The genealogy of this family, as given by Burke, is among the choicest curiosities of its genus: and Banks very justly apprehends it to be "the fruit of a disordered mind." It is taken from a pedigree drawn up c. 1650 by a Welsh herald named Owen Griffiths; and prefaced by the amazing assertion that it had been "collected from the British Annals, which will bear record of the truth, and that it is no fiction, to latest posterity."—It is further dedicated "To the most Noble and Puissant Prince, Sir James Perrot, Marquess of Marbeth, Earl and Viscount Carew, and Baron Perrot:"—titles that never had any existence except in Owen's own deluded brain; and commences with William de Perrott, who built "Castel Perrott" near a town of that name in Brittany, and came over to England a.d. 957. He obtained some lands in Somerset, where he gave his name to the river Parrott (now the Parret) and laid the foundations of North and South Perrot. He was "constrained to leave the infant city" and return home; but his grandson accompanied the Conqueror, having married the latter's "nearest relative, Blanche, daughter of Ramiro, King of Arragon," recovered the estate in Somersetshire, and completed the long-interrupted building. In the next generation, Sir Stephen had to wife "the celebrated Princess Ellyn, daughter of Howell Dha, King of Wales, the Lycurgus or lawgiver of that land;" and their son Andrew, as "the descendant of a numerous race of kings, monarchs of Britain," claimed the kingdom, but graciously consented to cede his rights to the King of England, on receiving a sum of money, and the grant of a tract of twenty miles of country. He married "Jonet, daughter of Ralph, Lord Mortimer by Gladdis Dee, daughter of Llewellyn:" and "Lord Mortimer's mother was Maud, daughter of William the Conqueror." As Ralph, Lord Mortimer, died in 1246, this princess, at the time of his birth, cannot possibly have been less than one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty years of age. His only daughter Isolda was twice married, but on neither occasion to Sir Andrew Perrott.

The etymologists declare that Perrott simply represents the French diminutive of Peter. "Prince Edward used to call the favourite, Piers Gaveston, by the familiar title of 'Perot.' Perot Gruer is mentioned in the Rolls of Parliament. Henry Perot in the Writs of Parliament."—Bardsley's English Surnames. See also Lower. "Peret forestarius" is written in Domesday as the name of a Hampshire baron, but apparently only the Christian name. No Perrots occur in the county history of Somerset, where I only find that the river Parret "was anciently called the Pedred."—In Norfolk, Alan Pirot held six knights' fees under William de Albini; and in 1165 Ralph Pirot (no doubt his son) was the tenant of Robert de Albini of Cainho. (Liber Niger). At the same date, a Ralph Pirot held two knights' fees of the Bishop of Ely in Cambridgeshire, four of Geoffrey de Vere, and four of Henry Fitz Gerald in Essex. "If these knights' fees, amounting in the aggregate to fifteen, were holden by one and the same person, they point him out as one of considerable estate and consequence."—Banks. His descendant of the same name still held land in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire of the barony of Cainho in the time of Henry III; as well as Lindsell Hall in Essex; Sauston in Cambridgeshire; and two knights' fees in Kent. One of his sons, Henry Perot, had the custody of the county of Kent 6 Ed. I: "to hold during the King's pleasure:" and Henry's nephew Ralph was among "the Barons made att the Parliament holden at Salesbury 25 Ed. 1." But it does not appear that Ralph's son and heir Simon, who succeeded him 33 Ed. I., ever was summoned to parliament; nor can I find any further notice of his posterity. A Reginald Perrot held Plateford and some other manors in Wiltshire in 1370.

This baronial house is never alluded to in the preposterous pedigree already quoted, which treats exclusively of the Welsh family of this name. It was seated at Iystington in Pembrokeshire, till Hester, daughter and heir of Sir Herbert Perrott of Haroldstone, brought the estates to her husband Sir John Pakington, of Westwood in Worcestershire, who died in 1727. Two junior branches remained; one in Brecknockshire; the other at Gellygare in Glamorganshire; and this latter only became extinct in 1779.

One of this Pembrokeshire house, Sir John Perrott, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1583-88, is supposed to have been an illegitimate son of Henry VIII. "If," writes Sir Robert Maunton, in his Fragmenta Regalia, "we compare his picture, his qualities, gesture and voice, with those of the King, they will plead strongly" in favour of this suggestion. "His first appearance at Court was early in the reign of Ed. VI. He was arraigned of high treason at Westminster in 1592, and received sentence of death, but did not suffer, for he died five months after in the Tower. He left one son, Sir Thomas, who married Dorothy, sister to the favourite Earl of Essex, by whom he had one or more daughters."—Nash's Worcestershire. He had governed Ireland victoriously and successfully; and was "brought unawares to ruin," says Camden, "by some envious persons, who were too powerful for him, together with the licentiousness of his own tongue, for he had thrown out some words against his Sovereign." Leland includes in this family the celebrated William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, and Lord High Chancellor under Edward III., the priest "who was so in favour with the King, that everything was done by him, and nothing was done without him." He says in his Notes concerning William of Wickham: "William Perrot, alias Wikam, because he was born at Wikam in Hampshire. Some suppose that he was a Bastard, Perot the Parish-Clark's Son of Wikam." His biographers, I observe, do not accept this statement, but assert that "his patronymic, if such indeed he had, was Longe." At all events, he was of humble origin.

Picard :

This name, which, like Le Gascon, L'Angevin, Le Poitevin, and others, plainly denotes the nationality of the bearer, occurs half a dozen times in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95. There is a Robert Pichard of about the same date to be found in the Rotuli Curiae Regis, and the family is said to have been settled in Herefordshire during the preceding century. "That part of Ocle called Ocle Pichard derived its additional name from a family holding it soon after the Norman Conquest. Roger Pichard is mentioned in the Book of Fees made in the reign of Henry III. as holding of the honour of Webbeley; and in 1232 was a pledge for the fidelity of Walter de Laci, until the kingdom should be settled in peace."—Duncumb's Herefordshire. Miles Picard was uninterruptedly Sheriff of the county from 1300 to 1306, and twice served as knight of the shire. It was he who, according to Nash, gave its name to Sapy-Pychard in Worcestershire, which he held of Stuteville. Roger Picard, probably his son, was Sheriff in 1318 and 1327, and must have been the last of the name at Ocle Pychard, where Peter de Clavenhogh (Clanowe), who succeeded him, had a grant of free warren in 1334. Another Picard served as Sheriff in 1348 and 1349; and in 1356 Sir Henry Picard, Vintner and Lord Mayor of London, gave a great banquet in honour of the battle of Poitiers, at which both the Black Prince and his Royal captive were present. At a second and still more august entertainment, of even greater splendour, he feasted four crowned heads—his own Sovereign, and the Kings of France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with a great assemblage of the nobles of the realm. "And after," says Stowe, "the said Henry Picard kept his hall against all comers whosoever that were willing to play at dice and hazard. In like manner, the Lady Margaret his wife did also keep her chamber to the same effect." It seems that "the King of Cyprus, playing with Sir Henry Picard in his hall, did win of him fifty marks; but Picard, being very skilful in that art, did after win of the same King the same fifty marks, and fifty marks more; which when the same King began to take in ill part (although he dissembled the same) Sir Henry said unto him, "My Lord and King, be not aggrieved; I court not your gold, but your play; for I have not bid you hither that you might grieve;" and giving him his money again, plentifully bestowed of his own amongst the retinue. Besides he gave many rich gifts to the King, and other nobles and knights which dined with him, to the great glory of the citizens of London in those days." The Picards gave their name to Picard's Manor, near Guildford, where they were living at this time.—Manning and Bray's Surrey.

The name, however, continued in Herefordshire. "John Pichard was vicar of Ocle Pichard in 1446; the name also of John Pichard was returned amongst the gentry of this county 12 Hen. VI., and a branch of this family resided during several generations in the parish of Cradley; they bore arms Gules, a fesse Or, between three escallops Argent."—Duncumb. In Suffolk the Pykards were tenants of the Earls of Oxford. "Gilbert, son of Walter Pykard, 31 Hen. II., was in the custody of Gilbert de Vere, by grant from the Crown, of whom they held in chief Great Wratting, and was of the age of twenty years. Walter Pykard of Wratting, 14 Ed. I., held one hundred acres of land of the King, by the serjeantry of finding for him one footman, with a bow and four arrows, as often as he went into Wales with his army."—Page's Suffolk.

Pinkenie :

from Pinkeny, Pinkenay, or Pinquigny, now Picquigny, a town in Picardy, in the neighbourhood of Amiens, that in later times was erected into a Duchy for the honour of Chaulnes. A castle that had existed there as early as the eighth century became the head of a barony that gave its name to one of the greatest houses in the North of France, maternally derived from Charlemagne (Bouquet, Ord. Vit). Many of the nobles of Picardy followed the Conqueror, and among them were several of the De Picquignys. William Fitz Ansculph is one of the great landowners of Domesday, holding eleven baronies in different counties, comprising one hundred manors; many of them inherited from his father Ansculph, Viscount of Surrey, who had died before 1086: and from two other passages in the same record, it is ascertained that their name was "Pinchingi." Some say that William left no posterity; others, that he had one daughter named Beatrice, who married Fulk Paynell. The arms of this family are Or two lions passant in pale Azure. "Gilo frater Ansculfi," is also entered in Domesday as holding in capite in four counties; in Northamptonshire his barony of Wedon was called from him Wedon-Pinkney, and in the time of his grandson Gilbert was certified to consist of fourteen and a half knights' fees. He founded a cell to the French monastery of St. Lucien at his caput honoris of Wedon. His descendant Robert de Pinkeney incurred forfeiture by taking part in the rebellion against King John, who bestowed his barony on Waleran Tyes; but, like most of the other malcontents, was restored to favour and fortune on the accession of Henry III. Henry de Pinkeney and his son Robert were both engaged in the Welsh wars; the former had a writ of military summons to serve against Llewellyn in 1264; and the latter, "being in the King's service in Wales 10 Ed. I., had scutage of all his tenants by military service in the counties of Northampton, Bucks, Bedford, Essex, Herts, Warwick, Oxford, Berks, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Somerset:"—implying a wide range of possessions. He afterwards followed the King on his expedition to Gascony. We next come upon a blot on the family escutcheon. "Sir John de Pinkeney was hanged in 1292 for certain thefts and depredations, and his lands seized by the King, and delivered to Sir Robert de Pinkeney, against whom Hugh de Odingsells claimed them, together with half the manor of Long Itchingham in Warwickshire, by gift of Sir John. This Sir Robert has been generally considered the son of Sir John, but there is abundant evidence to prove that he was Sir Robert Pinkeney of Wedon, the Lord of the Fee."—Baker's Northamptonshire. He died about 1295, and was succeeded by another brother named Henry, who fought against the Scots, and had summons among the barons of the realm in 1296. Four years afterwards, we find his seal attached to the famous letter that was addressed to the Pope by the barons in the parliament of Lincoln, when he was designated "Henricus de Pynkeney Dominus de Wedon." But his barony expired with him. He was childless; and electing to make the Sovereign his heir, surrendered the whole of his lands in 1301 to Edward I: "Who, being an excellent Prince, many ill men made him their heir; whereas, according to Tacitus, a good father makes no Prince, but a bad one, his heir."—Camden. This would seem to include Lord Pinkeney in an ugly category. He certainly committed an act of injustice in the disposal of his property; for he passed over the claims of a younger branch of his house, that remained in Northamptonshire, and was then seated at Siresham. These De Pinkeneys derived from a second Ghilo, who held a fee and a half of the barony of Gilbert de Pinkeney in 1167. "In the Testa de Nevill, Simon de Pinkeney was found to hold two fees in Morton Pinkeney, and two fees in Sulgrave, Siresham, &c, of the barony of Henry de Pinkney; and in 1303, after the barony had been alienated to the King, Robert, son of William de Pinkeney, did homage and acknowledged to hold the manors of Morton and Siresham of that barony."—Baker. In 1337—probably on the extinction of the male line—they had passed to John de Elington.

Sherston-Pinkney preserves the name in Wiltshire. It is also found in Yorkshire. Dugdale, in his Visitation of the county, gives a pedigree of five generations of the Pinkneys of Silton-Paynell, commencing with Lancelot, and ending with Francis Pinkney, who in 1666 was thirty years of age. Their coat differed from that of the baronial line, for they bore Argent five fusils in pale within a bordure engrailed Sable.

Pomeray :

Castellans of La Pommeraie, Normandy (De Gerville, Anciens Chateaux de la Manche). "A fragment of this Norman stronghold still remains in the Cinglais, not far from Falaise. It is there called Chateau Ganne—Ganelon's Castle—a name given in Normandy to more than one such ruin, and commemorating the famous traitor of romance, who betrayed the Christian host

'When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabia.'

It is really the Chateau de la Pommeraie, and here, no doubt, was the original 'pomeraie' or orchard which gave name to the stronghold and the family."—

Handbook for Devon. Two of the name—Hugue and Raoul de la Pomeraie—are on the Dives Roll. Of Hugh I can find no mention in Dugdale; but Ralph appears in Domesday holding sixty manors de capite; all of them, with only two exceptions, in Devonshire, where Berry Pomeroy became the head of his barony. He first built the castle whose ruins nobly crown its precipitous hill. His successor, William, had a younger son named Ethelward, who founded Buckfast Abbey in the time of Henry I., and whose name suggests an alliance with some Saxon house, but the earlier intermarriages are not given.^[3] The elder brother, Henry, "taking heart at the imprisonment of Richard I. by the Duke of Austria," declared for Prince John, garrisoned his castle of Berry-Pomeroy, and chased the monks from the famous Cornish monastery of "St. Michael of the danger of the sea," which had been granted by the Earl of Mortaine in 1070 as a cell to its namesake in Normandy.

"Who knows not Michael's mount and chair, the pilgrim's holy vaunt;
Both land and island twice a day, both fort and port of haunt?"

This formidable natural citadel was strengthened and fortified by Henry de la Pommeraie, "that there he might be," says old Fuller, "a petty Prince by himself. But being ascertained of his Soveraigne's enlargement, and fearing deserved death, to prevent it, he laid violent hands on himself, as Roger Hovedon doth report.

"But the Descendants from this Pomeroy make a different relation of this accident; affirming that a Serjeant of Armes of the King's came to this Castle of Berry Pomeroy, and there received kind entertainment for certain days together, and at his departure was gratified with a liberal reward. In counterchange whereof he then, and no sooner, revealing his concealed errand, flatly arrested his Host, to make his immediate appearance before the King, to answer a capital crime. Which unexpected and ill-carried Message, the Gentleman took in such despight, that with his Dagger he stabbed the Messenger to the heart.

"Then, despairing of pardon in so superlative an offence, he abandoned his home, and got himself to his Sister, then abiding in the island of Mount Michael in Cornwall. Here he bequeathed a large portion of his land to the religious people dwelling there, to pray for the redeeming of his soul; and lastly (that the remainder of his estate might descend to his heirs) he caused himself to be let blood unto death." A local legend, on the other hand, asserts that he never left Berry Pomeroy, and when the King's pursuivant came to arrest him, mounted his horse and leaped from the battlements into the valley below:

"Out over the cliff—out into the night—
Three hundred feet of fall.

"They found him next morning below in the glen,
With never a bone in him whole—
A mass and a prayer now, good gentlemen,
For such a bold rider's soul!"

The same story is told of more than one German robber-knight, beleaguered in his lofty eyry by his infuriated serfs during the peasants' war.

But, though Henry de la Pommeraie thus forestalled his trial, Leland tells us he "lost the most part of his Enheritance." His grandson and namesake twice changed sides in the baronial war; but at one time was found actively engaged for Simon de Montfort, and according to the Miracula Simonis (App. to Rishanger's Chronicle, Camden So. Edition) the great Earl appeared after his death to this second Henry. In the following generation, another Henry was found in 1298 to be one of the next heirs of Roger, the last of the great house of Valletort (his grandmother having, as I conceive, been Alice de Valletort), and thus added to his possessions the barony of Harberton, and the castle of Tremarton in Cornwall. Harberton, however, with Brixham and another barony, Stokeley-Pomeroy in Devon, passed away to the two sisters of Sir John Pomeroy in 1422. An heir male remained to carry on the line; but "as to the Barony, whereof this Family was antiently possessed; I do not find," says Dugdale, "that after King Hen. III.'s time, they ever had the benefit of Peerage, or place in Parliament by it; though the Capital seat thereof, viz. Birie, so held by that service, continued to them; it being evident, that in 11 Hen. VI. Edward Pomerei Esquire was then seised thereof."

For more than a century after this, the Pomeroys were to be found at Berry-Pomeroy; till, in the reign of Edward VI., Sir Thomas Pomeroy wrought the utter downfall of the family by engaging in the Devonshire rebellion of 1549. He is described as "a symple gente," and his life was perhaps spared on account of his feeble intellect; but no mercy was shown to the estate. He was involved in ruin; and after a short struggle, was forced to relinquish the stately home that had been the head of the honour since the days of the Conqueror, and Berry Pomeroy was sold to the Seymours.^[4]

The dispossessed family continued till the reign of Elizabeth, "when the heiress is said to have married Penkeville. Younger branches were of Sandridge and of Ingesdon in this county: a co-heiress of Pomeroy of Sandridge married Gilbert, ancestor of the Rev. Pomeroy Gilbert of Bodmin, about a century ago. About the middle of the seventeenth century the co-heiresses of Pomeroy of Ingesdon married Thomas and Ford. Arthur Pomeroy, Viscount Harberton, is supposed to be descended from a younger son of the Pomeroys of Ingesdon."—Lysons' Devonshire. They also held Tregony Castle (said to have been built by the same baron who revolted against Coeur de Lion) in Cornwall, till the extinction of the elder branch in the sixteenth century, when, according to Hals, the manor of Tregony-Pomeroy passed, with its heiress, to the Penkevilles. Yet, "in the parish church of Cuby is a memorial for Hugh Pomeroy of Tregony Pomeroy (of a younger branch, it is probable) who died in 1674."—Lysons' Cornwall.

Lord Harberton's ancestor, Arthur Pomeroy, first came to Ireland as chaplain of Arthur Capel Earl of Essex in 1672, and received from him the Deanery of Cork with other rich benefices. His son, again a clergyman, was the father of another Arthur, who married one of the co-heiresses of Henry Colley of Castle-Carbery in Kildare (the elder brother of the first Lord Mornington) and represented the county in parliament for twenty-three years. He received an Irish barony in 1783, and a Viscountcy in 1791, taking his title from the old Cornish barony of the Valletorts.

Pounce :

or De Pons; the ancestor of the Cliffords; from Pons in Saintonge. "The Lords of Pons in Acquitaine were one of the most powerful families in France, and are frequently mentioned in history. Pontius or Pons, who in 1079 granted a church to the Abbey of Cormery (Gall. Christ, xii. 14) had four younger sons who went to England, of whom Drogo Fitz-Ponce and Walter Fitz-Ponce held important baronies in 1086 (Domesd.) Their younger brothers were 1. Richard Fitz-Ponce; 2. Osbert Fitz-Ponce, ancestor of the Veseys and Burghs. The names of these sons are mentioned by Henry I. in his charter confirming their gifts to Malvern Abbey (Mon. Angl. i. 366) and from the Monasticon (i. 365, ii. 876) it appears that they also bore the name of "Pontium" or des Pons, from which it appears they were sons of Ponce "of Pons."

"Richard Fitz-Ponce witnessed, with Bernard de Neumarche', a charter of Brecknock Priory c. 1120 (Jones, History of Brecon ii. 75) and was, as is generally known, the ancestor of the De Cliffords."—The Norman People.

It certainly argues an unaccountable ignorance of his own pedigree in some one or other of the Cliffords, that he should have caused the name they had adopted temp. Henry II. to be inserted on the Roll (see Vol. 1, p. 278), when that of their first ancestor Pons was already there. Clifford Castle in Herefordshire, built in the Conqueror's time by William Fitz Osbern, the first Norman Earl of that county, passed through his daughter to Ralph de Toesni; and Margaret de Toesni, in her turn, brought it to Richard Fitz Pons' second son, Walter, thenceforward known as Walter de Clifford. Their eldest daughter was the Fair Rosamond—Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda, ("the rose of this world, but not the cleane flowre") as she is called in her monkish epitaph at Godstowe, who became celebrated as the mistress of Henry II., and the mother of one of the greatest soldiers of his time (see Vol. 1, p. 323). The Cliffords continued for several generations in the marches of Wales, fighting the Welsh, and once bringing home a Welsh princess as a bride,^[5] till Roger, fourth in descent from Walter, by his marriage with a great Northern heiress, removed them to a fresh scene of Border warfare. Roger's wife was Isabel de Vipont, whose father was Baron and Hereditary High Sheriff of Westmoreland, by a grant of King John to her great-grandfather. She brought him four fair castles, probably all of them the work of Ranulph de Meschines: Brough, built to fortify the pass of Stainmore; Pendragon, that of Mallerstang; Appleby, the head of the honour, for its "central as well as strong and beautiful position in the barony;" and Brougham, to guard its Northern boundary. Her successors in this great inheritance continued to be for three hundred and twenty-six years High Sheriffs of Westmoreland; and her son Robert (one of the four knights of Aymery de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whose portraits are on his tomb in Westminster Abbey) was summoned to Parliament in 1299. "He was educated," says Sir Matthew Hale, "in the schoole of Warre, under King Edward I., as great a master, for valour and prudence, as this worlde afforded;" who appointed him Constable of Carlisle, Chief Justice of the royal forests beyond Trent, and Earl Marshall of England. Several of his Scottish forays are on record. In 1297, "he entered Annandale with the power of Carlisle, and slew three hundred and eighty Scots near Annan Kirke"; and in 1306, he, with the Earl of Pembroke, defeated the newly-crowned King, Robert Bruce, at St. John's Town (Perth). He received from Edward I. the castle of Caerlaverock,^[6] with all the lands of Robert Maxwell and William Douglas, but, "not willing to build any great confidence on these debateable acquisitions, caste his eye upon a more firme possession at a reasonable distance from Scotland, and this was the castle and honour of Skipton-in-Craven"; of which we find him possessed in 1314. He was killed at Bannockburn; the first often stout Lord Cliffords that successfully bore arms on the Border, and of one of whom it is recounted, as an exceptional case, that he died in his bed.

The seventh Lord married Hotspur's daughter; and their son and grandson both figure in Shakespeare's King Henry VI. The son—challenged by the King-maker on the field of St. Albans—

"Proud Norman lord, Clifford of Cumberland,^[7]
Warwick is hoarse with calling thee to arms!"

was slain by the Duke of York's own hand in that stubbornly-fought battle; and the grandson was the savage Black-faced Clifford, who, "partly from the heat of youth, and partly in the spirit of revenge for his father's death, pursued the House of York with a rancour that rendered him odious even in that ferocious age." His hands were early dipped in blood, for he was little more than a child when he began to take part in the ruthless civil wars, and he was soon noted and dreaded for his brutality. At the battle of Wakefield, Leland says "that for slaughter of men he was called the boucher." It was then that he captured the Duke of York's youngest son, the Earl of Rutland; and when the poor terror-stricken lad fell on his knees before him, his lips frozen and speechless with fear, and with a mute gesture implored mercy, Clifford struck him to the heart with his dagger, crying, "By God's blood, thy father slew mine, and so will I do thee and all thy kin!" He was himself slain the year after, on the day before the rout of Towton, when, "having put off his gorget, he was struck in the throat by a headless arrow out of a bush." He had married Margaret Bromflete, who brought him the title of Vesci (derived from William de Aton, Baron Vesci 2 Richard II.) and the Londesborough estates in Yorkshire; but land and honours alike fell under attainder, and the life of his young son was only saved by means of a disguise. The boy was despatched to the wild fells of Cumberland, and entrusted to the care of some faithful hinds, with whom he grew up, and lived concealed for twenty-five years, keeping sheep and watching the sun and stars on the lonely mountain sides. Thus, when Henry VII., on succeeding to the throne in 1485, reversed the attainders of all the Lancastrian nobles, Henry, tenth Lord Clifford, emerged from his retreat with the manners and education of a shepherd. But, though almost altogether illiterate,^[8] he had a good natural understanding, and was so keenly alive to his deficiencies, that he retired, depressed and humiliated, to Barden Tower in Craven, then a common keeper's lodge. Here he found the quiet and solitude to which he had been all his life accustomed, and applied himself to the only lore that had been familiar to him among his friendly mountains. "His early habits, and the want of those artificial measures of time that even shepherds now possess, had given him a turn for observing the heavenly bodies, and having purchased such an apparatus as could then be procured, he amused and informed himself by these pursuits, with the aid of the canons of Bolton, some of whom are said to have been well versed in what was then known of the science."—Whitaker. He also studied alchemy and astrology, and composed a "Treatise on Natural Philosophy" which he presented to Bolton Priory. But when, in 1513, the war-note sounded along the Borders, and the great Northern barons were summoned to gather their followers in defence of the country, the old martial spirit of his forefathers suddenly blazed out in the studious recluse of sixty, and the Shepherd Lord held "a principal command" in the army that fought at Flodden. He was followed to the field by the flower of Craven:

"From Penigent to Pendle Hill,
From Linton to Long Addingham,
And all that Craven coasts did till
They with the lusty Clifford came;
All Staincliffe hundred went with him,
With striplings strong from Wharledale,
And all that Hauton hills did climb,
With Longstroth eke and Litton Dale."

His son and successor was in every respect a contrast to him. While he had lived for nearly half his life as a simple hill shepherd, the heir had been brought up in all the splendour of Henry VIII's court; and in one of his letters he bitterly bewails the "ungodly and ungudely disposition" of this son, who had despoiled his houses and goods "for mayntayning his inordinate pride and ryot." He had come from court into the country "apparellyd himself and hys horse in clothe of golde and goldsmythe's worke, more like a Duke than a poore baron's sonne as he ys." He was soon deeply involved in money troubles, by what Whitaker indulgently calls "the extravagancies of a gay and gallant young nobleman, cramped in his allowance by a narrow father under the influence of a jealous step-mother;" and the method by which he relieved himself of them is characteristic of the age. "Instead of resorting to Jews and money-lenders, computing the value of his father's life, and raising great sums by anticipation, Henry Clifford turned outlaw, assembled a band of dissolute followers, harassed the religious houses, beat their tenants, and forced the inhabitants of whole villages to take sanctuary in their churches." One of the most pathetic of our North-country ballads is believed to refer to him.^[9] It tells the tale of "am banyshed man," who woos and wins a bride of high degree. He can offer her nothing beyond an outlaw's rugged lot: the daily and hourly peril—

"Even as a thefe, thus must you lyve,
Ever in drede and awe;"

and the shelterless greenwood—

"The thornie wayes, the deep values,
The snowe, the frost, the rain;
And, us above, no other roofe
But a brake bush or twayne."

But she will heed no warning—she will hear nothing of danger or of hardship. Betide what may, she must fare with him—

"For in my minde, of all mankinde
I love but you alone."

This faithful "nut-brown maid" was Lady Margaret Percy, who became his second wife, and proved a great heiress. On the death of her childless brother, Henry sixth Earl of Northumberland, she succeeded, by a family settlement, to the entire Percy fee, "equivalent in extent to the half of Craven;" and from that time the whole country between Skipton and Brougham—a distance of seventy miles—belonged, with one solitary break, to the Cliffords. Her husband was early reclaimed from his evil courses, and his outlawry clearly did not stand in the way of his advancement, for in 1525, two years after his father's death, he was created Earl of Cumberland. He also received from Henry VIII. Bolton Priory and some other church lands as a reward for his loyalty during the Pilgrimage of Grace, when Skipton Castle, alone in Yorkshire, held out for the Crown. The second Earl married the King's niece, Lady Eleanor Brandon, daughter and coheir of Charles Duke of Brandon by Mary Tudor, Queen-Dowager of France, and her father-in-law built the great gallery and tower at Skipton in 1537 for her reception. Her only surviving child was, however, a daughter (Margaret Countess of Derby) and the heir was the son of a second marriage. This son, George, third Earl, was of some celebrity in his day as an intrepid and skilful navigator, who made "nine viages by sea in his own person, most of them to the West Indies, which he performed with great honour to himself and service to his Queen and countrie." He was one of the lover-like courtiers of Elizabeth, appointed her own peculiar champion at all tournaments, and wore a glove she had once given him, which he had richly adorned with diamonds, in front of his cap at all public ceremonies. But though he had first sailed under a royal commission, she withheld from him any more solid recompense; and, as he wrote in vain appeal, "Is it not as I have often told ye, Madam, that after I had throwne my lande into the sea, the sea would caste me upon the lande a wanderer?" He had to sell some of his property, and having "set out with a larger estate than any of his ancestors, in little more than twenty years he made it one of the least." At his death in 1605, "there fell a great division in the family," for he left only one child, the famous heiress Lady Anne Clifford. The title went to his brother Francis, fourth Earl; but (by right of an ancient entail of Ed. II.) his daughter claimed the estates as well as the baronies, and prosecuted her claim (at least to the former) with unflagging energy for thirty-eight years. James I. tried to compromise the difference by an award that satisfied both her husband and her uncle; but the indomitable lady positively refused to subscribe or to submit. She was twice married; first to Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, and secondly to Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, and was unfortunate in both her husbands. "The first was a spendthrift, who quarrelled with her because she prevented him from dissipating her estate; the second was a tyrant, who distracted her by the savageness of his humour:" and she complains in one of her letters that her stately homes at Knole in Kent and Wilton in Wiltshire were to her "oftentimes no better than the painted abodes of sorrow." Yet it may fairly be questioned whether so strong-willed and imperious a woman would ever have been fitted for the yoke of matrimony. Unquestionably the happiest years of her life were the twenty-five years of her widowhood, when, the dismal period of family discord having come to an end on the death of her cousin, the fifth Earl, without issue male, she travelled down in triumph to the North to take possession of her inheritance. She found it cruelly ravaged by the Civil War. Six of her houses were in ruins; Skipton Castle had been "slighted" or dismantled by the Rump Parliament in 1648, and Skipton Church was tottering to its fall; but, with two rich jointures added to her patrimonial estate, she set bravely to work to "repair the breach, and restore the paths to dwell in." She rebuilt her castles in almost open defiance of Cromwell; and placed over the gate of each (for she was given to self-laudation, and never missed an opportunity of putting up an inscription) a full account of what she had done. She lived to be eighty-five, inhabiting all these residences in succession, "diffusing plenty and happiness around her" wherever she went, and keeping a generous and hospitable house, that "was a school for the young, and a retreat for the aged, an asylum for the persecuted, and a pattern for all." Her high spirit was unquelled to the very end; and flashed out in full vigour when Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary of in. 18

State to Charles II., wrote to propose a candidate for her borough of Appleby. She replied: "I have been bullied by an usurper; I have been neglected by a Court; but I will not be dictated to by a subject; your man shan't stand." She died in 1675, leaving two surviving children, both daughters of her first marriage; Margaret, married to John Tufton, Earl of Thanet, and Isabel, married to James Compton, Earl of Northampton. The latter had but one girl who died young; but the elder sister, on whom devolved the two great Honours of Skipton and Appleby, was the mother of twelve children. Four of her sons succeeded each other as Earls of Thanet; the last, Thomas, sixth Earl, claimed his grandmother's baronies of Clifford and Vescy; and that of Clifford was confirmed to him by the House of Lords in 1691. But an untoward fate pursued this unlucky barony. His three sons died; thus it fell at once into abeyance between his five daughters, and though the Crown then interposed in favour of one of them, it twice relapsed into a similar condition; and after passing through a variety of families, was at last granted to Mrs. John Russell in 1833. Her grandson is the present Lord De Clifford. The great Clifford estates, however, remained with the Earls of Thanet till 1849, when the last and eleventh Earl bequeathed them to an illegitimate son born and bred in France, who took the name of Tufton, received a baronetcy, and was the father of Lord Hothfield, the present possessor.

One half of Craven—the original Fee surveyed under "Terra Wil' de Perce" in Domesday—with Bolton, Barden, &c. (all now the property of the Duke of Devonshire) had descended, on the death of Henry, fifth and last Earl of Cumberland in 1643, to his only child Lady Elizabeth. She was the wife of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork and Burlington, who, in honour of this succession, was created in the following year Lord Clifford of Lanesborough. This title became extinct with his great-grandson, who had, however, previously claimed and obtained another Clifford barony of earlier date (created by writ 3 Charles I.) which went to his daughter Charlotte. She brought it to the Cavendishes by her marriage with William, fourth Duke of Devonshire; but when the sixth Duke died s. p. in 1858, it fell into abeyance between his two sisters, Georgiana Countess of Carlisle and Henrietta Countess Granville.

Unlike most of its compeers, this renowned house still boasts of a descendant in the male line, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. He derives from Sir Lewis Clifford, a Knight of the Garter under Richard II., who defended Carlisle against the Scots in 1467, and was twice sent Ambassador to France. Dugdale, and most other authorities, make him the son of Roger, fifth Lord Clifford by his wife Maud de Beauchamp; but Sir Harris Nicolas has proved, by a careful comparison of dates, that this is impossible, and he was probably, as Froissart calls him, Roger's brother. He was "a chief man among the Lollards," but made his recantation before he died, and in his will confesses that he was "fals and traytor to my Lorde God, and to all the blessed companie of Hevene, and unworthie to be clepyed a Cristen man." His descendants were seated at Boscomb in Wilts, till, in Queen Elizabeth's time, Anthony Clifford married the heiress of Sir Peter Courtenay of Ugbrooke, near Chudleigh, in Devonshire. They then removed to Ugbrooke, which has ever since been their residence. Anthony's great grandson, Thomas, became a Roman Catholic, and was a leading member of the "Cabal" in the reign of Charles II. He had begun life as a sailor, but in 1666 entered the King's Household, first as Comptroller, and then as Treasurer; from whence he was promoted in 1672 to the high office of Lord Treasurer of England, and in the same year—the year before his death—created Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.

Another family, sprung from the same stock, retained their ancestral name of Pons, which became Poyntz in the English tongue. Their pedigree is traced from Osbert Fitz Ponce or Fitz Ponz, whose descendant Hugh Pointz, temp. King John, married the co-heir of William Malet of Cory-Malet in Somersetshire, and also held land in Gloucester and Dorset. His grandson and namesake had summons to parliament in 1295. This barony fell into abeyance on the death of the fourth Lord in the fourteenth century; but there remained two other branches of the family, believed to be descended from a second marriage of Nicholas, second Lord Pointz, to a Gloucestershire heiress who brought him Iron-Acton. One was Poyntz of Iron-Acton; the other Poyntz of Midgeham in Berkshire, of whom the last male heir, Stephen Poyntz, married the only sister of Viscount Montague, and inherited Cowdray at his death. (See Browne.)

The first Lord Pointz had a controversy with the Fitz Alans of Bedale respecting his coat of arms:—

"Le beau Brian Fitz-Aleyne,
De courtoisie et de honneur pleyn,
I vi ov' banniere barrel
De or et de goules bien paree,
Dont le chalenge estort le poins
Par entre luy et Hue Poyntz,
Ki portoit eel ni plus ni moins,
Dont merveille avait meinte et moins."—Roll of Carlaverock.

The name is retained by Sutton-Poyntz, in Dorset.

Pauely :

from Pavilly near Rouen. "A monastery was founded here by Amalbert, Lord of Pavilly 664, which was restored by Thomas de. Pavilly, c 1090 (Neustria Pia, 328). Reginald de Pavilly died in the first Crusade at Acre (Des Bois). Ralph de Pavilly witnessed a charter of William Earl of Surrey, temp. Henry I."—The Norman People. "The Pavelys," says Banks, "were a very numerous family, and greatly divided, which renders a connected account most difficult to give with any accuracy to be depended upon." Contemporary with the above-named Ralph, according to Sir Richard Hoare, was Reginald de Paveley, Lord of Westbury in Wiltshire, where his descendants continued till 1361. Walter de Paveley, in the time of Henry III., held two knight's fees of the King in capite, at Broke and Westbury; and in 1251 had a license for free warren in his demesne lands at Westbury. His successor, Reginald, "in 1260 was summoned in the character of a baron to attend the King on urgent affairs, as well affecting the state of the nation as the King's crown and government, and two years afterwards had the like summons to attend at Chester, upon an expedition about to be made into Wales. He died about 1279, and was succeeded by Walter de Paveley, who imports to be the person summoned in 1295, in the capacity of a baron, to attend the King at Newcastle-on-Tyne. After him, another Walter de Paveley is noticed, as a very eminent soldier in the martial reign of Edward III., at which period he was one of the Knights of the Garter."—Banks. The last was Sir John, Prior of St. John of Jerusalem, who left two daughters as his heirs. "Of these, Alice married Sir John St. Lo, and Joan, Ralph Cheyne."^[10]—Hoare's Wilts.

There was a flourishing branch seated at Bickenhall in the county of Somerset; and another in Hampshire; but this latter, according to Woodward, was founded by Walter de Pavilly, Mayor of Rouen, who was one of those who were banished from Normandy on account of their adherence to King John. He settled at Winchester, whence the name came into the county. Reginald de Paveley in 1264 was one of the Hampshire barons summoned to serve against Llewellyn. Robert de Paviliaco held Rodington in Notts in the time of Henry I., and founded a family that was seated there till the end of Edward III.'s reign.—Thoroton's Notts. The Paveleys were "among the earliest extinct families" in Bedfordshire, and were seated at Melchborn, where a brass plate is preserved in the church in memory of Robert Paveley, who died in 1377. "The St. Johns inherited a considerable property in Bedfordshire by a marriage with the heiress of this family; and since they have forsaken Bletsoe, Melchborn has been their chief residence."—Lysons. In Norfolk we find "the ancient family of De Pavilli, soon after the Conquest, enfeoffed of several lordships by the Earl Warren." Ralph de Paveley, son of Sir Philip, in the time of Henry I. gave the tithes of all his land at Dageney to the Abbey that his suzerain had founded at Castle Acre; and in 1199 "Ralph de Beauchamp had a grant of the custody of the heir of Reginald de Pavilli, with all the land he held in fee, the day he began his journey to Jerusalem, in which journey he died."—Blomfield. This heir was probably the Roger de Pavilli who, in the same reign, was a benefactor to Dereham Abbey and Castle Acre. They were seated at Ryburgh Parva, where Paveli's manor recalls their memory, and John Paveli, apparently the last of the race, was buried in 1522.

Paifrere :

variously entered in Domesday as Paisfor, Paisforere, and Pastforeire: once a considerable name in Kent. It has long since passed away, and is now only retained by Lullingstone Peyforer—the moiety of the manor that was held by Osbert Peyforer in 1086. He was, under Bishop Odo, the mesne lord of several other Kentish manors, and his descendants were of great note in the county. Fulk Peyforer, Sheriff of Kent in 1259, was seated sometimes at North Court, in Ealing, or sometimes at Colebridge in Boughton-Maleherbe, and with his son William was knighted at the siege of Carlaverock. His name constantly recurs in the county history. He was a man of ample possessions, and had married the heiress of Leverland: twice served as knight of the shire, in 1307 and 1313; obtained license to castellate his manor-house of Colebridge the following year, and died in 1316. In the south chancel of Colebridge Church there remains "a very ancient figure in Bethesden marble of a man in armour, with his sword and shield, lying cross-legged: and on the opposite side a woman, full as ancient and of the like marble:" supposed to represent Sir Fulk and his rich wife.—Hasted's Kent. He was succeeded by his son Sir William. I can find no further mention of the family after 1390. There is some hint of an heiress, Juliana de Peyforer; at all events their large estates passed into other hands about the end of the fourteenth century.

Plukenet :

or De Plugenet, from Plouquenet, near Rennes, in Brittany. Alan de Plugenoi occurs in Oxfordshire 1158 (Rot. Pip.) and Hugh de Plugenet, of the same county, in 1201 (Rot. Cancellarii). He married Sibill, daughter of Jose de Dinant, and acquired Lamborne in Berkshire: his son Alan in 1219 paid one hundred marks for livery of Lamborne. Another Sir Alan, his descendant, fought on the King's side at Evesham, and received as his reward one of the manors forfeited by the rebels, with the custody of Dunster Castle in Somersetshire. Of another promised recompense he was, however, disappointed. "Eustachia, the widow of Nicholas de Cantilupe, having married William de Ros, although the King had promised her to Alan Plunkenett, William de Ros was decreed to pay reasonable amends (rationabiles emendas) and two hundred marks was accordingly paid as the value of the lady."—Blaauw's Barons' War. In 1272 he succeeded his mother's brother, Robert de Waleraund, in the Herefordshire barony of Kilpeck, and had summons to parliament from 1295 to 1297. "He distinguished himself in the Welsh wars; nor was he less eminent in other ways. By his skill a large portion of the Haywood, hitherto uncultivated, was redeemed and bears to this day the name of Alansmore, and the Abbey of Dore (where he was afterwards buried) was enriched by a grant of the advowsons of Lugwardyne, with the chapels of Hentland, St. Weonards, Llangarren, and Little Dewchurch, appertaining to it. He died in 1299, and was succeeded by his son of the same name, a combatant in the Scottish wars, and in 1311 a Baron of Parliament. He obtained a charter for a weekly market and yearly fair at Kilpeck. On his death without issue in 1325 his sister Joan, wife of Edward de Bohun, became his heir; but she also died childless."—The Castles of Herefordshire and their Lords, by C. Robinson.

It was probably the nephew of this last Lord Plugenet that founded the family still existing in Ireland, though their pedigree declares that they are of Danish origin, and were seated at Bewley (Beaulieu) in co. Louth as early as the eleventh century. It must, however, be owned that there is a suspicious minuteness in the first dates given:—John Plunket, obt. August 3rd, 1082: Walter, or William, his son, obt. October 17th, 1085. They at all events bear the bend of the Lords Plugenet; and about 1332, John Plunket, presumed to be the nephew of the second Lord, was living at Bewley, and there founded a church with his wife Alicia. From his eldest son, John, descend the Barons of Louth; from the second, Richard, the Earls of Fingall and Lords Dunsany.

John's successors, seated at Bewley, and afterwards as Kilsaran, were frequently Sheriffs of the county; and in 1541 Sir Oliver Plunket received from Henry VIII. the title of Baron of Louth. His grandson Patrick was killed by Mac Mahon during a cattle foray in 1575; and the next heir, Oliver, "was appointed to have the leading of the shire of Louth," in 1593, when there was a great gathering of Plunkets at "the general hosting of the hill of Tara;" Lord Louth bringing, with the Plunkets of the barony of Ardee, six archers on horseback, and Lords Killeen and Dunsany twenty-four horsemen, for the barony of Skrine. In the ensuing century, Oliver sixth Lord, joined the rebellion in 1639 and was outlawed in 1642; whereas his son Matthew followed Charles II. in his exile, and received at the Restoration, in addition to his sequestrated Irish estates, "sundry other lands under the act of grace," and a pension from the Crown. Yet he, too, suffered outlawry in 1689, when loyalty to the House of Stuart had become treason to the new dynasty; and his successor Oliver could obtain no reversal of the sentence, and was incapacitated from taking his seat among the Irish peers. The next two heirs remained titular Barons of Louth; but the title has been since restored, and is now borne by the fourteenth Lord.

The younger branch was the more distinguished of the two. "These Plunkets in Ireland," says Camden, "have been very eminent ever since Christopher Plunket (a person of great valour and wisdom who was deputy to Richard Duke of York, Viceroy in Henry VI. time) was raised to the dignity of Baron of Killin, which came to him by his wife, as heir to the family of the Cusacks." Sir Christopher was Sheriff of Meath prior to 1442, and had married the only child of Sir Lucas de Cusack, Lord of Killeen, Dunsany, and Gerardstown in that county. All his three sons founded families. The eldest was the ancestor of the Earls of Fingall; the second, Sir Christopher, was the first Lord Dunsany; and the third, Sir Thomas, had to wife the heiress of Rathmore, which remained the home of his descendants. His son Sir Alexander "a person of great account," was appointed Chancellor of Ireland in 1492.

Of the Lords Killeen there were ten in regular succession; the last of these, Lucas, styled Lucas More, received the Earldom of Fingall from James I., in 1628. Yet, only thirteen years after that, all his three sons were in arms against their Sovereign; and Christopher, second Earl, having changed sides more than once during the Civil War, was seven times indicted and outlawed, and died a prisoner in Dublin Castle. His successor, pleading that he himself was only two years old when the rebellion broke out, recovered his rights; but Peter, the fourth Earl, was again outlawed for his loyalty to James II. This fresh outlawry was taken off in 1697, having lasted only six years; and since then the title has been transmitted in undisturbed sequence to the present time.

The barony of Dunsany certainly dates from 1438, in which year we find Sir Christopher styled Dominum de Dunsany; and, according to Camden, was conferred upon him for his "great worth and valour" by Henry VI. Dunsany, fifteen miles from Dublin, where he had his castle, is still the seat of his posterity, and had come to him from his mother. His descendant, Randall, eleventh Lord, was, like the rest of the Plunkets, outlawed for his adherence to James II.; and though restored to his estates by the treaty of Limerick, his seat in Parliament remained forfeit till the time of his grandson, who in 1791 claimed and was allowed it. He is now represented by the sixteenth Lord.

Another peerage was granted in 1827 to William Conyngham Plunket, a very eminent lawyer, who rose through every step in his profession to be Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1830. He took the title of Baron Plunket of Newton, co. Cork, now borne by the fourth Lord. His coat of arms is differenced by a portcullis from that borne by the Lords Louth, Fingall, and Dunsany, which is—strangely enough—in all three instances precisely the same, without mark of cadency or distinction of any kind.

The old baronial name is retained by the village of Wearn-Plugenet, and Preston-Plucknett, in Somersetshire.

Phuars :

probably for Phaer, or Phayer, a Flemish name, still known in Belgium. "The Flemings were numerous in Norwich from an early period, and Flemings were planted in Pembrokeshire by Henry I." (Notes and Queries, 6th S. ii.) "Some of their countrymen had already settled in this country in the days of William the Conqueror, and we find them established about Downton at the period of the Domesday survey. An eruption of the sea into Flanders compelled the inhabitants to emigrate in great numbers. Many of the wanderers sought refuge in England, and were allowed to inhabit the borders of Scotland. Shortly afterwards, about 1107-8, the King removed this colony to the Welsh border, and gave them permission to settle at Rhos, near Tenby, which they were to take possession of for themselves. "And so it was," continues Florence of Worcester, "and these strangers settled there as loyal men to the King; and he placed English among them to teach them the English language; and they are now English, and the plague of Dyved and South Wales on account of their deceit and lies, in which they exceeded any settlers in any part of the island of Britain.'"—Bridgeman's Princes of South Wales.

Four Flemings, all of them tenants-in-chief, "Hugo, Odo, Walterus, and Winemarus Flandrensis," are entered in Domesday: but their Christian names only are given: and Phaire—as far, at least, as I know—is not found in any mediaeval record. The first of the family mentioned is Colonel Robert Phaire, the Regicide, Governor of Cork in 1654, who went over to Ireland with Cromwell, and was seated at Rostellan Castle. "There is a tradition that he was a Quaker: but he was in reality a Muggletonian, and is 'described as the corner stone of that faith in Ireland.'"—Notes and Queries, 6th S. 100. He was twice married, and left descendants settled at Grange, Killoughran, and Temple Shannon, Wexford. Robert Phaire of Temple Shannon married in 1761 Lady Richarda Annesley, eldest daughter of Richard, sixth and last Earl of Anglesey; and their son acquired Pallas, co. Cork, through an heiress. They are still seated at Killoughdrum Forest, co. Wexford, and bear Gules a cross moline Argent, over all a bend Azure. Their crest is a message of peace—the dove bearing the olive branch, wholly inappropriate to their regicide founder.

Punchardoun :

or Pontcardon, from Pontcardon, near Neauffla, in Normandy. Robert de Pontchardon is on the Dives Roll. "Robert de Pontcardon held lands in Devon 1083 (Exon. Domesd.). William de Punchardon in 1165 held six fees in Somerset and Devon: Roger de Punchardon in Lincoln, and Matthew in Northumberland or York (Lib. Nig.). William de Punchardon of Heanton-Punchardon, Devon, was living 1242 (Pole), and in 1261 Oliver de Punchardoun had a writ of military summons for the war in Wales."—The Norman People. Thickley-Punchardon, co. Durham, received its name from this family. "Sir Anthon Bek, Busshop of Dureme in the tyme of King Eduarde, the son of King Henry, was the maist prowd and masterfull Busshop in all England, and it was com'only said that he was the prowdest Lord in Christienty. It chaunced that among other lewd persons, this Sir Anthon entertained at his court one Hugh de Tountchardon, that for his evill deeds and manifold robberies had been driven out of the Inglische Courte, and had come from the South to seek a little bread, and to live by stalinge. And to this Hughe, whom also he imployed to good purpose in the Warr of Scotland, the Busshop gave the lands of Thikley, since of him caullid Thikley-Puntchardon, and also made him his chiefe huntsman. And after, this blake Hugh dyed afore the Busshop: and efter that the Busshop chasid the wild hart in Galtres forest, and sodainly there met with him Hugh de Pontchardon that was afore deid, on a wythe horse; and the said Hugh looked earnestly on the Busshopp, and the Busshop said unto him, 'Hughe, what makethe thee here?' and he spake never worde, but lifte up his cloke, and then he shewed Sir Anton his ribbes set with bones, and nothing more: and none other of the varlets saw him but the Busshop only: and ye said Hughe went his way, and Sir Anton took courage, and cheered the dogges; and shortly after he was made Patriarque of Hierusalem, and he saw nothing no moe. And this Hughe is him that the silly people in Galtres doe call Le Gros Veneur, and he was seen twice after that by simple folk, afore yat the forest was felled in the tyme of Henry, father of King Henry that now ys."

"Still, when Autumn shakes the forest sear
Black Hugo's voice upon the blast is borne.
Woe to the wight who shall his ire provoke
When the stern huntsman stalks his nightly round,
By blasted ash, or lightning-shivered oak,
And cheers with surly voice his spectre hound."
—Surtees' Durham.

It is clear, however, that Thickley cannot have been granted to this Wild Huntsman by Anthony Beke, who only became Bishop of Durham in 1283, for "Evayne de Punchardon demorants a Thikley" appears in the list of the knights of the "Franchise de Duresme demy Tyne et Teys" who fought at the battle of Lewes in 1264 (Hutchinson's Durham); and the family were seated in the county a hundred years before that. Richard de Punchardon witnesses a deed of Roger de Coigners during the shrievalty of Ralph Haget (1159-1181).

The name is found in several other counties. Lydiard-Puncherton, or Punchardon, a hamlet and manor in Somersetshire, took its name from Hugh de Punchardon, who held it temp. Hen. II., by knight's service, of the castle of Dunster. William his son was living there in the reign of Henry III., and left several daughters heirs to his estates. The Punchardons were of great account in Devonshire. "Heanton is surnamed Punchardon; the parish reserveth charily the old lord's name of long antiquity, and therewithall copious in some ages; for you shall peruse few ancient evidences in those parts whereunto the Punchardons have not been witnesses; yea, sometimes two or three of them. I will not avouch a remainder of them yet in being (but it is very probable): if there be, they have lost their don, and are now ycleped only by the name of Punchard."—Westcote's Devon. This was in 1630. They were first seated at Heanton Punchardon in the time of Henry II. The last of the name there was Sir John Punchardon, who lived in the reign of Edward I., and left only three daughters. We also meet with them in Hampshire. "The Ellingham family of Pont Chardon were of some note in the county so early as the thirteenth century. We find Roger, Robert, and Oliver de Punchardon holding lands under King John and Henry III. They were benefactors to Beaulieu Abbey. In the list of Hampshire gentry made out in 1433 by Cardinal Beaufort, we find Richard Punchardon, who died 1466.—Woodward's Hants.

Pinchard :

of very early date in co. Durham. John Pinsard occurs in Boldon Buke, the first survey made of the county (1153-1194): and ReginaldPinchard witnesses a charter to Finchale Priory not long subsequent to its foundation in 1180. This Reginald had to wife Petronilla, the daughter of Osmund de Gatesheved (Gateshead) and the heiress of Cocken, "one of the most romantic spots on the Wear," and both were benefactors to the monks of Finchale. (Surtees' Durham). Perhaps Peter de Penchere, who was a witness to Matthew de Lumley's charter to the same Priory (1189-1209) belonged to the family. In the 14th century John Pynchard held lands in Middle Herington; after this we hear of them no more. Albreda de Pinchard occurs in Buckinghamshire c. 1272.—Rotuli Hundredorum.

Placy :

for Placetis, a baronial family that became widely spread. But their name has no title to be here, for they descended from John de Placetis or de Plessetis, a Norman by birth, who, from being a domestic servant at the court of Henry III., rose high in his master's favour, was rapidly promoted to wealth and power, and at length became Earl of Warwick through his marriage with Margery de Newburgh. She was, as we have seen, a most unwilling bride; for though, after the death of her first husband, John Mareschal, the King issued his mandate that she should be "earnestly persuaded—not to say, commanded—to marry this low-born adventurer, he seems himself to have doubted her obedience;" and on Christmas day following promised to his favourite, in case she could not be induced to comply, the fine she would have to pay for marrying without the Royal consent.

Pugoy :

"Ogerus de Pugoys, a Norman knight, came into England with the Conqueror, and was one of the four knights of the Lord Malet, Lord of the Honour of Eye, in Suffolk; and had the manor of Bedingfield in Suffolk given him by that lord, and from that place assumed the name of Bedingfield."—Blomfield's Norfolk. Mr. Freeman throws discredit upon this descent. "It is patched up by a deed of which I have a copy before me, and which is plainly one of the class of deeds which were invented to make out a pedigree. Pedigree and deed together go down before the fact that there was no such person as Oger de Pugoys, and that Bedingfield had quite another owner. It appears twice in Domesday, at p. 368 and p. 428 b: and in neither case is any one of the name of Oger set down as past or present owner." The gift may have been subsequent to that date: and the name of Pugoys—possibly derived from Puchay, near Evreux—is at all events a genuine one, and reappears in various parts of England.

The Bedingfields migrated from Suffolk to their present home at Oxburgh in Norfolk during the early part of the 15th century, when Edmund (thirteenth in descent from Oger de Pugoys) married the heiress of Sir Thomas Tudenham. Their grandson, another Edmund, had a patent from Edward IV. to build the existing manor-house, "that very much resembles Queen's College at Cambridge," with a moat and fine Gothic hall. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Richard III.; yet was "so highly in favour with Henry VII. for his eminent Services, that he paid him a visit at Oxburgh, the room where he lodged being called the King's room to this day; and gave him some Yorkshire manors, forfeited by the attainder of Lord Lovell."—Blomfield's Norfolk. The next heir—again Sir Edmund—was the father of Sir Henry Bedingfield, who, with a following of one hundred and forty men, appeared at arms at Framlingham in Suffolk, to support Queen Mary's title to the crown. He was rewarded for his loyalty with part of Sir Thomas Wyatt's estate, and held the offices of Knight Marshal of the army and Captain of the Queen's Guard. Furthermore, as a fervid and austere Catholic, he was the appointed custodian of the Princess Elizabeth during her year's imprisonment at Woodstock, and proved a harsh jailor.^[11] A short time afterwards, in October 1555, he was named Constable of the Tower, and a member of the Privy Council, as the recompense of his "laborious services. He was one of those whom Elizabeth dismissed with thanks when she came to the throne, adding a taunt to her farewell, and saying to him: 'God forgive you, as I do. Whenever I have one who requires to be safely and straitly kept, I will send him to you.' But it seems he did not think himself in disgrace during her reign, for he came from time to time to pay his respects to his sovereign. She herself went to visit him in 1578."—Wiesener's Youth of Queen Elizabeth. This was five years before his death.

His descendant and namesake, "the seventeenth Knight of this Family," joined the Royal Standard with his two sons in the Civil War, was taken prisoner and thrown into the Tower, where he was kept in durance for three years, and lost the whole of his estate, part of which was sold by the rebels, and the rest sequestrated. At the Restoration, Charles II. sent for the eldest surviving son, Henry, who, at the King's request, "laid before him an account of the losses their Family had sustained for his service, which appearing to be upwards of,£45,000, His Majesty reply'd with Concern, That was too great for him to recompense, and advanced him to the Dignity of a Baronet."—Wotton's Baronetage. He is still represented in the direct male line.

The name of Pogeys occurs in the chartulary of Battle Abbey. The charter of John de Dreux, Duke of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and Lord of the Rape of Hastings, confirming the grants of William de Echyngham to Robertsbridge Abbey in 1314, is witnessed by "Orgerus de Pogeyn, master of our household." In the preceding century Roger Pugoys of Rochester, in the county of Kent, appears in the Hundred Rolls of Henry III., and Richard Pogeys held the manor of Delce-Parva, in that neighbourhood, during the following reign. Imberic or Imbertus de Pugoys witnesses Henry III.'s charters to Kingston and Ivychurch Priory in 1256, and "held the manor of Gisag" (Gussage)

"All Saints, by service of one pair of gilt spurs; and the said Imbertus gave the said land to the Abbey of Tarrent."—Hutchins' Dorset.

Stoke-Poges, in Buckinghamshire, is named from Robert Poges, to whom Amicia de Stoke brought the manor in marriage. "He was chosen one of the knights of the shire in 1300: his grand-daughter and heiress Egidia married Sir John Molins, Knight Banneret, and Treasurer of the Chamber to King Edward III."—Lysons. It has since had a great variety of owners.^[12] The existing manor house, built by Henry Hastings Earl of Huntingdon in the reign of Elizabeth, furnished the subject of Gray's "long story. The churchyard at Stoke-Poges was the scene of his well-known Elegy. The celebrated poet spent a great part of his youth in this village, and lies buried here himself under a tomb which he had erected over the remains of his mother and aunt."—Ibid.

Patefine :

for Poitevin. "Guillaume Le Poitevin" and "Roger Le Poitevin" are on the Dives Roll. The name speaks for itself. They both appear in Domesday as Pictavensis, or Peteuinus; William as an under-tenant in Kent, and Roger in Suffolk. It would seem that the former also held land in Yorkshire. "Burg (afterwards Burgh-Waleys) was held at the date of the Domesday Survey by William, who appears in a grant to St. Clement's, Pontefract, by the name of William Pictavus.

"The Pictavi, or Pictaviensis, or Peytevins, were a family (if one family, and not rather several), who emigrated here from Poitou in the train of the Lacis, and appear in several parts of the West Riding, where they had great possessions. They became extinct at too early a period to have left materials for any connected history of themselves; nor, when we find them ended in co-heiresses, is it easy to show particularly the marriages made by the heiresses or the issue from them. Robert Pictavus was the last who held the manor, and had seven daughters; Eva, married to Richard de Reecroft; Dionysia, mother of Richard le Wallis" (from whom Burgh took the addition to its name); "Galiena, Agatha, Matilda, Muriel, from whom descended Richard de Rockley, and Agnes, who married Elias de Midhope."—Hunter's South Yorkshire. Perhaps this was the same Robert Pictaviensis who was a benefactor to St. Peter's, York, and Nostel Priory (Mon. ii. 34, 393). They were also seated at Hedingley; "Walter Paytefen, Lord of Hedingley, came into England with William the Conqueror: he married Lettice, daughter of Hugh Morker, who by the Title of Lord of Normanton, Clayton, and Carlston, near Newark, gave him half of the town of Normanton with his Daughter in Frank Marriage, that is, to her, and her Husband, and the Heirs of her Body, without any Homage or Service to the Donor. They had Issue one Daughter named Berlet, married to Gilbert of Snythall, to whom she bore three sons, Hugh, Richard, and Robert; to her son Richard she gave four Oxgangs of Land in Normanton, which after her Decease William the son of Morker seiz'd upon: Robert, his Brother, thereupon brought a Writ of Right against the said William (temp. Hen. I.) and recovered the Land, because the said William had absented himself in the Day of Battle. I suppose, those five of his seven Sons proved better Soldiers, who went into Ireland at the Conquest thereof. The said William, to supplant his elder Brother, doubled the Rent of Normanton to William of Warren, Earl of Surrey."—Thoresby's Leeds. Elsewhere he tells us that, when Henry de Laci built Kirkstall Abbey in 1147, "William Pictavensis was Lord of the Soil, of whom it was rented at five Marks per Annum, and that he resided at Hedingley is probable from an ancient deed sans date in my Collection." Other scattered notices of them are given, for the name, under various forms of degradation, survived till the fourteenth century. "In 13 Ed. I. William Petunn (Patefine rather) held a knight's fee of the Earl of Lincoln; and 5 Ed. II. William de Patenn (I presume the same Family) held of the Abbott of Kirkstall in Hedingley. In a list of the Knight's Fees of the Wapentake of Skireake, William Patefyn (the second Person of the Jury who were all Persons of Quality) is said to hold half a Fee in Hedingley." Finally about 1325, "William Scott, or Calveley, had a sister (if not daughter) married to one Pattfyn of Hedingley, a man of great possessions, who, it should seem, left them to her or her brother, John de Calveley, and she and her brother gave all or most of them to the Abbey of Kirkstall." Hunter believes (though it is but a suggestion) that this family bore Paly of eight Gules and Argent.

The name is found in many other parts of England. Richard Payefyn and William Paynefyn held lands at Cornforth in the county of Durham at the time of Bishop Hatfield's Survey; Roger Peitivin (according to Sir Richard Hoare) was a benefactor of Todeputte Church in Wiltshire in 1297; and Credy-Peitivin in Devonshire (now called Credy-Wiger) was so named from its successive owners. "William Pictavensis was Lord thereof, and after him Robert Paytevin, anno 27 of King Henry III., whose daughter Grimond was wief unto Sir John Wiger."—Pole's Devon. "William Pictaviensis held of Ralph de Pomerai at the date of Domesday; but his manor—Odeordi—has not been identified."—Lysons.

Place :

or De Plaiz. "The noble family of De Playz were," says Blomfield, in his History of Norfolk, "soon after the Conquest, enfeoffed of several lordships by the Earl Warren." Ralph de Playz witnesses a charter of William, second Earl 1091-97, granting the church of Coningsburgh, in South Yorkshire, to the monastery that his father had founded at Lewes. "Sir Hugh was Lord in the time of King Stephen," and was succeeded by a second Ralph. "The family of De Playz had a considerable estate in Otringhythe; and in the reign of King Henry II. there was a church concerning the patronage of which there was a great controversy between Sir Ralph de Playz and others, which was adjusted by the Bishop of Norwich, when it was allowed to be the right of the said Ralph, and his heirs for ever, to present to the same."—Ibid. Among the adherents of the rebellious barons under King John we find another Sir Hugh, who held seven knight's fees at Ifford and Werpesburn in Sussex, and was twice married. From his first wife, Beatrix de Say, widow of Hugh de Nevill, he was divorced; but the second, Philippa, one of the co-heiresses of Richard de Montfichet, brought him a great estate in Essex, where the manor of Playz, in Beacontree Hundred, and the hamlet of Plaistow, near Stratford, are named from him. His great-grandson Giles was summoned to a great council held by Edward I. in 1293, followed him to Gascony in the ensuing year, and was a baron by writ in 1297. Sir Richard, the grandson of Giles, was, in 1334, found heir to Stansted Montfichet on the death of John de Lancaster; and the next heir, Sir John, called the fourth baron (though neither he not his predecessor were ever summoned to parliament) was the father of Margery, the heiress of the house, who carried the barony to the Howards.^[13] Her granddaughter Elizabeth transferred it to the De Veres, and it fell into abeyance between the three sisters and co-heirs of the fourteenth Earl of Oxford.

According to an old deed (quoted by Blomfield) the last Sir John de Playz had a brother named Richard, living at Fettwell in Norfolk, but of him or his posterity we hear nothing more. A family of this name was seated at Halnaby in North Yorkshire, and afterwards (through a Surtees heiress) at Dinsdale in the county of Durham, continuing till the early part of the last century. William de Playz is mentioned in Yorkshire as early as 1189-90 (Rot. Pip.)

Pampilioun :

Pavillioun in Leland's list; from Pavelion, near Mantes, in Normandy. Thorold de Papelion is on the Dives Roll. He witnessed William the Conqueror's confirmation charter to the church of Durham; and is mentioned among those present at a great Council held at Westminster in 1082 (Mon. Angl.). Ralph Papelion, in 1214, was elected Abbot of Westminster. Halnadus or Havenald de Papelion was a benefactor of Selby Abbey, and a witness to the Bishop of Lincoln's grant to Thorney in Cambridgeshire (Ibid.). "Dominus Rydel Papillon" and Nicholas Papilioun of Lincolnshire are entered in the Hundred Rolls of Edward I.; and Geoffrey Pampilon was "one of the Procurators appointed by Simon Abbot of Croyland to appear on his behalf in the Parliament at York, 16 Ed. II."—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Then, again, we meet with the family in Kent and Sussex; three of the name, Henry, Thomas, and Laurence in Kent; Roger, in both counties; and William, in Sussex only; about 1272.—Rotuli Hundredorum. The two latter were seated at Bosham, where Roger held his land "by the service of carrying two white capons to our Lord the King, as often as he should pass by the gate of the said Roger." William, "one of King Edward I.'s faithful servants," was recommended by him to the Abbot of Leicester for a corrody in 1303.

The Papillons now of Crowhurst, in the same county, are of an entirely different origin. They belong to the French Huguenot families that came over to England at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and acquired Crowhurst through a Pelham heiress.

Percelay :

or Percehaie, as Leland gives it. This name occurs several times in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the twelfth century. Ralph Percehaie is one of the tenants in chief entered in Domesday, and held in Berkshire vii. hagae in burgo de Walingeford. No more mention of his posterity is to be found in that county; but in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194-98 occur Roger Percehaie of Bedfordshire, and Reginald Percehaie of Norfolk. They are said to have been collaterals of the great House of Percy, though their coat has no resemblance to the five fusils in fesse of the latter. They bore Ermine on a chief Gules a lion passant crowned Azure. "It is worthy of remark that, in Yorkshire as in Wilts, there was a Percehaie neighbour of a Percy; and they may be of the same stock remotely, although their arms are different. There is a radical distinction between the two names; the prefixes may be the same, but hay (la haia, Latin = etum) means an enclosure; and y or ey (ac or aix, Latin = iacum) indicated a spring or running water (vide Mordacque's translation of Salverte's work, ii. 205)."—A. S. Ellis. To my ears it is obviously a nickname. The first Percehaie—it is never De Percehaie—may have been some adventurer who had stormed the guarded hate that surrounded some outlying hamlet or manor; or had cunningly stolen through to take it by surprise. Or he may have been simply a mauvaise fete given to breaking bounds in an altogether different sense.

This enigmatical name was very generally distributed throughout the country. We find it in Cheshire between 1172 and 1190, when Andrew Fitz Geoffrey Percehai granted to Adam de Dutton a bovate of land in Budworth, where he and his ancestors held eight bovates by knight's service under Gilbert Fitz Brito.—Ormerod's Cheshire. It is entered, temp. Stephen, in the chartulary of Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, where Percenhaie de Sepenheve appears as a witness.—Nichols' Leicester. William Percehay and John his son held in Huntingdonshire about 1272 (Rot. Hundred.), and Walter Pertchay in Scotland under Robert Bruce. William Percehaye, joint Lord of Titherington in Wiltshire (can this have been the same William?) was fined and pardoned as an adherent of the Earl of Leicester in 1322.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. The Percehaies of Little Chaldfield, in that county, were close neighbours of the Percies of Great Chaldfield (see above): but this is all I know of them, as they are passed over in silence by Sir Richard Hoare. In Devonshire, "Kitton, that lyeth in the parish of Holcombe Rogus, was in Henry the Third's tyme the dwelling of Roger Percehay, to whom succeeded William, Henry, Sir Henry Percehay the judge, William, and William which died without issue, whose inheritance was divided anno 22 of King Richard II. betwixt Richard Warr and Alis, wief of Nicholas Heale, as cosens and next heyres. The said Richard Warr (to whom Kitton was assign'd) was sonne of Jone, daughter of Gonilda, one of the sisters of Sir Henry Percehaye, and ye said Alis Heale was daughter of Alis, the other sister."—Westcote's Devonshire. The longest-lived family was the one seated in Yorkshire. They held Ryton in Rydale, and Park in Lincolnshire, but the Sheriff of Lincolnshire reports them as non-resident in 1325. This was in the time of "Walterus de Perzhay," Persay, or Persay, a Commissioner of Array in the Wapentake of Rydale in the North Riding in 1322, who was summoned to the great Council at Westminster in 1324.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. William Percehaie was Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1375; and John Percehaie de Ryton occurs in 1433 among the gentry of the county. They intermarried with the Stricklands, Wyvills, Fauconbergs, &c. Matilda Fauconberg, who brought Whitton in Lincolnshire to Edmund Percehaie, was the great grand-daughter of Walter, fifth Lord Fauconberg. Her father had been the son of another county heiress, Margaret d'Arcy of Flixburgh. Leonard Percehaie, a cadet of this house, served in the Guard of Henry IV. of France. Dugdale, in his Visitation of Yorkshire, furnishes us with the pedigree of four generations, commencing with Leonard (grandfather of the above-named younger son) and ending with Christopher, then (in 1665) eleven years old. He was the son of an earlier Christopher, who had been one of Cromwell's Commissioners of Sequestration in Yorkshire, and proved the last of the line. His daughter and heiress, Barbara, was the wife of William Selby of Biddleston in Northumberland.

Perere :

"This family came from Periers, near Evreux, Normandy, where it remained in the fifteenth century (La Roque, Mais. d'Harcourt, ii. 1360, 1361). Hugo de Periers possessed estates in Warwick 1156 (Rot. Pip.). Geoffrey de Periers held a fief in Stafford 1165, and Adam de Periers in Cambridge (Liber Niger). Hugh de Perers, thirteenth century, held a fief at Sixtenby, Warwick, and Leicester, from Roger Mowbray (Testa). Sir Richard de Perers was M.P. for Leicestershire 1311, for Herts 1316-24; and Viscount of Essex and Herts in 1325."—The Norman People. He had been pardoned for his participation in the death of Gaveston in 1313: and was thenceforth constantly employed in the King's service. In 1314 he received a writ of military summons to serve against the Scots; in 1315 was empowered to raise one hundred archers in Essex; in 1322 was Commissioner of array and Leader of the levies in Hertfordshire: in 1324 employed to select and array the knights of the counties of Essex and Herts required to perform service in Gascony, and the same year summoned to the great Council at Westminster.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Holt-Perers in Norfolk preserves his name. His daughter and sole heir, Alice, an extremely beautiful woman, was the so-called "Abishaig of King Edward III." She had been one of the ladies of Queen Philippa's household, and is said to have married Sir Thomas de Nerford, who left her a widow in 1371. The Queen had died two years before, but she appears to have remained at Court, and exercised extraordinary influence over the aged King. In 1373 he granted her "all the jewels which belonged to Philippa his late Queen, with all her goods and chattels;" and bedizened in these, as Lady of the Sun, she paraded the streets of London in a dazzling blaze of splendour. She rode in great state from the Tower to a tournament held in her honour at Smithfield, followed by "many lords, knights, and ladies; each lady leading a lord or knight by his horse's bridle, till they came to West Smithfield, where presently began solemn justs, which held for seven days."—Barnes. Nor did she rest content with her authority and magnificence at Court. She aspired to be a power in the State. She liked to help and promote her friends, and even to interfere with a high hand in the administration of justice. She would, we are told, sit in Court by the side of the Judge, and dictate to him his verdict. She "was in such credit with Edward III. that she sat at his bed's head, when all of the Council, and of the Privy Chamber, stood waiting without doors; and moved those suits that they dared not. Yet," adds Sir Richard Cotton, "those two suits whereof she was condemned, seemed very honest; her mishap was, that she was friendly to many, but all were not so to her." When Parliament met in 1376, she was proceeded against as one of those by whom the realm "had been of long time evil guided;" and the Commons, through their Speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, demanded her instant removal from the King. This request was allowed; and she, with the rest of the accused, and "others of their affinitie" was commanded to depart from Court. All duly obeyed; but she, at least, quickly returned, and was at Shene when the King died. Walsingham asserts that she drew the rings from his fingers as he lay powerless on his deathbed; and one of the counts against her in the new reign was that "contrary to that she had promised by oath in the last parliament, she had presumed to come within the Court and to obtain of the King whatsoever was to her liking." She was banished the realm, and all her goods declared forfeit to the Crown. Within two years, however, she was reinstated by Richard II., "being then the wife of Sir William de Windsor." She owed this act of grace solely and entirely to her marriage. In 3 Rich. II. Lord Windsor "was by Indenture retained to serve the King with one hundred men-at-arms for half a year; and in consideration thereof he had restitution of the Landes which were belonging to Alice Perers (sometime a Concubine to King Edward III.) then his wife, which were in the King's hands by reason of her forfeiture."—Dugdale. It has been urged on her behalf—though unfortunately there are many instances to the point—that Lord Windsor would never have married a woman who had been the King's mistress. There is no certainty that she deserved the ugly name with which she has been branded: and it is hard to believe that Edward III., on whom no breath of scandal had rested in the very heyday of youth, should have had a paramour in his infirm old age. Froude insists that the story "which throws a stain of dishonour on the end of our great English sovereign," rests on the unsupported authority of a priest, and is altogether unworthy of credit. "Lady Alice Perers was the wife of Lord Windsor, a nobleman attached to Edward's person, who had been a distinguished Viceroy in Ireland. Her family had for many years been involved in angry lawsuits with the Abbot of St. Albans; and long after this affair" (the death-bed scene) "which Walsingham describes so rhetorically, we find her still a great lady, her father's heiress, carrying on the controversy with the Abbey. She was evidently regarded there with bitter personal hostility, and charges from that quarter require to be scrutinized.

"Turning now to other evidence against her, we find from the Rolls of Parliament that she was complained of by the Legislature as presuming on the King's favour to interfere in the business of the courts of law. Although there is no hint in the Roll that she was the King's mistress, the complaint has appeared to harmonize so well with Walsingham's charge as at least to confirm it.

"The Speaker of the House of Commons, however, who presented the charge, was Peter de la Mare, the Abbot's brother or cousin; and thus again there is a suggestion of personal motive. The particulars when looked into amount to no more than this: Lord Windsor was a favourite with Edward, and an object of jealousy both with other noblemen, and with the popular party in Parliament. A hostile commission was to be appointed to inquire into Lord Windsor's conduct in Ireland. Lady Alice, who may have been a favourite with the King also without being a concubine, interceded with him successfully in her husband's defence to prevent his being sacrificed to his enemies." It will be observed that Froude chiefly rests his argument on the chronological error that Alice Perers married Lord Windsor during Edward's lifetime, whereas in reality she only became his wife about 1378. They had no children, but she left some daughters by her former marriage. One of them, Joan Skerne, is mentioned in her will.

Another family of the same name, but said to be of entirely different origin, and derived from Perieres in Brittany, existed in the West of England, where Philip Perer held of the Honour of Plympton, Devon.—Testa de Nevill. "The family of Perry, seated in that county in 1307 (see Pole) bears similar arms, and is believed to have the same origin."—The Norman People. These arms are Party per pale indented Or and Gules. Burke assigns them to the Perrys of Cornwall.

Pekeny :

repeated once again as Peukeney; for De Picquigny: (see p. 8).

Poterell :

for Poutrell: (see Putrill).

Peukeney.

Peccell :

another duplicate: see Pershale.

Pinel :

Ralph Pinel, in 1086, held a barony in Essex and Suffolk. (Domesday). It is impossible to decide to which of the Norman families of the name he belonged. There were three, all bearing different arms, "maintained in their nobility" during the seventeenth century; the Sieur des Hayes, the Sieur de Bois-Pinel, and another near Rouen; and in 1789 four Pinels figured in the great Assembly of the Nobles. Three of them, the Seigneurs de Gouville, de Golleville, and du Quesnay, belonged to the Cotentin; the fourth, another Seigneur de Bois-Pinel, was seated near Rouen. Several of the name are found in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-98.

A second Ralph Pinel—probably the grandson of the first—held four fees in 1165 of the Earl of Essex in Essex, and some land in Berkshire under Fitz Robert and Fitz Peter, another of whose tenants was Anchetil Pinel.—Liber Niger. The name continued in the former county for many generations: John Pinel occurs there about 1272.—Rot. Hundred. There is some hint of a previous scandal in the family. In the Pipe Roll of 12 John, "Robert Vanx owes five best palfreys, that the King may be silent regarding Henry Pinel's wife." The Oxfordshire fee of Warin Pinel (then deceased) is spoken of in the Testa de Nevill; and in 1278, Roger Pinel, Robert Pinel's widow, and Margaret, daughter of William Pinel, were all landowners in the county. Contemporary with them were Matthew Pinel of Suffolk, his brother Hugh, and Henry Pinel of Huntingdonshire.—Rotuli Hundredorum. Two coats are assigned to this name by Robson: Per pale, Argent and Or, an eagle displayed, standing on a billet raguly Azure: and Argent on a chevron engrailed Gules a lion rampant crowned Or.

Putrill :

Roger Poutrel and Galfrid Poterel are entered in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the end of the twelfth century; and it is possible that their name was derived from the manor of Potereau, mentioned by Anselme. It dates from the Conquest in England. One of the charters of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, to St. Werburgh's, contains the following entry: "Robertus Pultrel dedit terram unicus carucae apud Masclefeld." Ormerod tells us that "Poynton, probably included, at the time of the Survey, in some part of the Earl's extensive domain in Macclesfield Hundred, after an intermediate grant to the family of Poutrell, had passed to the Stokeports when the place from which they derived their name was erected into a barony about the time of Randle Blundeville." Sir Galfrid Poutrell is mentioned in Cheshire during the reign of Henry VIII. In Leicestershire the Poutrells gave their name to Cotes-Poutrel, which they held of the Honour of Chester, and to Hoton-Poutrel, where they are found in 1235. "It appears," says Nichols, "that Poutrel the lord of Cotes held lands in Prestwould and Wimeswould, and that part thereof belonged to the monastery of St. Ebrulf in Normandy, probably by gift of these Poutrels;" and here he quotes in corroboration a deed of the Conqueror's. "John Poutrel was of Prestwould in 1350: he held of the Beaumonts, and bore Or on a bend Azure three fleurs-de-lis Argent. Hoton chapel was given by Robert Poutrel of Cotes to Bolingbroke Priory in Lincolnshire, at the time of his being received into their fraternity." Robert Poutrel was three times knight of the shire for Leicester during the reign of Edward I., and once in that of his successor.

In Nottinghamshire the Poutrels held Thrumpton of the Fee of Busli, and had their seat there till 1608. "Richard Poutrel was a very considerable man and some kind of Receiver under King Edward III. He died 1 Henry IV. without issue. His seal is a fesse between three cinquefoils."—Thoroton's Notts. The Poutrels had then been seated for eight generations at Thrumpton. The heiress married Smith, whose son took the name of Poutrel. A cadet of this family, Thomas Poutrel, settled at West Hallam in Derbyshire: "his son John married a co-heiress of Strelley in Nottinghamshire. Thomas, his grandson, left an only daughter married to Dethick of New Hall. Henry Poutrel, the last heir-male, who died in 1666, left seven daughters."—Lysons' Derby.

Walter Poutrel occurs in 1189 in Shropshire; (Rotuli Curiae Regis): and at about the same period we find the name in Somersetshire. "The family of Powtrell were ancient owners of Hinton-St-George, of whom were John and George Powtrell in the time of Richard I. and King John. Whether the former possessed the estate or not, is uncertain; but the latter enjoyed it, and in the time of Henry III. devised it to an only daughter and heir, married to John Giffard, who sometime resided here, but died without issue male, and the lands descended by Alice his daughter to Sir Philip Denebaud, of Pescayth in Monmouthshire. After many successions of this family of Denebaud, the manor of Hinton came, by the marriage of Elizabeth Denebaud, into that ancient family, who were afterwards ennobled with the barony."—Collinson's Somerset.

Petiuoll :

probably from Petival in Normandy. Towards the end of the twelfth century, Ralph de Petiville, and Godfrey de Petitvilla are found in the Magn. Rotul. Scaccariae Normanniae. But there is no subsequent mention of the family in the Duchy, and I have met with it once only in England. Thomas Petiwille of Scarborough was with the Scots at the assault of Berwick, where he was killed in 1296.—Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland.

Preaus :

from the barony of that name, in the arrondissement of Rouen, "which was, about 1070, held by the Eudo Dapifer of Domesday, son of Hubert de Rie."—Taylor. The "Sire de Praels" is mentioned by Wace at the battle of Hastings. This family used a singular war-cry, "Cesar Auguste!" and bore Gules, an eagle Or, beaked and membered Azure. Jean de Preaux founded the Priory of Ste. Marie de Beaulieu about 1200, and Pierre de Preaux, in the latter part of the same century, married Yolande de la Marche, the niece of Henry III. Another Pierre, their son, whose wife brought him the great inheritance of Crespin, with a share of Tesson, was the last of his race, leaving only two daughters.

"In England a 'Sire de Praeres' appears about 1119 as a vassal of the Earl of Chester."—J. R. Planche. This was the Richard de Praers who gave Knockmirton, at that date, to Chester Abbey; and who, according to Ormerod, was a tenant of the Baron of Wich-Malbank at Barthomley in Cheshire, held by this family shortly after 1086. "They were in this country," says Sir Peter Leycester, "a race of great possessions, but are long since worn out and swallowed up by other names." From this parent stock "descended collateral lines settled at Checkley, Baddiley, Badington, Duddon, and Stoke, all of which terminated in heirs general at an early period."

The principal line—that of Barthomley—was the first to expire: it lasted for six generations, and ended with Thomas de Praers in 1349. His daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, was the wife of Sir Robert de Fouleshurst, one of Lord Audley's four gallant esquires, who accomplished "marvels at arms" with him at Poictiers, and lies buried under a stately altar tomb in Barthomley Church. The extinction of the Baddiley branch followed within a very few years; it had given two Sheriffs to the county, Sir William, who served four times under Edward I., and his son of the same name, appointed in 1349. The co-heiresses were Joan de Mainwaring and Margery de Honford. The Haddon and Badington lines branched off from this: the former ended in the second generation; the latter, which boasted of a Steward of Halton and Constable of Beeston, continued till 21 Ric. II. Agnes, the daughter of the last heir, married Richard de Bromley. The longest-lived house was the one that assumed the name of its manor, Stoke, and lasted well into the reign of Henry V. The two last heirs were brothers; the elder died in 1417, when only six or seven years old; the other did not live to marry, and their kinswoman, Isabella de Beeston, became Lady of Stoke. Their grandfather, Roger, had received an annuity from Richard II. "for service in the wars and loss of both his eyes."

The name is to be found in several other parts of England. In Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs I meet with a Thomas de Praeres, Lord of Southstoke in Sussex, 1316: a Sir Henry de Praeres "one of the Supervisors of the array and Leader of the levies in Wilts" in 1311; knight of the shire for that county in 1319, and for Gloucestershire the following year; and a Sir John de Praeres, three times summoned from Essex; first for Edward II.'s coronation; then, in 1322, for military service; and two years later to the great Council at Westminster. In Essex "the manor of Prayers was held under the De Veres as early as the time of Henry III. by the ancient knightly family of Prieres, Preyers or Prayers, from whom it took its name. Robert de Prayers had a son, Sir Thomas, who married Anne, daughter and heir of Hugh de Essex the younger, descended from Swein de Essex, Baron of Rayleigh, and by her had an only daughter Margaret, wife of Robert de Bourchier, Lord Chancellor of England in King Edward III.'s reign. Sir John and Sir Thomas de Prieres were two of the Knights Bannerets under King Edward I.; but their arms were different; the former bearing Gules a fesse with two bars gemelles Argent; and the latter Vert, a bend Argent with two cotises Or,"—Morant. There exists, however, a certain degree of affinity between the two coats. Those of the Cheshire families were altogether different. The Barthomley line bore Gules a scythe Or (in evident allusion to preau, a meadow): that of Stokes Party per chevron Vert and Ermine a chevron engrailed counterchanged. None of them displayed the Imperial eagle of the French house.

Pantolf :

"Guillaume Pantou" is on the Dives Roll; and as William Pantolf, Baron of Wem, occurs in Domesday among the great feudatories of Shropshire. The history of this "William, surnamed Pantoul" (or Pantolf), "a gallant soldier, endowed with great talents," is told at considerable length by Ordericus Vitalis. He came to England in the following of Roger de Montgomeri, and was one of the chief officers entrusted with the administration of his earldom of Shrewsbury. In 1077 ne accompanied Robert de Grentemesnil, Bishop of St. Euphemia in Apulia, to the court of the celebrated Robert Guiscard, who "received him with distinguished honors, and tried to retain him in his service. He made him sit by his side at dinner on the feast of Easter, and offered him three towns if he would remain in Italy." Pantolf, however, would not be persuaded, and returned to England, but only to find himself involved in serious troubles. A violent hostility had long subsisted between him and the wife of his suzerain, Mabel de Belesme, who had forcibly taken possession of his castle of Perai; and when the tyrannical Countess was murdered by Hugh d'Ige in 1082, he was suspected, being a friend and associate of this Hugh, of having contrived her death. Earl Roger and his sons accused him of treason, seized his whole estate, and sought an opportunity of putting him to death. In this extremity he was harboured and protected by the monks of St. Evroult in Normandy, to whom he had been a benefactor; and at last, by the intervention of his friends, obtained permission to clear himself of the charge by undergoing the ordeal of hot-iron at Rouen. When he "carried the flaming iron in his naked hand, by God's judgment, there was no appearance of its being burnt, so that the clergy and all the people gave praise to God;" and he was acquitted. Earl Roger afterwards reinstated him in all his possessions. He then betook himself again to Apulia, this time in search of a relic of St. Nicholas, and having by good fortune obtained "the tooth of so great a man," enshrined it in a silver coffer, and brought it home in triumph to his domain of Noron in Normandy, where he had founded a cell for the monks of St. Evroult, gratefully bestowing it upon their church.^[14] In his latter years we find him in arms against Robert de Belesme, third Earl of Shrewsbury, who had disinherited him, and given him "a sharp repulse" when he came to proffer his services. He thereupon went over to the King, at that time engaged in besieging De Belesme's stronghold of Bridgenorth; and it was chiefly through his negotiations that the fortress surrendered, and Henry succeeded in crushing the terrible Earl. His estates were given back to him by the King, and inherited by his son Robert, from whom descended the subsequent Barons of Wem. Another son, Philip, inherited his lands in Normandy. There were, it seems, two other sons; Philip being the eldest of the four; "none of whom," complains Ordericus, "were emulative of their parent's virtues in respect of the Church."

Robert, who succeeded to the English fief, "had acquired some notoriety previous to his father's decease. Soon after the death of King William I., a nunnery at Caen was pillaged, and Robert Pantulf's name figures among the marauders. This fact, which could not but be known to Ordericus, perhaps induced the contrast which he makes between the first and second generation of Pantulfs."—Eyton's Shropshire.

But Ivo, "probably the son and certainly the successor of Robert, who comes into notice before the death of Henry I." was a great benefactor of the Church, for he gave lands to Shrewsbury Abbey, Combermere Abbey, and Haughmond Abbey. His eldest son Hugh, fourth Baron of Wem, was Sheriff of Shropshire from 1179 to 1189. "This," says Eyton, "I doubt not was with reference to his connection with the Fitz Alans" (his wife was Christiana Fitz Alan) "for the office was quasi hereditary, though the Fitz Alan of that day was hardly old enough to undertake it." The next heir, William II., who succeeded his father about 1224, and "had served as a knight in King John's Irish campaign of 1210," proved the last of the line. He was dead before 1233, leaving two daughters, Matilda and Elizabeth; "but as we have no coeval mention of Elizabeth, we may presume that she died unmarried, and soon after her father." Matilda was the wife of Ralph Botiler of Oversley, to whom she brought the barony of Wem.

"There was another William Pantulf, one of the defenders of Carrickfergus, and who, on being taken prisoner by King John, was fined fifteen merks for his release. I doubt whether this was the same William Pantulf who, in 1215, was one of the insurgents who held Belvoir Castle against King John, but who was pardoned in December of that year (Rot. Pip.).

"The first of these persons was perhaps William Pantulf of Cublesdon and Hales; the second was perhaps a member of the family seated in Warwickshire and Leicestershire."—Ibid.

William Pantulf of Cublesdon was a younger son of Ivo, third Baron of Wem; and left an only daughter Roesia, "married to that Richard Trussell who was slain at Evesham in 1265." The name is often written Pauntou in Shropshire. One of the Norman manors held by the first Baron of Wem is still called Aubri-le-Pantou.

In Leicestershire, William Pantulf (whom I cannot attempt to identify), with his wife Burgia founded a Benedictine nunnery, known as Langley Priory. Burgia was a sister of Roger de Stuteville; and her son Sir Roger was enfeoffed by his uncle of Newbold-super-Avon—called from him Newbold Pantolf—in Warwickshire. "But these Pantulfs," adds Dugdale, "enjoy'd it not long:" for Roger's son William had no issue; and left his two sisters, Burgia and Emma, his co-heirs. Emma married Sir Robert de Waver; but Burgia gave her share to the monastery of Pipwell in Northamptonshire, where her late brother had betaken himself "to lead a retired life. He had a Chamber assigned him by the Monks there, where he determined to end his days, and to have been a good benefactor to them: but, on a time, the Monks removed him out of that lodging, in respect of an entertainment they gave to a great Judge, who travailed (it seems) that way; which caused him to take such distast, that he presently left the house, and came to Monkskirby, where he after dyed, giving to that Monastery what he intended for Pipwell; viz. the capital Mess or Manour house of this Newbold, with three carucates of land, and fishing in the Avon."

Peito :

the mediaeval spelling of Poitou. Roger de Poitou, one of the great magnates of the Conquest, was the third son of Roger de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury, and bore the name of his wife, Almadis de Poitou, in her own right Countess de la Marche, "which title was used by him and his descendants as Count de la Marche and Poitou."—Bain's Lancashire. He received one of the most magnificent grants made by the Conqueror—the whole county of Lancaster, comprising the six hundreds lying between the Ribble and Mersey,^[15] or three hundred and ninety-eight manors in all, with the (free jurisdiction of an Earl Palatine. "The barons who held of him were called Barones Comitatiis (barons of the county) and held free courts for all pleas and complaints, except those belonging to the Earl's sword."—Ibid. Among these palatinate barons the territory was parcelled out; each having his appointed post assigned to him for the defence of the frontier, and the protection of its communications. Roger's chief care seems to have been to secure himself from any aggression by his powerful neighbour Hugh Lupus; for the whole course of the noble river that formed his southern boundary bristled with fortifications. At Liverpool, in a strong castle built to command the estuary of the Mersey, he installed his trusty comrade, Vivian de Molineux, as the first castellan. Higher up the river, opposite Runcorn, he placed Yardfrid, Baron of Widnes; and next to him (still ascending the stream) Paganus de Vilers, Baron of Warrington, mounted guard over the ford of Latchford, one of the principal passes into Cheshire before Warrington Bridge was built. Somewhat to his rear, but still within striking distance, "to strengthen him in time of need," was stationed Warin, Baron of Newton; while, further east, Albert Greslet, Baron of Manchester, held another ford called High Fare Passage, leading to the Cheshire barony of Stockport. Albert must have governed a large extent of country, for he and his neighbour Roger de Busli "were co-parceners in the lordship of Blackburnshire at the time of the Domesday Survey." Roger was Baron of Penwortham, where another castle guarded the mouth of the Ribble, which then formed a broader channel than it does now. There is a little uncertainty as to the original number of the Lancaster barons, and I have left out several others, given in the county history, that are evidently errors or interpolations, such as Ilbert de Lacy, Byron of Rochdale, and William de Lancaster—a name first assumed three generations after.

Roger appears to have chosen Clitheroe as the head of his Honour, and to have built his castle there before the date of Domesday, as his Yorkshire lands were then held of it. "It is not stated that he held either Halton Or Whittington, but it is certain that he, in the next reign, was lord also of these, and had fixed upon Lancaster in the former, then an all but deserted Roman site, for another castle."—A. S. Ellis. In 1094, he founded Lancaster Priory as a cell to St. Martin's Abbey at Sees in Normandy.

During the Conqueror's reign, he had lost the whole of his great principality: for, "in the interval between the first division of property under the Norman dynasty and the Domesday Survey, all his possessions were forfeited to the Crown. The honour of Lancaster was, however, restored to him in the time of William Rufus, but it was finally alienated in his banishment of 1101."—Bain's Lancashire. He undertook this second abortive rebellion in concert with his brother, Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, whose close ally he had ever been. "These brothers became too powerful to remain long faithful subjects to the King, with whom they ranked among the great feudatories of France.^[16] It was found that their influence was sufficient to give preponderance to the side they espoused, and Henry I. must have been greatly relieved when he was able to banish them from England."—A. S. Ellis. This opportunity was afforded him the year after his accession to the throne. The insurrection failed: Robert de Belesme surrendered his castle and himself at the King's mercy; and both the obnoxious Earls, stripped of their honours and estates, with their younger brother Arnulph de Montgomerie, were removed from the scene. "Outlawed, and banished from England, Roger and Arnulph naturally went to Robert, a man of vast resources and wealth, having no less than thirty-four strong castles in his county of Alencon alone; however, they were but ill received by him, though it was to their support of him they owed all their misfortune. Roger then retired to the castle of Charroux, near Civray, which he possessed in right of his wife, and it is not probable that he ever visited England again. His troubles, however, did not cease, for Hugh the Devil, Lord of Lusignan, son of his wife's aunt, disputed the county of La Marche with him, and there were constant hostilities between them, which, as a feud, their descendants continued. Almadis died 1116, but Roger was surviving in 1123, being present at the installation of Claras, Abbot of Ahun (Gallia Christiana, ii., col. 619). By Almadis, Roger had three sons;—Count Aldebert IV., Eudo, and Count Boson IV.; and the French genealogists say also two daughters, Ponce, wife of Wulfgrim 'Taillefer' II., Count of Augoulesme, and Marquise, wife of Guy IV., Viscount of Limoges."—Ibid.

The great honour of Lancaster was granted to Stephen, the King's nephew: and I cannot find that any part of Roger's English possessions ever reverted to his descendants. They could have no motive for returning to this country; and most likely, as was the case with Robert de Belesme's posterity, remained Frenchmen. Yet more than one family named De la Marche existed in England during the fourteenth century (see vol. iii., p. 370), and Dugdale speaks of the Petos, long seated at Chesterton in Warwickshire, as "so eminent in ancient times," without affording us any clue to his meaning. One of them served as Lt. Gen. of the Marshalship and Captain of the Bastille under the famous John Talbot in 1448: and two Petos occur as Sheriffs of Leicestershire, 15 Ed. III., and 7 and 15 Henry VI. There is a curious similarity between the coats of some of these families: for instance, Peyto bore Barry of six counterchanged; one of the De la Marches four bars on a field Azure; another, Barry of eight: but none of them in the least resemble Roger de Poitou's, Ermine, three chevrons Gules, as given by Bain. It was a mysterious coat, for it was certainly never borne by his father, nor, according to the same authority, was it that of his wife. I have met with a family of Peyton in Burke's Armoury that bore the same Ermine three chevrons Gules.

Penecord :

for Pencurt, or Fancourt; a duplicate.

Prendirlegast :

generally abbreviated to Prendelgast or Prendergast. In the latter form it has been considered territorial, and Mr. Ferguson, in his Surnames as a Science, labours to interpret it as follows: "Prendergast is, I take it, an ancient compound from the stem bend (A.-S. bend, band, crown, chaplet) with gast, hospes. It first takes a medial vowel between the two words of the compound, and becomes Pend-e-gast. Then e naturally becomes er, passing the very slight barrier which English pronunciation affords, and the name, having become Pendergast, finds the need of a second r to balance the first, and becomes Prendergast."

Much ingenuity, as it appears to me, is here wasted in the endeavour to transmute a Norman into a Saxon name; but it is with the original form, Prendirlegast, that we have here to do. Were it not invariably preceded by de, we might conjecture it to be a nickname, as Prendre le Gast—whatever that may mean; but it seems more likely, from the example of St. Denis-le-Gast, to be a true name with an adjunct. It is true that I cannot attempt to explain Le Gast. Is it the same as Vaast or Wast, frequently found in the Cotentin as a termination of place names? Nor can I in any way elucidate the meaning of the following lines:

"This peuysh proud this prender gest
When he is well yet can he not rest."

They were written by Skelton in the seventeenth century.

Sir Bernard Burke states that this family settled in Pembrokeshire and at Akill, in Northumberland, at the time of the Conquest. In the Testa de Nevill, however, we find William de Akill holding at Akill de veteri feoffamento. Perhaps he had adopted the name of his manor. In Wales, on the other hand, the Prendergasts gave theirs to a parish now forming part of the borough of Haverfordwest, which continued in their possession till Maurice de Prendergast sailed with Earl Strongbow to Ireland in the spring of 1170.

The posterity he left in that kingdom was sufficiently numerous; but in England I have only met with the name three times in public records. Robert de Prendelgast of Lincolnshire is found in the Pipe Roll of 1189-90: John Prendergast, Preceptor of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem of Greenham, in a catalogue of Berkshire gentry of the time of Henry III. (v. Lysons): and William de Prendergast, an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster, was pardoned for his participation in the death of Gaveston, in 1313.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. In Scotland, on the other hand, the Prendergasts are often mentioned, and occur at so early a date that it would appear they had crossed the Border even sooner than the Irish Channel. A village in the neighbourhood of Coldingham, Plendergast, formerly Prenagest, retains their name to this day, and "was one of the 'mansions' granted by Edgar, son of Malcolm Canmore, to the monks of Durham on his restoration to the crown of Scotland."—Ridpath's Border History. "William de Prendelath," named in 1295 in the "Submission of men of the shires of Roxburgh and Perth" to Edward I. was probably the same Sir William Prendregist who is included in the list of "Magnates" serving under him at the battle of Stirling in 1303. A "Mons. Henri de Prendirgest" brought the King the news of the capture of "Mons. Symon Fresel," at which he had himself assisted, and "was rewarded accordingly."—Affairs and History of Scotland, by Sir Francis Palgrave. Sir Peter de Prendreguest was one of the eleven knights who made their submission with John Comin to Edward I. at Dunfermline in 1304.—Ridpath's Border History. Another Sir William Prendegaste—perhaps the son of the former—fought among the barons "in the III warde of the batailles of Skotelonde" commanded by the Earl of Ross, in 1333.—Glastonbury MS. The name lingered on the Borders for more than two centuries and a half after this. "'Prenderguest' was one of the gentlemen of the Eastern March that, in 1591, subscribed the oath of allegiance to James VI., "binding themselves not to shrink from His Majesty's service for any cause, as they shall answer to Almighty God and His Majesty upon their faith, honour, or allegiance.'"—Ridpath. They bore a fleur de lis, as shown on the seal of Henry de Prendergast, appended to one of the Coldingham charters, but not—in his case at least—on a shield. Another seal, accidentally brought to light during the trenching of a field in Perthshire, and "undoubtedly the work of the fourteenth century," bears the name of John de Prendergast, and a shield with the singular device of a fleur de lis, with a sprig or stamen issuing from between the centre and dexter leaf.

But it was in Ireland that the family chiefly flourished and extended itself. They struck root in Tipperary, as Sir Bernard Burke informs us, nearly seven hundred years ago, and seated themselves at Newcastle Prendergast, on the river Suir, which washes the walls of their manor house on its way to Cahir Castle and Clonmell. In that county alone their territory stretched from Cahir to Cappoquin, and from Fethard to Cloghean; and they were to be met with in many others. Philip de Prendergast witnesses King John's charter to Grane Abbey, Kildare; and "Dominus Philippus de Prendilgast" another of Edward I. to Ponte Priory, Fermoy.—Mon. Angl. The Prendergasts of Clan Morris, co. Mayo, are mentioned by Camden. In Cork, the name is sometimes given Pindergrace; and, like most of its Norman compeers, it was now and then adopted by the conquered Celts, who were ordered to disguise their nationality under an alien patronymic. Thus, in 1575, Sir Henry Sidney writes from Galway: "There came to me" (with several others) "Mark Morris, of English syrname, Prendergast.... All submitted and seemed desirous to lyve in loyaltie, and under the lawes and subjection of the crown of England."

One of this extensive Irish family received a baronetcy. Thomas Prendergast of Newcastle, who married a sister of the eleventh Earl of Ormond, and died in 1725 at the patriarchal age of one hundred and eleven, left three sons, Jeffrey, Thomas, and James. Of the eldest and the youngest Burke tells us that "many descendants still exist;" but the posterity of Thomas only continued in the male line for one more generation. He was a Brigadier General in Marlborough's army; and having accidentally discovered a plot against the life of William III. was created a baronet, and further recompensed with a grant of Gort in Galway, the forfeited estate of Roger O'Shaughnessy. He fell at the battle of Malplaquet, and was succeeded by a son and namesake, who died s. p. in 1760, "whilst a patent was being drawn out raising him to the Viscountcy of Clonmell." Three sisters remained, all of them married; but the inheritance became vested in the youngest, Elizabeth; and her son by her second husband, Charles Smyth, was created Viscount Gort in 1816. These Prendergasts do not give the sprouting fleur de lis of the Scottish house. They bear Gules a saltire Vair.

The name has travelled into Spain, where Senor Moret Prendergast, often called the Spanish Cobden, is a foremost man among the Dynastic Democrats, and the leader of the Free Trade party (1882).

Perciuale :

Sir Richard, the fifth and youngest son of William Lupellus or Louvel (see Louvel) and the only one of his brothers who transmitted the original surname of De Percheval or Perceval to his posterity, "was portioned by his father with lands in Stawel in Somerset, and many other estates, which descended to his posterity, the successive lords of Weston-in-Gordano. This Sir Richard de Perceval attended King Richard I. in his expedition into Palestine, a.d. 1190, where, being a person of uncommon strength and valour, he distinguished himself in several fierce engagements. In one of them, it is said, that having lost his leg, he undauntedly continued on horseback till he also lost his arm, and that even then, with the horse's bridle in his teeth, he persisted to deal slaughter round him till he fell by loss of blood. Notwithstanding this tradition (one part of which seems to be confirmed by the family crest, which was a man armed on horseback, with one leg couped) it is certain that he lived to return home, and was buried in the church of Weston, under a superb monument which was destroyed in the civil wars of the seventeenth century."—Collinson's Somerset. His son, of the same name, went with him to the Holy Land, and was the father of Robert, Hugh, and John (sometimes styled, from one of his manors, de Walton). The first named, Robert, was one of the early adventurers to Ireland; and landing there in 1261 with Richard de Marlee, Stephen de Burgh, and about twenty men-at-arms, acquired by his good sword such great possessions that he elected to take up his abode there altogether. He was accordingly summoned to the parliament held at Dublin in 1285 as Baron Perceval, but died the same year: and the title was successively borne by his two sons, and a grandson with whom it ended in 1312.

The two younger brothers remained in Somersetshire, and it is believed that Robert resigned either the whole, or a great part, of his paternal estates to them. Nothing further is known of Hugh, but John was the ancestor of a long line of knights, who continued Lords of Eastbury and Weston-in-Gordano till the time of Charles II.^[17]. One of them was slain at Bannockburn; another knighted by the King's own hand on the field of Cressy: and the last, Thomas Perceval, who died in 1691, was a zealous Royalist, and suffered cruel treatment in the Civil Wars. Not only had he to pay a heavy sum as "composition," but his estate was injured by the Parliament forces, who, in addition, "ransacked his house, destroyed the family writings, and defaced the monuments of his ancestors. After the Restoration he was twice visited at his manor-house of Weston by King Charles II., from whom he expected, but in vain, a gratuity for his services."—Ibid. His only child, a daughter, left no posterity, and sold all the family property.

The name, however, was still borne by a remote kinsman, representing a branch that had separated from the parent stock more than two hundred years before. Ralf Perceval, who died in 1477, had a younger brother of the same name, on whom he settled the estate of Tydenham, and who was the immediate ancestor of the present Earls of Egmont. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, one of his descendants, named Richard, was much employed by Lord Burghley (who had married his sister) and had the skill and good fortune to decypher a packet of despatches that a Spanish vessel from the Low Countries, chased by an English cruiser, had cast overboard; and which, having been picked up at sea and laid before the Privy Council, was found to give the earliest intimation of the coming Armada. For this the Queen gave him a pension of 800 marks. In the following reign he had an appointment in Ireland, and finding an advantageous opportunity of buying land there, sold almost all his English property, and purchased the great barony of Duhallow, co. Cork, which consisted of seventy-eight and a half knight's fees, and extended over more than one hundred thousand acres. From this time the family became resident in Ireland, where they filled various offices, and continually added to their possessions, till, in the Civil Wars of 1642, Sir Philip Perceval held no fewer than nine castles on his territory in Munster. He was at that time a Royalist, and lost all these strongholds, and half his principality, in the cause: but the next year he changed sides, and "privately leaving" Oxford (where he was in actual attendance on the King) went over to the Parliament. He sat for Bridport, and afterwards for the province of Ulster; but soon got involved in quarrels with the Independent party; and thus, on his death in 1647, his son John found himself, in the words of Sir Egerton Brydges, "obnoxious to the rebel party in Ireland, from his father's services against them: odious to the Royalists, from his father's having quitted that cause, and equally hateful to Cromwell and his adherents;" and last, though not least, with his estates sequestered both in England and Ireland. But the young man was equal to the occasion. Though only eighteen at that time, he proved a skilled diplomatist, for he obtained the restitution of his estates in 1653; his father's office of Clerk of the Crown in 1655: another employment under the Protector in 1656; and finally, in 1661, a baronetcy from Charles II., to whom he presented a schedule of his father's losses during the rebellion, estimated at £280,000. Here, however, his success experienced a check: for he certainly never received a farthing of this large sum of money, though he was afterwards appointed to several lucrative Irish offices. Third in descent from him was another Sir John, who, on the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, received three successive peerages in Ireland. First, he was created Baron Perceval of Burton in 1714: then Viscount Perceval of Kanturk, in 17x2: and lastly, Earl of Egmont in 1733. His wife was Catharine, sister of Sir Philip Parker, the last representative (in the female line) of Henry Lovel (second son of the Lord Lovel and Holland who died in 1455), summoned to parliament by Edward IV. as Baron Morley: and when their son, the second Earl, received an English peerage in 1762, these ancient baronies were revived in his favour, and he was created Lord Lovel and Holland, of Enmore in the co. of Somerset.

Quinci :

"a baronial family from Quinci, Maine, traced by La Roque (Mais. d'Harcourt i. 213) to the house of De Rohan, whose arms they bore."^[18]—The Norman People. The pedigree of the Earls of Winchester, given by Dugdale, is comparatively brief, for it only commences with Saner de Quincy in the time of Henry II., and ends with the last heir in 1264, but the house, while it lasted, was amongst the greatest of the realm.

Saher descended from Richard de Quincy, the companion-in-arms of the Conqueror, and received a grant from the King of Bushby in Northamptonshire, that had belonged to Anselm de Conches. He held this, as well as some land in Bedfordshire, in 1165.—Liber Niger. His wife was Maud de St. Liz, who brought him two sons, Robert and Saher.

The eldest, Robert, an active and adventurous soldier, left no heir. He invaded Ireland with Earl Strongbow, who appointed him Seneschal of Leinster; four years afterwards witnessed a charter of William the Lion to Kelso Abbey, and received the Scottish barony of Tranent, with the office of Justiciary of Scotland. Then, in 1190, he "being in the Holy Land upon the Recess of the King of France, was made Captain of those CL Soldiers then left behind for the defence of his Country against the Infidels." His last expedition was with Coeur de Lion to Normandy in 1194.

His brother and successor Saher, created Earl of Winchester by King John, married Margaret de Bellamont, second daughter of Robert Blanchmaines Earl of Leinster, and co-heiress of her brother, Robert Fitz Parnel, whose vast possessions were divided in 1204 between her and her elder sister Amicia, the wife of Simon de Montfort. The strong fortress of Montsorell, which the King at first retained in his own hands, was eventually committed to her husband's custody.

Saher, thus invested with the power and authority of a great baron, took a leading part in the councils of the King's enemies. Already, in 1203, when Castellan of the Norman castle of Rueil, he had refused to defend it against the French from disgust at the slothful inaction of John himself, "who then lay at Caen, and minded nothing but Feasting, Luxury, and lying in Bed till Dinnertime." At first, while the differences between the barons and their sovereign still admitted of mediation, he received letters of safe conduct to come to Court, and endeavour to bring about an understanding; and obtained the same immunity for all those who came to petition the King for the redress of their grievances till the Clause of Easter 1214. But when all other means failed, he took the field under the banner of Marescallus Dei et Ecclesiae; and was one of the twenty-five illustrious guarantors of Magna Charta that were excommunicated by the Pope. "Which," adds Dugdale, "did not at all startle him;" for he soon after went with Robert Fitz Walter on an embassy to France, to offer the crown of England to King Philip's son Lewis. Nor did he, like so many others, return to his allegiance on the accession of Henry III., but kept a strong garrison at Montsorrel on behalf of the French prince, and was one of the principal commanders of the army that was routed at Lincoln.

He was there taken prisoner, but released on his submission a few months afterwards. The next year, abjuring home politics, he set out, with the Earl of Chester and others, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was present at the siege of Damietta; but died on his way to Jerusalem in 1219.

He left three sons by "that great Inheritrix," as Dugdale styles his wife: 1. Robert; 2. Roger; and 3. another Robert. The elder Robert was in Palestine at the time of his father's death, and never lived to return home and claim his heritage. He married Hawise, the fourth daughter of Hugh Keveliock, Earl of Chester; by whom he had an only child, Margaret, the wife of John de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.

Roger, who succeeded his father as Earl of Winchester, again made a splendid alliance; for his first wife, Helen, the eldest daughter and co-heir of Alan of Galloway, brought him the office of Constable of Scotland, with a great appanage. "In 31 Hen. III., being in Galway (where he had great Possessions in right of his Wife) and exercising more severity to the People of that Country than becom'd him, he was besieg'd by them in a Castle there: and being apprehensive of his danger, mounted his Horse, well armed (with some of his Followers) and broke through them; whence he came to the King of Scotland, to whom he made his complaint of their dealing; who punish'd them for that their Rebellious Insurrection, and re-establish'd him in the possession of his Right."—Dugdale. By this Scottish wife he had three daughters who became his co-heirs, Margaret, married to William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby; Elizabeth, married to Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan in Scotland; and Ela, married to Alan la Zouche.

He was twice again married, and on each occasion to a widow; for his second wife Maud, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, was previously Countess of Pembroke; and the third, Alianor, the seventh daughter of his son-in law the Earl of Derby (by his first marriage with one of the great Pembroke heiresses) had for her first husband William de Vaux. By one or other of these two Countesses he had a fourth daughter, Isabel, contracted in 1240 to Hugh de Nevill; but no son was ever born to him, and the name and title of the Earls of Winchester expired at his death in 1264.
He had been the last survivor of his race, for his younger brother, Robert, died seven years before him. Robert was not behind the rest of his family in the success of his matrimonial venture; for his wife was a Welsh princess, who, as the daughter of Llewellyn, was probably richly dowered. But she, again, had three daughters and no son. One of the daughters was a nun; the other two were married: Joan to Humphrey de Bohun, son of the Earl of Hereford (I am quoting Dugdale, but no such match is recorded in the Bohun pedigree); and Margaret to Baldwin Wake.

Quintiny :

or Quentin; originally, of course, a Christian name. A family of Quentin—the Quentins of Coupigny—still exists in Normandy, and bears Paly of six, Azure and Or. They came from Brittany, having expatriated themselves during the troublous times of Duchess Anne, and settled at Morigny, near Coutances, about 1450. Roger Quentin's claim to rank with the older nobility of the Duchy was recognized and confirmed in 1605 by the Cour des Aides of Rouen.

In England the first trace of the name that I have met with is in the reign of Coeur de Lion, when Richard de Quintine was Abbot of Furness in Cumberland. But the notices of it soon become numerous, and appear in at least half a dozen counties. Richard Quintin held a knight's fee of the Earl of Hereford in Wiltshire.—Testa de Nevill. About 1272, we find Thomas Quintin of Oxfordshire (it may be the same Thomas who, as Servientes, performed military service due from William de Braose in 1310); Adam Quintin of Huntingdon; Robert Quintin of Kent and Norfolk; William Quintin of Kent and Wilts; and three of the name, Henry, Edric, and Richard, in Suffolk.—Rotuli Hundredorum. John and Roger Quintin attended the muster of the Hundred of Loose, in the latter county, in 1326: and Alexander Quintin of Essex was summoned for military service in 1322, and to a great Council at Newcastle in 1330.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. In Wiltshire, Henry Quintin was Custos of Graveley Forest in 1273, as was William Quintin of Wychford in 1289 and 1296.—Hoare's Wills. John Quintin was joint Lord of Highway in 1316: and in Cliffe Pypard Church there is a brass of a man in armour of this family, which probably dates from about 1380.

In Kent, at least, the Quintins remained for nearly three hundred years after that. Anceline de Quintin held Woodford and Wingfield in the time of Edward III. His descendant William Quintin bought an estate at Seale in the beginning of Henry VI.'s reign: and about 1560 Robert Quintin was seated at ne Grange, in the parish of Leybourne. Now comes the mysterious part of their story. "Thomas, the son of William Quintin of Seale, was often styled Thomas son of Oliver" (for what reason Hasted does not attempt to explain) "by which means his son John acquired the name of Quintin alias Oliver, by which he calls himself in his will, 32 Hen. VIII. His descendant Robert transposed his name, calling himself Robert Oliver alias Quintin, and resided at the Grange, as did his grandson Robert, who used the name of Oliver only, though in deeds and writings he wrote the name of Quintin likewise. He bore Ermine on a fesse Gules, three lions rampant Or, and died in the reign of Charles II., leaving Juliana his sole daughter and heir, who carried this estate in marriage to Edward Covert of Sussex."—Hasted's Kent.

A Gloucestershire proverb, "very frequent" in the seventeenth century, arose from the matrimonial misfortunes of one of this family. "W. Quintin of Hill having a pestilent angry and unquiet wife, much more insultinge over his milde nature than Zantippe over Socrates, was oft enforced to shelter himselfe from those stormes, to keepe his chamber: whence, hearing his neighbors complayninge of the unruliness of their towne bull, whom noe mounds would keepe out from spoilinge of their cornefeilds, the bull then bellowing before them, and they then in chasinge him towards the comon pounde: peepinge out of his chamber windowe, cryed to them: 'Neighbors, Neighbors, gett him a wife, gett him a wife;' meaninge, That by that meanes hee would bee made quiett and tamed as himselfe was: from whence this proverbe first arose."—Berkeley MSS.

Ros :

"It needeth not be doubted," says Dugdale, "that Peter, the ancestor of the great Family of Lords Ros of Hamlake, originally assumed that Sirname in King Henry the First's time from the Lordship of Ros in Holderness,^[19] where he then had his residence." He deliberately shuts his eyes to the fact that five De Ros'—neither more nor less—are entered in Domesday; that is, William, to whom the Conqueror had given the Abbey of Fecamp in 1079, with a small Sussex barony added to its revenues; and Anchitel, Ansgot, Goisfrid, and Serlo, who all held as under-tenants. "They derived their name from the parish of Ros, now Rots, two miles from Caen, where they held a fief, but not the entire domain, which pertained to the De Patrys and others. The family must have been numerous at the time of the Conquest, and the formation of Domesday Book, as five of the name are there inscribed. They had evidently all followed Duke William to England, but did not stand high in his favour, for, with the exception of William, to whom he gave the Abbey of Fecamp, they do not figure among the tenants in chief either in 1086 or during the reign of William Rufus. All our researches have failed to determine the exact relationship of these five contemporaries, or indeed of a sixth, inscribed in 1090 on the roll of the Abbey of St. Stephen-of-Caen as William Gonnor de Ros. Nor have we been more fortunate in discovering which among them or their descendants was the father of Richard de Ros, who witnessed the foundation charter of Aunay Abbey in 1131; or of the trouvere Adam de Ros, author of the Descente de S. Paul aux Enfers. The history of this family is all the more obscure, as it appears to have become extinct towards the latter end of the fourteenth century.

"The origin of the Anglo-Norman family of De Ros is enveloped in the same obscurity, as the English genealogists have no real ground for deriving it from Anchitel, rather than from any of the other three companions-in-arms of Duke William, who bore the same name, and are, like him, inscribed in Domesday Book."—Recherches sur le Domesday.

There can be no question that the real history of the family in this country commences with Peter de Ros, who married Adeline, the youngest but most favoured of the sisters of Walter Espec, the famous Baron of Helmsley. She brought a considerable inheritance, even though a preponderant share of Espec's great barony was given to the Church. He had an only son, on whom he doated; a promising and "comely" lad who "took great delight in swift Horses;" and one unhappy day, in 1121, when he was spurring and pressing his horse to its utmost speed, it stumbled and fell with him, breaking his neck. The bereaved father, thus left childless, vowed to make Christ his heir, and founded three great monasteries; one at Kirkham, near the scene of the accident, where he converted his own "pleasant Seat into a religious House:" another at Rievaulx, also in Yorkshire; and a third at Wardon, in Bedfordshire. In his latter years he joined the community at Rievaulx: and this formidable champion died a Cistercian monk. His portrait, though drawn by Abbot Ailred, one of the grateful brethren whom he had endowed, is somewhat grim: "Black hair, long beard, his stature taller by a Head than other men; great eyes, big face, high forehead, and a voice like a trumpet."^[20] It had rung over the field of Northallerton, when, on the morning of the great battle, he harangued his men, and then, taking the Earl of Albemarle by the hand, cried, "I faithfully promise you, that I will conquer the Scots this day, or lose my life by them."

This match with Adeline Espec founded the fortunes of the house; but Peter's grandson, Everard de Ros, made a still more fortunate marriage. His wife, Rose Trusbut, was the eldest daughter of Robert Trusbut, Baron of Wartre in Holderness, and through the successive deaths of her three brothers and two sisters—all issueless—was left his sole heiress and representative. In honour of the great barony she had brought to them, her descendants adopted her punning coat of arms, Trots bouts d'eau (three water-bougets) in lieu of the golden Catherine wheel they had hitherto borne.^[21]

Rose's two sisters, however, reached such extreme old age—Hillaria lived to be ninety, and died six years before Agatha—that the whole inheritance only came to her grandson. Everard himself died early—before 1185—leaving her a young widow, and his son and heir Robert—one of the future potentates of the realm—a lad of thirteen.

Robert Furfan, as he was surnamed, proved a man of fitful and capricious temper, in his early years imprisoned for some offence or other against Coeur de Lion, and again, in 1205, suffering sequestration under King John, who, only five years before, had endowed him with the whole of the barony of his great-grandmother's father, Walter Espec. In both cases the cloud of displeasure passed over quickly: and it was in the zenith of his power and the flower of his age—he can scarcely have been more than thirty—that he renounced the world in 1209, and became a monk. But it was not for long. The very next year he cast off his cowl and emerged from his monastery—a strange instance of the latitude accorded even by the inflexible monastic rule to a great feudal lord—resumed his barony, which had been committed to the custody of Philip de Ulcote, and plunged with fresh vigour into the strife of parties and the clash of arms. At first he was on the King's side, and duly rewarded with a grant of some Cumberland manors; "but this favour," says Dugdale, "did not oblige him, as it seemed;" for we next find him holding Carlisle Castle in open defiance of the King's authority, and soon after ranged amongst the most resolute of his opponents. He was entrusted by the Barons with the government of Northumberland; was present at the sealing of the Great Charter at Runnymede, and one of its twenty-five appointed Conservators. In the ensuing reign "he approved himself firm and faithful to King Henry III.": and some time before his death in 1226 assumed the habit of a Knight Templar, in which he was buried in the Temple Church, London, where his tomb and effigy yet remain. He had married Isabel, the daughter (though of more than doubtful legitimacy) of William the Lion, King of Scots, and widow of Robert de Brus, and left two sons, between whom he divided his possessions. To William, as the firstborn, he gave his great Yorkshire barony; to Robert his smaller fief in Northumberland, adding to it a Scottish barony, to be held of the elder by military service. For each he built a great castle as the head of their Honour: Hamlake for William, and Werke for Robert.

William had, like himself, taken up arms with the confederate barons, and been mulcted in a heavy fine. "Nevertheless, as soon as he discerned an opportunity, he flew out again," joined the revolt against Henry III., and was taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln; but his father procured his release on bail. The next heir, Robert, was, again, deeply engaged in the baronial war, held a command under Simon de Montfort at Lewes, and was summoned to parliament by the barons in 1264 as Lord Ros of Hamlake.^[22] Some twenty years before, he had gained the third great matrimonial prize awarded to the family, in receiving from Henry III. the hand of the heiress of Belvoir. "But not," adds Dugdale, "without a round compensation; for it appears that both he and his wife in 32 Hen. III. were debtors to the King in no less than the sum of 3285l, xiijs, ivd, and a Palfrey; of which sum, the King was then pleased to accept by two hundred marks a year, until it should all be paid." In those days, this represented, at the very least,£55,000 of our money; but the inheritance thus acquired was proportionately splendid. Isabel de Albini brought him, as the appanage of her honour and castle of Belvoir, a domain that a prince might well afford to envy—the whole wide stretch of territory granted by the Conqueror to Robert de Todeni.

The first Lord Ros was followed by ten others, all men of action busied in the affairs of the realm, and constant on the battle-field, whose fortunes I cannot attempt to follow in any degree of detail. Isabel's son, who put in a claim to the crown of Scotland in right of his pseudo-royal great-grandmother, received from Edward I. the castle of Werke upon Tweed, forfeited by the treason of his kinsman. But this stronghold, one of the keys of the Border, was judged too important for the custody of a subject, and his successor transferred it by exchange to the Crown. The uncle of this third Lord, Sir John de Ros, was very eminent in the days of Edward II. and Edward III. He had taken part energetically with Queen Isabel against the Despencers; and on her son's accession was summoned to parliament as a baron, appointed Steward of the Royal Household, and chosen as "one of those twelve Lords by whom it was resolved the King (being young) should be governed." In 1336 he was named "Admiral of the Seas from the Thames mouth northwards," and died the year following, leaving no heir to his barony. The fourth Lord Ros was a renowned soldier. He led one of the brigades at Cressy, and died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as did his nephew John, sixth Lord. The next in succession was the "William, Lord Roos," who had a dispute concerning some right of pasturage in Lincolnshire with Robert Tirwhitt, one of the Justices of the King's Bench, which was decided by the King in his favour. Tirwhitt was ordered to make a humble apology, "delivered before all the Knights, Esquires, and Yeomen of his" (Lord Ros') "party then present;" which he prefaced by a singular acknowledgment—all the more singular as coming from one of the law officers of the Crown. "My Lord Roos," said he, "I know well that you being of such Birth, Estate, and Might that if you liked, you might have comen to the foresaid Lawday in such a way, that I had been of no might to make any party." He then proffered a fine of five hundred marks, with two tuns of good Gascon wine, two oxen, and twelve sheep; but Lord Ros would only accept the latter "for the dinner of those here present." His son and heir John spent the whole of his brief life under arms. In 1416—being then not yet eighteen—he went with Henry V. to France, and distinguished himself so greatly before Rouen, that he received a grant of the Norman castle of Basqueville; but was slain in a disastrous encounter near the castle of Beaufort, while still under age. With him fell his young brother William, the Duke of Exeter, and "many more of the English Chivalry." Thomas, his nephew, who succeeded his father, when only four years old, as tenth Lord Ros, was a staunch Lancastrian, and after that memorable Palm Sunday on Towton Field,

"Where the river ran all gory,
And in hillocks lay the dead,
And seven and thirty thousand
Fell for the White and Red—"

he fled with the King to Berwick. He was attainted on the accession of Edward IV., and died the same year, leaving, by Philippa, sister and co-heir of John Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, two sons, Edmund and John; and three daughters; Eleanor, married to Sir Robert Manners of Etal Castle in Northumberland; Isabel, the wife of Thomas Grey (or, as others say, of Sir Robert Lovell): and Margaret, who is supposed to have died unmarried. "His lands," says Leland, "stood confiscate: and Bellevoir Castell was given in keeping to the Lorde Hastings; the which coming thither upon a tyme to peruse the ground, and to lye in the castell, was suddenly repelled by Master Harington, a Man of Power thereabout, and Friend of the Lorde Ros: whereupon the Lorde Hastings cam thither another tyme with a strong power, and upon a raging wylle spoiled the castelle, defacing the roofes, and taking the leades off them, wherewyth they were all coverid. Then fell alle the Castell to ruine; and the tymber of the roofs uncovered rotted away; and the soyle between the waulles at the last grew full of Elders; and no habitation was ther till that of late Dayes the Erie of Rutland hath made it fairer than ever it was."

The attainder was reversed when Henry VII. came to the throne, and Edmund, as eleventh Lord Ros, enjoyed his own again. But he was never married; and his brother must have died in early life, as there is no further mention of him. The old line had at last come to an end; and the sisters became co-heiresses: only Eleanor had children; and her son, Sir George Manners, succeeded as twelfth Lord Ros, and was the father of the first Earl of Rutland, who undertook the restoration of her ancestral castle, completed by his successor in the time of Elizabeth. Since then, Belvoir has been burnt to the ground and entirely rebuilt by another of the family; for Eleanor de Ros' splendid dowry has never passed away from her lineage, though her ancient barony is no longer theirs. It went to the only child of the third Earl of Rutland, Lady Elizabeth Manners, married to William Cecil, Lord Burghley; and though, on the death of her son, it reverted to the sixth Earl, Francis, it was again lost through want of a male heir, and fell to his daughter, Lady Catherine. She was the wife of George Villiers, the famous Duke of Buckingham, and the mother of several children, but they all died s.p., and the barony lapsed into abeyance for a century and a quarter. At last, in 1806, it was granted to Lady Henry Fitz Gerald, who adopted the name of De Ros, and transmitted it to her posterity.

At least two other baronies by writ were held by the house of De Ros. Robert Furfan's second son Robert, to whom he gave the barony of Werke in Northumberland, was, according to Dugdale, summoned to parliament 22 Ed. I., or sixty-seven years afterwards; but from the date it appears most probable that it was his son of the same name. The first Robert, as the son of William the Lion's daughter, was named Regent of Scotland and guardian of the young King and Queen with John Baliol in 1255. Both were vehemently accused by their charges; the Queen protesting that she was kept like a prisoner in a solitary place near the sea, without wholesome air or proper attendance; and Robert de Ros was sentenced to pay the enormous sum of 100,000 marks—a fine afterwards remitted—for "greatly misdemeaning himself in his trust."

The second Robert, summoned as "Robertus Ros de Werke" in 1293, forfeited his barony by his foul treason. "About a year after" (his summons) "being far in love with a Scotch woman, whom he had a mind to make his Wife, he endeavoured to inveigh William de Ros of Hamlake (his kinsman) to the Scots party, acknowledging that he himself was of their confederacy; who refusing to be thus wrought upon, rebuked him for that attempt, and represented to him how scandalous such an act would be to their whole Family. Howbeit all this prevailed not, for that night he got privately away to the Scots; which being discerned by William, he forthwith hasted to the King (then at Newcastle-upon-Tine) and signifying to him the perfidiousness of this his Kinsman, desired some help to defend the Castle of Werke, lest it should be surprised by the Scots, through the means of that treachery; who accordingly sent a thousand of his men which were quartered the night following at Prestfen; whereof this Robert being aware, he took a power of Scots out of the Garrison of Rokesburgh; and privily surrounding the Village, gave them a Signal; viz, Tabart and Surcoat, commanding that whosoever naming the one word, if the party to whom he expressed it, did not answer the other, they should kill him. And thereupon entering Prestfen, he set fire to the Houses; which so astonished the English, that divers of them slew those of their own party, and many were taken prisoners, and most barbarously used. But this vile and unworthy act was not long unrevenged; for shortly after King Edward made slaughter of no less than ten thousand and fifty-three of the Scots, in the Battel of Dunbar." Dugdale adds, that Robert de Ros, "then marching in the Scots army with Banners displayed," was with them at the burning of his own town of Werke.

The fair lady for whose sake he forswore his allegiance is not named, and if he married her she must have been his second wife. The first—I should rather say the only—wife of his ever mentioned, was Margaret, sister and co-heir of the great Yorkshire baron, Peter de Brus of Skelton. She inherited from her mother, Helewise of Lancaster, the castle and honour of Kendall, which she gave to her son William. From him it descended to his grandson, who dying s.p. 32 Ed. III., left an infant daughter, afterwards married to Sir William Parr, and the ancestress of the Parrs of Kendall. But according to another account given by Dugdale, Robert had no son at all; only two daughters, Margaret Salvain and Isabel de Knock; "which Isabel lived not long, I guess"; for in 1312 Margaret, as sole heir of Robert de Ros, petitioned the King for pardon of her father's forfeiture, and had letters patent granted to her in terms of her request. The confusion may arise from his having fused two Roberts into one.

The second Robert was the elder brother of William of Igmanthorpe, one of the three De Ros' summoned to parliament in 1293, who left descendants in the male line till the seventeenth century. Leland mentions them: "Ros, that dwellith at Ingmanthorpe in Yorkeshir a 2. Miles a this side Wetherby, cummith of a Younger Brother in Descentes tyme past of the House of the Lord Ros. Wetherby longgid in tymes past also to the House of this Ros, and divers other theraboute." The line had only "of late" expired when Dugdale wrote.

Some of the family that had crossed the Border early in the thirteenth century are now represented by a numerous and flourishing Scottish clan. Hugh de Ros of Geddes, temp. Alexander II. (1214-1249), was the father of a second Hugh, who acquired Kilravock in Nairn through the heiress of the Bissets, and had a crown charter of the barony from John Baliol. This must have been the same Hugh who, with Thomas de Ros, is found among the barons who appended their seals to the famous proclamation issued by Robert Bruce after the battle of Bannockburn. Kilravock is still held by his lineal descendants. The name became Rose and often Ross (in either case the lineage may be recognized by the water-bougets on the coat of arms); and was widely spread. From a branch settled in Hampshire descended F. M. Lord Strathnairn, whose peerage was conferred in 1866 for his eminent services as Commander-in-chief during the Indian Mutiny. No such feats of arms have been recorded in India since the great days of Clive. In that terrible summer campaign, during which "not a man in the force enjoyed his natural health or strength, months of marching under an Indian sun having told on the strongest," he vanquished armies that twentyfold out-numbered his own, and carried by assault the rock-citadel of Gwalior—reputed the strongest fort in India—with a mere handful of men. Yet of the victorious troops under his command not more than one-third were English. He received the baton of a Field Marshal in 1877, and died unmarried at a good old age in 1885.

Ridel :

descended from the ancient Counts of Angouleme, who claim to have received their fief from Charles the Bald in 866. The surname was first assumed about 1048 by Galfrid or Geoffrey, the second son of Count Galfrid, who had for his inheritance the barony of Blaye in Guienne, and married the heiress of Perigord. By this Countess Agnes, he had two sons: of whom the elder, Helias, was the forefather of the Counts of Perigord, and the second, Geoffrey, fought in Apulia, and came from thence to the conquest of England with William Bigod. He is mentioned in Domesday as having received large grants of land, and also succeeded to his father's barony in Guienne. The next in succession, another Geoffrey, married Geva, the bastard daughter of Hugh Lupus,^[23] and was a Crown Commissioner in 1106 with Ralph Basset, whom he succeeded as Lord Justiciary (Mon. Angl. i. 172): but was soon after drowned in the famous shipwreck of the Blanch Nef, with his brother-in-law, the young Earl of Chester, and the King's two sons. Maud, his only surviving child, was a great heiress, and married Richard Basset, who became in his turn Lord Justiciary of England, and with whom she founded Laud Abbey, in Leicestershire. Their son Geoffrey took the name of Ridel, and though in the next generation Richard, the heir, again called himself Basset, and became the ancestor of the baronial Bassets (see Basset), it was retained by his younger brother Hugh, who founded the still existing family. This Hugh de Ridel was one of the hostages given to Henry II. for William the Lion, King of Scots, having acquired through his wife, Margaret de St. Medard, the manor of Cranston in Scotland, which was lost in the subsequent Scottish wars, and Withering in Northamptonshire, held for three hundred years and upwards by his descendants. The French barony of Blaye, that he had inherited from his father, also remained with them till 1319; and by means of another estate they obtained in Guienne, their connection with the province was kept up till it fell into the hands of the French in the following century. His younger grandson, Hugh Fitz-Geoffrey, had some lands in Normandy, where his posterity appear to have settled; and one of them, Martin Ridel, Baron of More and Plainesevette, was Grand Treasurer of France under Louis XIV. (Feoda Norman, up. Chesnium.) Another of the family, Sir William Ridel, was seated in the North of England, and a person of some note under the first two Edwards, being successively Constable of Norham, Constable of Barnard Castle, Sheriff of Northumberland, and Governor of Newcastle. But he left no son when he died in 1328, and his three daughters, Isabella de Clavering, Constance de Kingston, and Joanna de Woderington, became his co-heirs.

In the sixteenth century the Ridels removed to Scotland. It would seem they had at that time lost much of their former importance; most of their lands having passed away through heiresses or been alienated; and in 1558 John Riddell (as the name was then spelt) sold his only remaining estate in Norfolk, and sought his fortune at the court of King James, where he was kindly received. From that date to the present day, that is, for more than three hundred years, the family has remained resident in Scotland. They were for a long time seated at Kinglass in West Lothian: thence they removed to the Highlands; and in 1778 James Riddell, of Ardnamurchan and Sunart in Argyllshire, received a baronetcy. Their present home is at Strontian, in the same county. The crest they bear is surmounted by a scroll inscribed "De Apulia," in memory of the Geoffrey Ridel who fought under Robert Guiscard, and first came to England at the Conquest.

This account of the Ridels is abbreviated from an elaborate pedigree, with full references to the authority of public documents, given by Hutchinson in his History of Durham. "It may be here proper," he continues "to take notice of a very singular error into which some Scottish genealogists have lately fallen. The family of Ridel has been by them mistakingly considered as the same with another of the surname of De Ridale. Accordingly they have blended together and confounded the history of both.

"De Ridale is evidently a local surname, and has its origin from the district of that name in Yorkshire. Persons of that name were settled in Ridale as early as the middle of the twelfth century. One of them, Walter de Ridale, it appears, went to Scotland at the time that King David I. brought the monks of Rieveaulx, in Ridale, to settle them at Melrose in Roxburghshire, and there acquired the lands of Liliesleaf in that county. The descendants of this Walter, as well as himself, retained possessions at the same time both in Ridale and Roxburghshire, so that the origin of the family is clear beyond dispute.

"Another branch of the De Ridales, besides that of Liliesleaf, in Scotland, settled at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Philip de Ridale was mayor of that town, an office which was then of great importance, in the reign of Edward I. Whether he was the chief of all the family, or whether he was of a younger branch, we know not; but it seems probable that the honourable family, the Riddells, of Swinburne Castle, are his descendants."

Surtees, however, gives a wholly different pedigree of the last mentioned family. He discards Philip the Mayor and all connection with Berwick-upon-Tweed; and derives them from Hugh Ridel, living 4 Ed. III., a brother of the Sir William Ridel who was appointed Constable of Norham in 1311. Several of them were Mayors or Sheriffs of Newcastle-on-Tyne; two were "merchant adventurers:" and one, Sir Thomas, colonel of a regiment of foot in the service of Charles I., and Governor of Tynemouth Castle, "dyed abanyshed man (after his lordship of Tunstall was sold to pay his composition) at Antwerp in Brabant." He had "rendered himself so obnoxious to the Parliament that £1000 was offered for his apprehension; and escaped with difficulty from Berwick in a small fishing vessel." Another Thomas, who was seated at Swinburne Castle, engaged in the Jacobite rising of 1715, and was taken prisoner, but escaped from Lancaster Castle, and was included in the general pardon. He afterwards married one of the co-heirs of Widdrington in Northumberland; and his son acquired Felton through another heiress of the same name. Their house of St. Edmund's, near Gateshead, was, as the property of an ancient Roman Catholic family, gutted and plundered by a Protestant mob in 1747, and has since been untenanted. They are still represented in the male line, and bear Argent, a fess between three garbs or wheatsheaves Azure: whereas the coat of the Riddells of Ardnamurchan is Or, three piles Gules in point, over all a bend Azure. That of the Ridells of Roxburghshire is Argent, on a chevron Gules between three ears of wheat stalked and leaved ppr, as many fleur-de-lis of the second.

Riuers :

from Revieres, near Creuilli, in the arrondissement of Caen. This is one of the names given by Wace in his account of the battle of Hastings. "He who was then Sire de Reviers brought with him many knights who were foremost in the assault, bearing the enemy down with their war-horses." M. le Prevost, in his Notes, states this to be Baldwin de Meules (see Meulles). "He never bore the name of Reviers or Redvers, which, however, the annotator assumes, was taken by his son Richard. See Intro. Domesday, i. 377-473. If however, as we believe, it is a mistake in Dugdale and others to confound Richard de Reviers with Richard Fitz Baldwin (who died without issue) the Sire de Reviers is to be sought elsewhere."—Taylor. It seems improbable—not to say impossible—that Richard Fitz Baldwin, who lived till 1137 (seventy-one years afterwards) could have been a leader or even a combatant at Hastings; and there is not the slightest authority for assuming that he was ever called De Reviers.

But there was a genuine and undoubted Richard de Reviers, who with William de Reviers (perhaps his brother) is to be found on the Dives Roll, and held a barony in Dorset in 1086. (Domesday.) He is presumed to have been the son of a William de Reviers who held land at Montebourg in Normandy; a conjecture the more probable, as he, with the King's consent, founded an Abbey at Montebourg in 1088, and endowed it, among other grants, with one of his Dorset manors. "In the cartulary of Carisbrook he is called the nephew of William Fitz Osbern, and the grant of the Isle of Wight to him after the death of Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford, certainly gives some support to the assertion."—Planche. He had been one of the chief counsellors and champions of Prince Henry throughout all his differences and conflicts with Robert Courteheuse, and was magnificently recompensed on his accession to the throne. Besides the castle and honour of Plympton, he received Tiverton in Devonshire with the gift of the Tertium Denarum, or third penny of the pleas, by which he was constituted Earl of the county; and not long after obtained the Isle of Wight. His proper style was Earl of Devon and Lord of the Isle; but he was most generally called, from his residence, Exoniensis Comes. He died in 1107, and was buried in his Norman abbey; where the top of his stone coffin, with the word Fundator still visible upon it, has been found and preserved from destruction by M. de Gerville. By his wife Adeliza Peverel he left three sons; Baldwin; William (both of whom witness the foundation charter of Montebourg), and Robert; with one daughter, Hadewise, Countess of Lincoln.

Baldwin, the second Earl, took part very strongly with the Empress Maud, having, as is alleged, a personal quarrel with Stephen, who had refused to confer upon him some coveted honour, and spent "much treasure" in fortifying Exeter Castle and the Isle of Wight against him. But the King, marching westwards with a force partly composed of Flemish auxiliaries, besieged and captured his castle, seized his island, and expelled him and his wife and children from the country. Nevertheless, we find him in later life reinstated in his Earldom. He founded three religious houses, Brummore Abbey in Wiltshire, Twineham Priory, and Quarr Abbey in the Isle of Wight, where he lies buried. His son Richard, who succeeded him, and 14 Hen. II. certified to eighty-nine knights' fees, was the father of two Earls that died s. p., and the title and inheritance reverted to their uncle William de Vernon. He was one of the four Earls that carried the silken canopy at Coeur de Lion's second coronation, being then styled Earl of the Isle of Wight; and married Mabel de Beaumont, daughter of Robert Earl of Mellent; by whom he had one son, Baldwin, and two daughters; Mary, the wife of Robert de Courtenay, Baron of Oakhampton, and Joan, first married to William Briwere, and then to Hubert de Burgh, the King's chamberlain. She brought her second husband Christ Church and the whole Isle of Wight in marriage, but had no children. The son died before his father, leaving a little boy—another Baldwin—to succeed as seventh Earl. His wife, Margaret Fitz Gerald, had been a considerable heiress; and in her widowhood was, according to Matthew Paris, "constrained by King John, the Tyrant, who stuck at no wicked act, to marry that impious, ignoble, and base-conditioned man, Falk de Breant, against her Will." After his grandfather's death in 1216, her little son was in ward to this Fulk, till Fulk himself died in 1224; and two years afterwards, Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester paid the King a fine of two thousand marks "for leave to marry his eldest daughter to this young Earl." Accordingly, in 1239, when the King was keeping Christmas at Winchester, Baldwin was girt by him with the sword of knighthood, formally invested with the Earldom of Wight, and married to Amicia de Clare. "But about five years only after," says Dugdale, "on the morrow of St. Valentine's Day, he died in the flower of his youth, leaving Baldwin his Heir very young." There were also two daughters.

This second orphan Earl, Baldwin V., again fell under the tutelage of a Court favourite, Peter of Savoy, the uncle of Queen Eleanor, "to the end that he should marry a kinswoman of the Queen's;" which marriage—for mediaeval heirs and heiresses were passed from hand to hand as easily as the current coin of the realm—accordingly took place in 1256, the same year that he did homage for his lands. His wife brought him one son, whom she lost in his infancy; and he himself "dyed by Poison (together with Richard Earl of Gloucester and others) at the Table of Peter of Savoy" in 1262. He died a young man, as his father had died before him; and the male line of this great house came to an end with him.

This last Earl had, as I have said, two sisters. Margaret, the eldest, was a nun at Lacock; and Isabel, who succeeded as Countess of Devon and Lady of the Isle of Wight, was at that time the widow of William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle, to whom she had borne three sons and two daughters. The first son was then already dead; and neither of the others long survived him; Avice, the eldest daughter, had died in her childhood; and thus the whole vast inheritance centred on Aveline. She had not only her mother's Earldom, with the sovereignty of the Isle of Wight, but was Countess of Albemarle and Baroness of Skipton-in-Craven in her father's right. So great an heiress was not suffered to match with a subject; and though her wardship had been granted to her kinsman the Earl of Gloucester for the whole fifteen years of her minority, the grant had ere long to be surrendered to the King, who designed her for his own daughter-in-law. She was married in 1269 with great pomp to Edmund Crouchback, afterwards Earl of Lancaster; the King and Queen, and almost all the nobility of England, being present at her wedding.

But Aveline proved a childless and short-lived wife; for she died s. p. within the next three years; and her brother in law, Edward I., soon after coming to the throne, entered into an agreement with Countess Isabel (her mother) for the transfer of the Isle of Wight, and the greater part of her possessions to him and his heirs at the expiration of her life-tenancy. "Some say that what was done therein, as to the Isle of Wight, was not real, but fraudulent. For thus they report, That King Edward, much desiring that Isle, and importuning Isabel de Fortibus frequently for it, was still denied, and by her answered, That she would not wrong her heirs so much as to pass that part of her antient Inheritance from them. And that thereupon the King taking notice that sir * * * (je Stratton had much interest and power with her, he set him to work her to it; and that he, more for fear, than otherwise, promised him so to do; But when he saw that he could by no means prevail with her therein, to the end he might not frustrate the King's expectation, he waited till her death, and then forged a Grant thereof, and put her Seal to it, which Seal he had (with other of her goods) at that time in his power; and that by this means, the right heirs were shamefully defrauded thereof."—Dugdale.

Isabel died in 1293, when the remainder of her property passed to the heir-at-law, Sir Hugh Courtenay (descended from Lady Mary Redvers, eldest daughter of the sixth Earl) who was summoned to parliament as Lord Courtenay in 1299; and in 1335 claimed and received from Edward III. the Earldom of Devon.

This Countess Isabel filled an office rarely—if ever—before held by a woman. "Not only was she Chamberlainess of the Exchequer, but she had the power of re-appointing her deputy."—Poulson's Holderness.

Riuell :

or Revell, a baronial name, from Reville, or Raville, in Normandy, Curry-Rivel and Langport in Somersetshire were granted by Richard I. to Richard Revel, or Rivel, "a person of great note, and sheriff of the counties of Devon and Cornwall for several successive years."—Collinson's Somerset. From him it passed to his only daughter Sabina, the wife of Henry L'Orti. The Revills were ranked among the principal barons of Somerset, in the time of Henry II., and held two fees in capite (Liber Niger). They were also settled at Newbold Revel in Warwickshire, which they obtained, temp. Ed. I., by the marriage of Hugo Revell with Alicia de Wapenbury. "Hugo," says Dugdale, "is the first whereof the Records that I have seen do make mention; son to Robert Revell (as I guess) who had to do at Swineford in Leicestershire 29 Hen. II. But of this Hugo I can say no more than that he was a Rebel against King John, for which his lands in this County were seized on; and that in 1 Hen. III., returning to his obedience, they were restored to him again. Unto this Hugo succeeded William, who had issue John and Robert; whereof John was Lord of this place in 9 Edward II., being an active man and of great trust in his time, for in 6 Edward III. he had the joynt custody of the County." He twice served as one of the knights of the shire in Parliament, as did his son Sir William, who was in the Bishop of Durham's retinue in the French expedition, 20 Ed. III. This latter had no issue; nor either of his brothers; and the last died 7 Henry IV., leaving three sisters his heirs. Agnes, the eldest, married John Malory. These Revells bore Ermine a chevron Gules within a bordure engrailed Sable. Fenny-Newbold, or Newbold Revell, was another of their Warwickshire manors. John Revel, a younger son of this house, settled at Ogston in Derbyshire in the fourteenth century; and his younger brother Hugh at Carnfield in the same county. John's last heir male, William Revel, died in J7o6: Hugh's line had ended earlier.—Lysons' Derby.

The father of the Robert Revell spoken of by Dugdale was Henry Revell, who "had some concerns in Swinford in 1183, which descended to his son Robert, who had a considerable interest here, all of which he gave to the Knights Hospitallers."—Nichol's Leicestershire. He was also Lord of Scalford in the same county.

In Devonshire the Revells gave their name to Revelstoke, where they continued for five descents; "the heiress married Hurst."—Lysons. "At Revel Grange resided from an early period a family of the name of Revel, whom we often meet in the old genealogies as connected by marriage with the superior gentry of the county of Derby. The attachment of this family to the old profession of religion exposed them to much injury in the times of the Civil War and Commonwealth. Mr. Richard Broomhead of Stannington married the heiress of the Revells about the year 1740."—Hunter's Hallamshire.

Rous :

or Le Roux. "This family is Norman; and in 1165 held lands near Rouen from the county of Breteuil (Duchesne, Feod. Normanniae). Ralph le Roux was sent in 1119 by Henry I. to the aid of Ralph de Guader (Ord. Vital. 857), and in 1120 was one of the nobles who perished with Prince Henry in the Blanche Nef. The English line descends from Turchil Rufus or Le Rous, who came to England in 1066, and held lands in Norfolk from Alan Fitz Flaald, ancestor of the Fitz Alans (Mon. i. 627). Alexander Rous appears in the Liber Niger; also Richard Rous, who held from De Albini in the Eastern Counties. Hugo Rufus was Viscount of Norfolk in 1225 (Roberts, Excerpta i. 227). Richard le Rous of Norfolk died 1277, and had Alan, who in 1316 was Lord of Dunham and East Lexham, Norfolk, and had Peter le Rous of Dennington, ancestor of the Rouses of that place, from whence descend the Rouses of Henham, Earls of Stradbroke."—The Norman People. Dennington was brought into the family in the time of Edward III. by the marriage of Peter Rous with a Hobart heiress, and increased by subsequent matches with the heiresses of Le Watre and Philips. The latter lady was the representative of one of the co-heirs of Erpingham. "Al the Rousis that be in Southfolk cum, as I can learne, oute of the House of Rouse of Dinnington. Diverse of the Rouses of this Eldest House ly in Dinnington Paroche Chirche buried under flat Stones. Antony Rouse, now the Heire of Dinnington Haule, hath much enlargid his Possessions."—Leland. It was this Sir Anthony, Comptroller of Calais, who in 1535 bought their present residence, Henham Hall, the ancient seat of the De La Poles, and afterwards of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and of Sir Arthur Hopton, to whom it had been granted by Henry VIII. It was a very fine house, but "was burnt down in 1773 through the carelessness of a drunken butler, who, while robbing the cellar during his master's absence in Italy, set fire to the sawdust in one of the wine-bins."—Suckling's Suffolk. Lady Rous (perhaps Sir Anthony's daughter-in-law) was appointed by Queen Mary one of her Quorum for Suffolk, and "did usually sit on the bench at assizes and sessions amongst the other justices, cincta gladio."—Ibid (v. Harl. MS. 980). In the next generation, Sir John Rous was so eminent for his loyalty, that Charles II. wrote him a letter of thanks with his own hand. There is a venerable oak beneath the windows of the Hall, which, according to tradition, saved his life during the Civil War, when a party of rebels arrived at Henham with a warrant for his arrest. It was even then hollow, and having been used as a summer-house, was fitted with a door covered with bark, so curiously contrived that no one suspected the cavity thus concealed. Into this hiding place his wife promptly conveyed him; and night after night stole out to bring him food, eluding the strict watch kept over her by the Roundheads.^[24] Baffled in discovering her secret, they next tried to force it from her by violence; but they stormed and threatened in vain; the lady's courage was proof. She was neither to be scared nor bullied; till at last they went away discouraged, and she had carried the day.

This loyal Sir John received a baronetcy at the Restoration; and his descendant in the fourth generation—another John—was created Lord Rous of Dennington in 1796. The next heir obtained the Earldom of Stradbroke in 1821, and was the grandfather of the present Lord.

I find mention of a good many families of this name, but I cannot trace the connection between them. In Gloucestershire "the manor of Dunstbourne-Rous, soon after the Conquest, belonged to John le Rous, and continued long in the family. Roger le Rous held there 22 Ed. I.; and John le Rous temp. Ed. II. He was in rebellion against that King, and was attainted and his lands forfeited; but restored 1 Ed. III."—Atkyns, In Wiltshire, "Richard Ruffus or Le Rous had a grant of Imber from Henry II. for his services as Chamberlain. Sir Roger and Sir John attended Ed. I. in his wars. After the time of Henry VI. I can find no descendant of Le Rous of Imber."^[25]—Hoare. "Little Mitton in Blackburnshire was granted by Robert de Lacy, 3 Henry I., to Ralph le Roux, whose posterity were named from the place."—Whitaker's Whalley. Thomas le Rous was High Sheriff of Leicestershire 14, 15 Edward II. John Rufus, in the time of Henry III., was seated at Ragley in Warwickshire, and Lench-Randolph in Worcestershire; his last heir-male, Sir Thomas, died in 1721. Another John Rous, who died in 1491, and lies buried in the nave of Warwick Church, "was," says Leland, "of the Howse of the Rowsis of Ragley by Alcester. He beareth three Crouns in his Armes." The Augustinian Priory of Woodbridge in Suffolk was founded by Hugh le Rous, but at what date is uncertain. "The Prior and Convent were bound to pray and say mass for the souls of Sir Hugh, the founder, and six other knights of the same surname, registered on a table in this monastery."—Davis's Suffolk Collections.

Rushell :

in Duchesne's copy, Russell; Rosel in Leland's; from the Lordship of Rosel in the Cotentin. "Hugh de Rosel came to England with the Conqueror, and is mentioned in a charter of the time of Stephen as father of Robert Russell (Wiffen, i. 531). In Domesday he appears as holding lands in capite in Dorset by the serjeantry of being Marshall of the Butlery in England (Domesd. 84 b.) a feudal dignity, which conferred rank, and was hereditary. His grandson, another Robert de Rosel, held the fief of Kingston, Dorset, in capite, and in 1165 one fee in that county from Alured de Lincoln; another from the Abbot of Cerne (Lib. Niger.) The latter had apparently been acquired by authority of the Crown in the time of Stephen. Odo, Eudo, or Hugh Russell, who succeeded, is mentioned in a charter of King John, granting an advowson of a church in Gloucester to his son, John Russell, who in 1202 married the sister and co-heir of Dodo Bardolf, one of the greater barons, and was Constable of Corfe Castle."—The Norman People. His son and heir, Sir Ralph, married Isabel, one of the co-heiresses of James de Newmarch, and was the grandfather of Theobald Russel, who, by his second wife, was ancestor to the Dukes of Bedford. By his first marriage to Eleanor, daughter and co-heir of Ralph, Lord Gorges, he had three sons: 1. Sir John, his successor at Kingston-Russell, whose line ended with his grandson; 2. William, died s. p.; 3. Theobald, who, inheriting his mother's property, bore her name and arms, and founded the family of Gorges of Wraxhall (see Gorges). His second wife, Eleanor De La Tour, was again an heiress, and their son was seated on her Dorsetshire estate, at Berwick (now Bewick), four miles from Bridport. From him, in the third generation, came Sir John Russell, Speaker of the House of Commons, 2 & 10 Henry VI.: but it was reserved to the grandson and namesake of the latter to lay the foundation of the family greatness. This John Russell, when a young man, was a great traveller, "well versed in several languages:" and it was this knowledge that, by a lucky accident, proved the stepping-stone to his fortune. When, in 1506, the Archduke Philip of Austria, who had sailed from Flanders to join his royal bride in Spain, was storm-bound in the Channel, and forced to put into Weymouth, Sir Thomas Trenchard, who lived in the neighbourhood, came forward to offer him hospitality, till such time as a messenger could be despatched to Court, to acquaint the King with his coming. The offer was accepted; but when the royal guest was fairly installed in his house, Sir Thomas, not speaking a word of Spanish, or in fact of any language other than his own, was, as may well be conceived, sorely perplexed; and in his tribulation bethought himself of his accomplished neighbour at Berwick, then "newly returned from his travels." John Russell would be able to interpret, to explain matters to the Archduke, and learn his pleasure; and John Russell was accordingly sent for. He came, and fulfilled his duties so commendably, that the prince took a great fancy to him; and carried him with him to Court when he was summoned to join the King. Here it soon became evident that the remainder of his life was to be spent. His kind patron recommended him to the King, who appointed him one of the Gentlemen of his Privy Chamber; and on the accession of Henry VIII., three years afterwards, he was continued in this office, and rose so conspicuously into favour that his ill-wishers termed him the "King's fire-screen." He was "found apt for any kind of service, either with pen or sword, brain or hand;" an able, accomplished man, with a peculiar grace and gentleness of demeanour often alluded to by his contemporaries. Even poor Anne Boleyn, while complaining of the "cruel handling" she had experienced in her examination before the Council, "named Mr. Comptroller" (Russell) "to be a very gentleman." He went with the King to his first campaign in France in 1513, and assisted at the taking of Therouenne and the Battle of the Spurs; was knighted in 1523 on the deck of the flagship for his gallantry in Surrey's expedition against Morlaix, where he lost an eye; was employed in negotiations with Charles V., Francis I., the Pope, and the Duke of Lorraine in 1524: fought at Pavia; was one of the forty-five knights chosen to accompany Henry VIII. to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1532, and named Comptroller of the Household in 1538. In the following year he was raised to the peerage, and, "as Lord Russell, commenced a line of nobles whose services to England wind like a silver cord through later history."—Froude. He chose the title of Baron Russell of Chenies, from the ancient seat of the Cheneys in Buckinghamshire, which had come to him through his wife Anne, the daughter and co-heir of Sir Guy Sapcotes, who had been the heir of Dame Agnes Cheney. Though the manor-house is now tenanted only by a farmer, the church chancel of Chenies has always continued to be the burial-place of the Russells, and is now filled with their monuments. He was further appointed Lord Admiral of England in 1541, and Lord Privy Seal in 1544. Nor was wealth wanting to uphold these new dignities; for the King's coffers were at that time overflowing with the riches of the suppressed monasteries, and "the Lords of the Council, being first in the field, had the pick of the spoil." Few secured a larger share of it than Lord Russell, who had been foremost in the attack of the religious houses, and himself presided at the execution of the Abbot of Glastonbury. He received, as Warden of the Stannaries, the whole of the rich Abbey of Tavistock, comprising the hundred, town, and borough, and a host of Devonshire manors, in 1546: Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire "fell to him on easy terms" in 1547.; part of Thorney Abbey in 1549, and Covent Garden with the "Seven Acres" (now called Long Acre), "the choicest morsel of Somerset's forfeited estates," in 1552.^[26] Two years previously, in acknowledgment of his services against the Catholic insurgents of the West, he had been created Earl of Bedford, and he lived to put down another insurrection—this time a Protestant one—in the same counties. This was, of course, under Queen Mary, and not long before his death in 1554.

Francis, second Earl, who was committed to the Tower as a stiff-necked Protestant by Queen Mary—a person of such great hospitality that Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of him "that he made all the beggars"—survived his three eldest sons, and was succeeded by his grandson Edward, the husband of the lovely Lucy Harrington,^[27] who d. s. p, in 1627. The next heir was another of his grandsons, emphatically termed "the wise Earl," whose father, Sir William Russell, having proved himself an able soldier in France, Hungary, and the Low Countries, was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1594, and created Lord Russell of Thornhaugh in 1603. It was this Earl Francis that achieved the drainage of the vast tract of fen now known as the Bedford Level; a great national undertaking several times projected, and once before actually commenced, that added nearly four hundred thousand acres to the soil of England. Of these, "ninety-five thousand acres were allotted to the Earl and his fellow adventurers, the latter of whom had been nearly ruined by the expense of drainage" (£1 an acre), "and were most of them bought out." He was the acknowledged leader of the popular party in the House of Lords, "being," as Lord Clarendon tells us, "of the best estate, and best understanding of the whole number, and therefore most likely to govern the rest." He died oft small-pox before the outbreak of the Civil War. His son William, fifth Earl, at first heartily espoused the cause of the Parliament, and served as a General of Horse in their army at Edgehill; but the next year threw up his commission (being, as is supposed, alarmed at the revolutionary aspect of affairs) and offered his sword to the King. He was received with distrust and hesitation, and though, to prove his sincerity, he charged gallantly in the King's regiment at Newbury, he found himself slighted and coldly looked upon at Court, and within three month's time had gone back to his old friends. He took, however, no further part in politics, and never sat in the House of Lords during the usurpation. Charles II. gave him the Garter; and in 1694, he was created by William and Mary Duke of Bedford and Marquess of Tavistock, because (as set forth in the patent) "he was the father of Lord Russell, the ornament of his age."

William Lord Russell had "the undaunted courage and unshaken firmness" that had been wanting in the Duke. "He was," says Sir William Temple, "an honest worthy gentleman, without tricks of private ambition, who was known to venture as great a stake as any subject in England." He first entered the House of Commons in 1678, and so quickly made himself obnoxious to the Court as the leader of the popular party, that when, the year following, he asked leave to retire from the Council board, the requisite permission appeared in the Gazette, endorsed by His Majesty's own hand, "With all my heart." He had the intrepidity to go to Westminster Hall and "present" the King's brother at the King's Bench as a recusant. "He shared to the bottom of his heart in the old English dread and hate of Popery. He impeached Buckingham and Arlington. He believed to the last in the reality of the Popish plot, and he accepted Oates and Dangerfield as credible witnesses. He carried a Bill prohibiting Papists from sitting in Parliament. If Papists could not sit in Parliament, still less ought they to be on the throne, and the House of Commons, under his influence, passed the Exclusion Bill, cutting off the Duke of York. Russell carried it with his own hands to the House of Lords, and session after session, dissolution after dissolution, he tried to force the Lords to agree to it."—Froude. Yet, with all his zeal, he spurned any proposal for buying votes with French gold. "I should be very sorry," he said, "to have any commerce with persons capable to be gained by money." At last, on the discovery of the Rye House Plot, he was arraigned for high treason on a charge of having designed to seize the King's guards. His trial at the Old Bailey "was attended with every feature which could concentrate the nation's attention to it. The Duke of York was the actual and scarcely concealed prosecutor." He defended himself with dignity and simplicity, and asked for no aid beyond that of a writer to take down his notes. When he was told he had only to choose one, he replied, "My wife will write for me;" and Lady Rachel Russell appeared in Court, and took her place as her husband's secretary. She bore herself with admirable courage and constancy, writing down his words as calmly as he dictated them, and never faltered in her duty to the very last. He was found guilty, condemned to a traitor's death, and executed on July 21, 1683, though every effort had been made to save him. Lord Cavendish offered to change clothes with him, and take his place in the prison while he made his escape; and the Earl of Bedford, after vainly pleading his own services at the Restoration, promised the King's mistress,£100,000 for his son's pardon. But the Duke of York was inexorable, and Lord Russell died as bravely and nobly as he had lived. "It is idle to say that he was unjustly convicted. He was privy to a scheme for armed resistance to the Government, and a Government which was afraid to punish him ought to have abdicated. Charles Stuart had been brought back by the deliberate will of the people. As long as he was on the throne he was entitled to defend both himself and his authority. Lord Russell was not like Hampden, resisting an unconstitutional breach of the law He was taking precautions against a danger which he anticipated but which had not yet arisen."—Froude.

His wife, Lady Rachel, "a beautiful figure in the story, whose gentle influence had first reclaimed him from the frivolities of his earlier youth," survived him for many years, and lived to be a very old woman. She was the second daughter and eventual heiress of Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer of England, by a French lady of noble Huguenot blood; and, at the time she married him, the youthful widow of Lord Vaughan. She brought her husband the great Bloomsbury estate with Southampton House and Stratton (now the seat of the Earl of Northbrook) in Hampshire. She died in 1723, having had the grief to see her only son, Wriothesley, the second Duke, carried off by small-pox twelve years before. From Wriothesley, in the fifth generation, descends the present and ninth Duke.

Three other peerages have been held by the family. The first was granted to the victorious Admiral who won the battle of La Hogue, "one of the few Russells who was famous in arms," Edward, the nephew of the first Duke. "He was," says Burnet, "bed-chamber man to the King when Duke of York; but upon Lord Russell's death retired from Court," and was deep in the councils of the Prince of Orange. With him he came over to England in 1688, receiving ample grants and appointments, in addition to a pension; yet, still unsatisfied, he presently entered into correspondence with the Court of St. Germains, and offered to bring over the fleet to the cause of the exiled King. He saved the country, however, from a foreign invasion in 1692, when he met and drove back the approaching French fleet at La Hogue, defeating it with a loss of sixteen men of war. For this gallant service he received the Earldom of Orfordin 1697, with the title of Viscount Barfleur; but left no son to inherit either. Macaulay denounces him as "emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, and selfish." Froude tells us that James II.'s own opinion was that "Admiral Russell did but delude the King with the Prince of Orange's permission."

The second title of honour was given in our own time to Lord John Russell, the third son of the sixth Duke of Bedford; "the old statesman who filled so large a place for half a century in English public life," and was the author of the first Reform Bill. He continued Premier (with a brief interval) from 1846 to 1851; and ten years later was created Earl Russell and Viscount Amberley. He died in 1878, and was succeeded by a grandson.

The third and yet more recent title was the reward of the distinguished diplomatic services of Lord Odo Russell, the youngest brother of the present Duke, who was created Lord Ampthill in 1881. He died only three years afterwards, leaving four young sons.

Raband :

or Rabayne: in the Testa de Nevill it is given Roboin. "The family of De Rabayne came from Saintonge, Acquitaine, where it possessed the marquisate of Piscay. The castle of Rabaine still remains. The family was of eminence in 1018 (Des Bois)."—The Norman People. The first who was of much note in England was Elias de Rabayne, a good soldier in the Gascon war of 1251, and high in favour with Henry III. In 1255 the King committed to him "the corpus, of the Castle of Corfe during pleasure, saving to the King the warren, forest, and all other things pertaining to the Castle, outside the walls thereof." Considerable privileges were attached to this office, which the new Constable enforced and extended with such vigour that his aggrieved neighbours were driven to seek redress in the law courts. In 1277, William de Claville brought an. action against him, for felling six of his (Claville's) oaks at Holne, as well as opening a quarry there, and carrying stone to Corfe; and at the same date the Abbess of Shaftesbury complained that he had cut and carried away from the Abbey woods of Kingston five hundred ashes, and two thousand maples and thorns. Elias pleaded the right of every Constable to cut timber and dig stone throughout the warren for repairs of the Castle; but the jury decided that the greater part of the wood had been misappropriated by Elias as fuel for his own use. Other "instances of stretches of authority" are recorded against him; but the most conclusive proof of his rapacity was his conduct to his sister-in-law. He had, with the King's permission, married Maud, one of the daughters and co-heirs of a Lincolnshire baron, John de Bayeux, who had also possessions in Dorset, Somerset, and Wilts. "Under colour of that grant," Elias carried the other heiress beyond sea, thinking to appropriate her share to himself; but the King, who was thus defrauded of the custody of the moiety of the barony, sent orders to seize the estates. I cannot find that they were ever restored to him, though either he, or (according to The Norman People) another Elias, received writs of military summons in 1277 and 1282. Nor is it altogether easy to decide what became of them. "Certain it is," says Hutchins, in his History of Dorset, "that Stephen de Boys possessed Waybaiouse, and perhaps the rest of the family estates, probably on Rabayne's forfeiture; for, 7 Ed, II., he was found to have held the manors of Waybaiouse, Little Piddle, and half a knight's fee in West Stafford. 9 Ed. II., he held these two manors at his death; and it appears by the King's writ annexed to this inquisition that there was a judgement touching this barony in the court of King Edward I. that one moiety of the barony should belong to the King and his heirs, and the other to Matilda de Rabayne and her heirs; and that she thereupon exhibiting a petition to King Edward II. in the parliament at Lincoln, was answered, 'She might sue for the same, if she thought fitt:' and that the King, being willing to do her right, had caused inquisition to be made in Dorset and other counties, to be well informed of her title thereto." Yet he elsewhere tells us, that Peter de Rabayne held Little Pidele at his death in 1272; and "Petrus de Roboin" is incontestably entered in the Testa de Nevill as holding Waybayouse of the King. He was also possessed of Edmondesham, where he granted an annuity to John Beauboys (Bello Bosco) and his heirs. In 1316, Matilda de Rabayne was Lady of Edmondesham; but of her or her marriage we hear nothing more.

Ronde :

About 1272, Arnulf de Rondes, Robert his son, and Alicia de Rondes occur in the Rotuli Hundredorum for Huntingdonshire. Radulfus Rotundus is found in Essex in 1130.—Rot. Pip. A family of the name is now domiciled in that county; but this is nothing more than a coincidence, for it was not till 1724 that their ancestor James Round, citizen of London, purchased Birch Hall, near Colchester, their present seat.

Rie :

from Rye, three leagues north of Bayeux. "Geoffrey de Rie was living c. 980. His son Odo Fitz Geoffrey gave half the church of Rie to Fescamp Abbey, which was confirmed 1027 by Richard II. of Normandy (Neustria Pia, 218)."—The Norman People. It was Hubert de Rie, who, in 1047, saved the life of the young Duke of Normandy—the future Conqueror of England—when flying from the conspirators of the Cotentin. He had made his escape by night from Valognes, without armour or attendants, and "dared not," says Wace, "turn towards Bayeux, for he knew not whom to trust, so he took the way which passes between Bayeux and the sea. And as he rode through Rie before the sun rose, Hubert de Rie stood at his gate, between the church and his castle, and saw William pass in disorder, and that his horse was all in a sweat. 'How is it that you travel so, fair sire?' said he. 'Hubert,' said William, 'dare I tell you?' Then Hubert said, 'Of a truth,' most surely! say on boldly!'—'I will have no secrets with you; my enemies follow seeking me, and menace my life. I know that they have sworn my death.' Then Hubert led him into his hostel, and gave him his good horse, and called forth his three sons. 'Fair sons,' said he, 'muntez! muntez! Behold your lord; conduct him till ye have lodged him in Falaise. This way ye shall pass; it will be ill for you to touch upon any town.' So Hubert taught them well the ways and turnings; and his sons understood all rightly, and followed his instructions exactly. They crossed all the country, passed Folpendant at the ford, and lodged William at Falaise. If he were in bad plight, what matters so that he got safe?

"Hubert remained standing on his bridge: he looked out over valley and over hill, and listened anxiously for news, when they who were pursuing William came spurring by. They called him on one side, and conjured him with fair words to tell if he had seen the Bastard, and whither and by what road he was gone. And he said to them, 'He passed this way, and is not far off; you will have him soon: but wait, I will lead you myself, for I should like to give him the first blow. By my faith I pledge you my word that if I find him, I will strike him the first blow if I can.' But Hubert only led them out of the way till he had no fear for William, who was gone by another route. So when he had talked to them enough of this thing and that, he returned back to his hostel."—Roman de Rou.

From Falaise, the young Duke, well out of reach of his pursuers, went to seek and obtain the succour of the King of France, and returned to win the decisive victory of Val-es-dunes. He never forgot the man who had done him so signal a service,^[28] and Hubert de Rie remained through life his friend and counsellor. When Edward the Confessor, shortly before his end, sent over a messenger to Normandy, requesting that some trustworthy envoy might go to him on the Duke's behalf, a great council was called together by William, to consider the choice of a representative. But the assembled nobles, one and all, hung back. They would not undertake the embassy to England. "They remembered what had been done at Guilford" (the massacre of the Norman companions of the son of Ethelred) "and refused to visit the barbarous people." Then Hubert de Rie stepped forward, volunteered to take upon himself the risk and the responsibility, and, "praised by all and rewarded by the Duke," set forth on his mission with a great train, picked men on splendidly trapped horses, equipped with all the pomp the Norman court could furnish. He was well received by Edward, who presented him with some lands in Esce (Ashe in Hampshire): and returned to Normandy with "the promise of the kingdom, and the tokens confirming the promise:" a two-handled sword of which the hilt enclosed the relics of certain saints, a hunter's horn of gold, and a great stag's head.

For this second important service, the grateful Duke promised him the office of Dapifer: but, soon after the Conquest, disturbances broke out in Cennomania which Hubert, "prompt of hand and good at council," was sent over to quell, and we do not hear of him again in England. He was then an old man, and must have died before 1086, as his sons only are entered in Domesday. There were four: Ralph, Hubert, Adam, and Eudo, all of them magnificently endowed by the Conqueror.

1. Ralph, who, like Adam and Eudo., was generally called Fitz Hubert, was Castellan of Nottingham, and held land in Leicester, Stafford, Nottingham, and Lincoln; but the head of his great barony was Crich in Derbyshire, where he had received the whole estate of a rich Saxon named Levenot, comprising thirty-six manors. Dugdale asserts that he was hung in 1140 for "divers crimes and cruelties"; but, as he was old enough to be the Duke's guide across country in 1044, he must then have been for many years resting in his grave.^[29] The senior male line of the house ended with his grandson Hubert, who died about 3 Hen. III., and left two daughters. Julian, the eldest, married Ansger de Frecheville, and the Derbyshire lands continued vested in her descendants till they died out in the reign of Charles II. One of the manors that Ralph held at Domesday—Whitwell, was, however, for several centuries the seat of a junior branch of the family; till in 1583, Edward Rye, then its representative, sold his ancient home, and is lost sight of altogether.

2. Hubert, the next brother, founded another baronial family, which proved of even briefer duration. He held the Honour of Hingham in Norfolk, comprising thirty-five knights' fees, and succeeded Ralph Guader as Castellan of Norwich in 1074. His wife, Agnes de Todeni, a daughter of the first Baron of Belvoir, had been the richly-dowered widow of one of the De Beaufoes, and brought him several other manors in the county. "He cast his lot in closely with the church, half founded and richly endowed the splendid cathedral of Norwich," and assumed the cross in his later years. Both his son and his grandson, who in turn succeeded him, worthily emulated his munificence to the church: and with the latter, another Hubert, the line expired in 1188. This last Baron of Hingham again left two coheirs; Isabel, first married (without the King's license) to Geoffrey de Chester, and afterwards to Roger de Cressy; and Aliva, or Avelina, the wife of John le Mareschal. Aliva had no children, and on her death in 1263, Isabel succeeded to her moiety of the barony. She was then a very aged woman "of ninety and more," and yet survived till about 1270.

3. Adam, the third son, held considerable estates in Kent under Bishop Odo, and was one of the compilers of Domesday Book. Little is known of him, and nothing of his descendants, except that a Robert de Rie of Kent—presumably one of them—is mentioned in the Pipe Roll of 1189.

4. Eudo—generally styled Eudo Dapifer—the last born, was by far the ablest and most distinguished of the four brothers. He received princely possessions, not only in Essex, where his principal estates lay, but in Norfolk, Suffolk, Herts, Cambridge, Berks, Bedford, Northampton, &c, with the great hereditary office of Seneschal or Dapifer, that had been promised to his father, and then appertained to the Conqueror's early friend, William Fitz Osbern. Dugdale gives a whimsical account of the time and circumstances of this grant. While Eudo was "personally attending the Court, it so hapned that that William Fitz Osberne, then Steward of the Houshold, had set before the King the Flesh of a Crane, scarce half rosted: whereat the King took such offence, as that he lifted up his Fist, and had struken him fiersly, but that Eudo bore off the blow. Whereupon Fitz Osberne grew so displeased, as that he quitted his Office, desiring that Eudo might have it. To which request the King as well for his Father Hubert's demerits," (sic) "and his own, readily yeilded." This must have taken place before 1074, when he witnesses a charter of donation at Bayeux as Eudo Dapifer.

He was in attendance on his master's death-bed at Caen, and mindful of his last wishes, hurried away to secure the succession of his son. He was the first to land in England, and, concealing the King's death, went straight to Winchester, to demand in his name the keys of the Treasury from the Treasurer, William de Pont de l'Arche: thence proceeded to Dover, Hastings, Pevensey, and the other strongholds of the south coast, and, as the King's appointed emissary, made the Castellans in charge swear to open their gates only at his command. Having secured these castles and harbours, he returned to Winchester, announced the Conqueror's death, and "while the rest of the Nobles were consulting in Normandy touching the succession" handed over the keys of the Treasury to William Rufus, who was at once proclaimed King. Thus the new sovereign "began to reign without a hand or a voice being raised against him." He was not ungrateful to Eudo. He confirmed him in his office of Dapifer, and bestowed upon him the town of Colchester, partly at the request of the townsmen, who had petitioned "that they might have this famous Eudo to govern amongst them." For Eudo was not only a faithful servant, and an astute and sagacious politician, but one of the very few Norman rulers that endeared themselves to their English vassals: "he eased the oppressed, restrained the insolent, and pleased all." Moreover, he was a great prince in all his doings and dealings. The castle he built at Colchester could boast of the largest Keep ever seen in England (the White Tower of London is not more than half its size), and he founded a magnificent Abbey on the site of a wooden church then dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. In this humble edifice "it had been observed," writes one of the monks, "that Divine Lights sometimes appeared by night, and also the sound of Heavenly Voices devoutly praising God (and yet no man there). And moreover, taking notice of what had hapned to a certain man, who had been put in Fetters by the King's command: viz. that standing in that Church at the celebration of Mass, the Bolts of his Fetters flew out, whereby he was suddenly loosed, he" (Eudo) "became so much transported with these Miracles, he resolved to found an Abbey in that place, wherein perpetual suffrage might be made for his Soul."

He reached a good old age, and died in 1120 at the castle of Preaux in Normandy; Henry Beauclerk standing by his bed side, and conferring with him as to the disposal of his property. No son was left to inherit; for his wife Roesia, the daughter of Richard Fitz Gilbert, Justiciary of England, had given him one only daughter, Margaret. She married William de Mandeville, and her son Geoffrey, Earl of Essex, was Steward of Normandy in her right.

In addition to the Ryes of Whitwell in Derbyshire, of whom I have already spoken, there were numerous other offsets from the parent stock. William de Rye—perhaps the same William mentioned in Norfolk in 1272 (Rot. Hund.) was Conservator of York in 1287. Ranulph de Rie held Gosberkirk, Surflete, Donyngton and Quadryng in Lincolnshire of the Honour of Richmond.—Gale's Richmondshire. John de Rye was in arms with Simon de Montfort during the baronial war, and taken prisoner at the storming of Northampton in 1263. He was pardoned in 1268 at the instance of the King's brother, and his estates in Lincoln and Oxford are entered in the Hundred Rolls of 1272. In 1290 he gave his manor of Rye to St. John's Abbey.—Morant's Essex. Nicholas de Rye was Sheriff of Lincoln in 1276 and 1277; and in 1280 Ralph de Rye obtained the King's license for a weekly market and yearly fair at Gosberkirk, with free warren there and in his other manors in the county. He was present in 1309 at the Dunstable tournament, which was attended by two others of the family, Ralph de Rye of Whitwell, and William de Rye. This latter bore Gules a bend Ermine (the coat of the Barons of Hingham) with a label of three points Or, and was seated at Swan ton in Norfolk, which soon after (in 1327) had passed to a female heir. But the name lived on in Norfolk, where Roger Ree or Rye presided as Sheriff in 1461, though of its former high estate few memories remain. "The only traces now left of the Ryes are the 'Court of the Honor of Rye,' which still exists as a tribunal in the district which belonged to them, and a few yeomen-descended namesakes like myself, who take pride in belonging to a county with which their name has been so long connected."—Walter Rye (Herald and Genealogist, vol. 7, p. 243). During the brief period of their ascendancy, they were conspicuous for their liberality to the Church. They founded St. John's Abbey at Colchester, Binham Abbey, Beeston Abbey, Aldeby Priory, and a chantry at Walsingham in Norfolk, and magnificently contributed to the foundation of Norwich Cathedral.

Rokell :

from Rochelle in the Cotentin. "In 1130 Humfrid de Rochella had lands in Dorset; in 1165 we find William de Rochelle in Essex (Rot. Pip. Lib. Niger). The former witnessed the charter of William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, founding Walden Abbey" (Mon. i. 460).—The Norman People. South-Okendon, or Wokyndon, in Essex, took its name of Rokele from its ancient owners. The above-mentioned William held it in the reign of Henry II. of Hugh de Eu, under Geoffrey de Mandeville: "in some deeds he is styled William de Eu. Probably he married a daughter of Hugh, and so came into this manor. The capital Seat was a stately one, not far from the Church, on the right hand side of the road leading to Warley and Burntwood."—Morants Essex. He was succeeded by Sir Richard de la Rokele, at whose death in 1222, the manor was confirmed to his son, to be held by knight's service of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. There were only two more heirs; the last, Philip, died in 1295, leaving two daughters and coheirs, Maud and Isolda. Maud was married to Lord Grey; and "Isolda brought Wokyndon Rokele in marriage to Sir William de Brune, of the Bed-Chamber to King Ed. I., who was so much in favour with that Prince, that he gave him the Manor of Beckingham in Kent: And his wife, Isolda, who was Lady of the Bed-Chamber to Queen Alianor, obtained also from her several lordships."—Ibid, The arms of Rokele were Lozengy, Gules; whereas the De la Rochelles of Normandy (according to Drouet-Darcq's Armorial de la France) in 1360 bore two bends Argent with seven escallops.

The name is found in several other counties. Grangevilles Rockells, in Norfolk, was granted in the thirteenth century by Sir Richard de Rokele (perhaps the same who was seated in Essex) to Reginald de Kareville, as the marriage portion of his daughter Alice.—Blomfield. Richard de la Rokele, joint Lord of Flitcham-cum-Appleton, Oulton, and Walton, was knight of the shire in 1311 and 1314; and Godfrey de la Rokele held at Colney, Tibbenham, and Aslacton, in the same county in 1316. Besides these, I find mentioned in Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs, Humphrey de la Rochelle, of Frilsham and Marsham, Berkshire; Robert de la Rokele of Astwood in Buckinghamshire, Martin de la Rokele, one of the Justices appointed in that county in 1309; and John de la Rokele, of Holland in Yorkshire, one of the "Fideles" of Ireland, who received a writ of military summons in 1322. Another Essex manor, Coggeshall Rokells, bore their name.

Risers :

originally Richer. "Ricardus Risher" occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1195; and the name still existed in the fifteenth century.—Nobiliaire de Normandie. In England, we find Robert, Thomas, and Walter Richer mentioned in the Hundred Rolls, about 1272, as landowners in Kent; William Richer in Yorkshire; Ralph Richer in Gloucestershire; and Hugh and Henry Fitz Richer in Norfolk. In the latter county the name still continued in the seventeenth century; for Morant tells us that "Thomas Richers of Fringe in Norfolk bought Ashdown of the Bramstons in 1679." A branch settled in Kent, where Robert Richers of Wrotham, "descended from an ancient family of Swanington, Hall, Norfolk" occurs about 1570.—Archaeologia Cantiana, The arms are given: "three annulets, two and one, for Richars." John Richer, in 1253, held of the Barony of Chilham.—Ibid. The earliest mention I have found of them is in the Domesday of Ralph de Diceto, a.d. 1181, when "Richer" is entered as a tenant of the Chapter of St. Pauls.

Randuile :

probably Rodeville or Rudeville. Rudeville, now Rouville, is near Gisors; and under the latter name the family still flourished in Normandy late in the last century. Two De Rouvilles were represented at the great Assembly of the Nobles in 1789. They bore, Or a lion crowned Azure. In England, a William de Rodeville or Rudeville, in the thirteenth century, held the manor of Lindley, in Yorkshire, of Robert de Moubray by knight service (Testa de Nevill, 92, 96). Alan de Rodewell, of Leicestershire, occurs about 1272 in the Rotuli Hundredorum.

Roselin :

for Rosceline, a baronial name, said to be a branch of the Carlovingian Viscounts of Maine and Beaumont. Roscelin the thin man (Homo Magri) is mentioned in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1198. The probable ancestor of the family in England was, according to Banks, Rocel. filius Osbert, who held five knights' fees of the barony of Hubert de Rie in 1165. (Liber Niger.) William de Roscelyn, with whom the recorded pedigree commences, married the heiress of a Norman family that had held a considerable property in Norfolk from the time of the Conquest, and had taken the name of Edgefield or Edisfield from one of their manors. Sir Thomas, the next heir, in 1265 had free warren in all his demesne lands at Edisfield, Walcote, Norton, Heckingham, Drayton, Tasburgh, and Redlington, in Norfolk; and his son Sir Peter was summoned to parliament among the barons of the realm in 1293. This summons was, however, never repeated, either to him or his posterity. His son and successor, another Sir Thomas, joined the confederacy of the barons against the Despencers, and thereby lost his estates, which were seized by the Crown; but they were restored by Edward III. He died without issue, prior to 13 Ed. III., and his inheritance came to his six sisters and coheirs: Margery, married to John de Champaine; Alice, to Sir William Daye; Joan, to John Lord Willoughby of Eresby: Maud, to Sir Robert Tiffin: Mary, to Sir John Camois, and another, whose name is lost, to Ralph de Bokenham.

"A younger branch of this family was William, brother (as it would seem) to Peter, for he was contemporary with him, and 14 Ed. I., claimed assize of his tenants, view of frank-pledge, a gallows, and free-warren, having purchased of the prior of Norwich a lordship at Aldebye, in the county of Norfolk. This Sir William, and Joan his wife, 4 Ed. II., settled by fine the said manor on themselves for life, with remainder to William Marshal, Baron of Rye, and his heirs; to which family it afterwards passed accordingly."—Banks.

Rastoke :

I met with a name somewhat resembling this in Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Ralph de Rostack, in the fourteenth century, was "manucaptor of Otto de Bodragan, knight of the shire for Cornwall."—He probably held the manor of Ros-teage (as it is now spelt) in Gerans; derived from two Celtic words, signifying "valley house," or "fair valley." William de Roscaet is entered in the Testa de Nevill among the tenants of Henry de la Pommeray at Tregony. If, however, this Celtic local name is the one here intended, it must of course be an interpolation.

Rinuill :

Goisfrid de Runeville held in Herts 1086: (Domesd.) and was probably the "Seigneur de Rouvile" of the Norman Chronicle. But I think this name stands for Reinevile, a very ancient Yorkshire family. "They held much land of the Lacis, in various parts of their fee. An Ilbert de Ramosville, which may be Reinevil, was contemporary with Ilbert de Laci, and held lands of him in Campsall, of which he gave the tithe to the chapel of St. Clement, in Pontefract Castle. The same chapel had also tithe in Badsworth, and I have little doubt Badsworth was included in the tenure of this Ilbert. But the first of the Reinivils mentioned by Dodsworth as having possession of Badsworth is a William, father to Adam de Reinivil, who is distinguished by the addition vetus from a son and grandson of the same name. He gave the town of Badsworth with the advowson of the church, to a younger son, Swein de Reinivil. This could scarcely be later than the time of Hen. I.

"Swein was one of four potent brothers; William, Adam, Swein, and Jordan; but the name of Reinevil soon disappeared at Badsworth, Swein having only daughters, Eva, married to Eudo de Longvilers, and Agnes, to William his brother. The issue of Agnes was one daughter only, Hugolina de Quatremains. Badsworth passed to the descendants of Eudo and Eva."—Hunter's South Yorkshire. The first Adam de Reinivile was a benefactor to Nostel Priory at some time prior to 1120: Thomas his son also appears in the chartulary.

Jordan de Reinevile, Swein's brother, had also two daughters and co-heirs; Margaret (living 1266) who married Sir Robert de Mounteney, and Alice, or Aliena, married to Thomas de Bellew.

Rougere :

N. Rogere and Robert Rogere appear in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180 and 1195. In England the name became very common. Brianston, in Dorsetshire, was "the seat of the ancient and Knightly family of the Rogers. This was held in Grand Sergeantry by a pretty odd jocular tenure; viz. By finding a man to go before the King's army for forty days when he should make war in Scotland, bare-headed and bare-footed, in his Shirt and Linnendrawers, holding in one hand a bow without a string, in the other an arrow without feathers."—Camden. It was from these Rogers that Brianston passed by purchase to its present owners, the Portmans: and it had come to them (whether by purchase or marriage does not appear) as early as the time of Henry IV. Leland, speaking of Weymouth, tells us: "Ther was a faire House of Freres in the Est Part of the Town; and the chief House of Rogers in Dorsetshire was Founder and Patrone of it." Richard, the last of the family, is represented by Lord Clarendon as "a gentleman of a rare temper and excellent understanding, passionately inclined to advance the King's service, and having a wonderful influence in the county, for which he served as one of the knights in parliament, so that his death was an unspeakable loss to the King." He left two daughters his co-heiresses, who both made brilliant marriages. Elizabeth was the wife, first of Charles, Viscount Mansfield, eldest son of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (who died in his father's lifetime): and secondly, of Charles Stuart, sixth Duke of Lenox and third Duke of Richmond; and Rogersa married Sir Henry Belasyse, eldest son of John, first Lord Belasyse of Worleby. But neither of them left children.

There was a family of this name (supposed to be derived from the Dorsetshire house) seated at Benham in Berkshire from 12 Henry VI. to 4 Henry VII. Near Cheping Lanburn in that county Leland "sawe a greate Warren of Conies longginge unto Mastar Estesex, who is Lord of the Towne by his Mothar the sole Dowghtar and Heyre of Mastar Rogers, by whom he hathe bettar than three hundred Marks of Lands by the Yere." There seems to have been another branch seated near Bridport.

Rait :

Jordan de Raat held in Lincolnshire temp. Henry III.—Testa de Nevill. The name is of considerable antiquity in Scotland. Among the documents preserved in the Exchequer Office is the Submission and Fealty of Sir Gervays de Rate, given at Elgin, July 27th, 1295. Their principal seat was at Hall Green, in the shire of Kincardine, where the older parts of the castle still show their armorial bearings. "The first Rait, according to Nisbett, took refuge in the Mearns during the 14th century, having had to leave his native district of Nairnshire for some capital crime. It is certain that Raits were settled in the Mearns, and held the lands of Owres or Uras at that period; but it was not until the close of the following century that they had any connection with Hall Green. From that time, till the year 1724, they were possessed of it; and from them all the Raits of any note in Angus and the Mearns, whether landholders, ministers, farmers, or merchants, claim to be descended. The last Laird of Hall Green died in 1724, and his lands, burdened by mortgages, were sold by order of the Court of Sessions."—Andrew Jervise. Thomas Raite, Lord of Owres, received a confirmation charter of half the lands of Arroch, in the barony of Brechin, from Robert II. in 1378: and David Rait of Drumnagair had Hall Green confirmed to him by a similar charter from James III. in 1478.

Ripere :

or De Rupierre; "from Rupierre, near Caen; the Lords of which were of great importance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Des Bois). William de Rupierre (who came to England with the Conqueror) is mentioned by Ordericus Vitalis; and in 1090 commanded the forces of Duke Robert. The Counts of Rupierre continued in Normandy till the last century. In England, Robert de Ruperia paid fines in Notts and Derby (Rot. Pip:), and the heiress of John Rooper of Turndish, Derby, married De Fourneaux, who assumed her name (Mon. i. 503). Roger de Rupers, of the Norman line, held lands in Warwick or Leicester, temp. John, where he granted the advowson of Tewkesbury Abbey (Testa de Nevill, 87). The seal of Roger de Rupierre of Normandy (published by the Norman Antiquarian Society) represents a shield divided into twelve squares, each containing a martlet, the original evidently from which the modern Roper arms are derived. The Ropers, Lord Teynham, are descended from this family."—The Norman People. There is a certain similarity in the coats of arms. Lord Teynham's pedigree (as traced by Philipot in his Visitation of Kent, 1619), commences with Edwin Roper, seventh in descent, from whom were two brothers; William, who married the daughter of the famous Chancellor, Sir Thomas More; and Christopher, the father of Sir John Roper, created a baron in 1618, and still represented. The elder line ended in heiresses after four generations.

Rigny :

The family of De Reiney, or Rigny, came from Champagne. Hagebert de Rigneio, in 1101, witnessed a charter of the Bishop of Tulle (Gall. Christ, xiii. 480 Instr.), and may have been the same that possessed lands in Essex in 1086 (Domesd.) Roger de Reigny witnessed a charter of Bishop Roger of Sarum, temp. Hen. I., and Robert de Reigny held five fees in Devon 1165 (Liber Niger).—The Norman People. I can find no further mention of the Reignys in Essex, but they were long of great account in Devonshire, where Ash-Reigny, Brixton-Reigny, and Anstey-Reigny have preserved their name. They also took root in the adjoining counties. John de Reiney, of Devon and Somerset, died in 1247 (Roberts, Excerpta): and Sir Richard de Reyney, who lived in the early years of the following century, acquired Stoke, in the latter county, through his wife Lucia. A little later, Sir John Paulet, the forefather of the Dukes of Bolton and Marquesses of Winchester, "made an addition to his estate by marriage with Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Thomas Reyney of Rowd in Wiltshire and Shyrston in Somerset. She was such a considerable heiress that Sir John Paulet, her son, sealed with the arms of Reyney 15 Ric. II."—Collins. She bore the Vol,^[30] the bearing of the great house of St. Maur, but of other tincture; viz. two Wings conjoined in Lure Argent.

The family is to be met with in other parts of England. Newton-Reigny, in the Forest of Inglewood, was their seat in Cumberland. "In 33 Hen. II. William de Reigny was impleaded in a writ of right by one William de Lascelles, for a knight's fee in Newton Reigny, sed non prevaluit, for John Reigny succeeded after William his father, 4 King John, and William his son after him, who died 4 Ed. I. Then the inheritance fell to four sisters."—Hutchinson's Cumberland. A branch of far longer continuance derived from Thomas de Reigny or Reynes, who, about the middle of the twelfth century, married the great-granddaughter and heiress of Simon de Bosco-Roardo, Lord of Stathern in Leicestershire, Clifton in Buckinghamshire, and Oakley in Bedfordshire, at the time of the Conquest. The grant, by Ralph de Reynes and his brothers, of some land at Stathern to Belvoir Priory, is witnessed by William de Albini Brito II. "The monks, by way of forwarding this grant, presented to Ralph five marks of silver and a bridle, and undertook to give him annually the garment of a monk, with boots of 6d. value."—Nichol's Leicestershire. The other two manors continue to be known as Oakley-Reynes and Clifton-Reynes; and the latter was the residence of the family for more than three hundred years. A brass in the parish church commemorates Sir John Reynes, obt. 1428. Its last lord, Thomas Reignes, left three daughters, of whom Anne, the eldest, inherited the family place, and married Thomas Lowe, Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII.

Richemound :

Alain le Roux, son of Eudes Count of Brittany, "in his very youth not a little famous for his valour," led the division comprising the men of Brittany and Maine, that formed the left wing of the Norman army at Hastings, and "received three entire wapentakes in North Yorkshire, which became the great Honour of Richmond, the name given by the new possessor in the new language to the old English soke of Gilling."—Sir F. Palgrave.

"Le roy servit et ama
Et il bien le guerdona:
Richement (mont?) li dona el north
Bon chastel et bel et fort.
En plusieurs lius en
Engleterre Li rois li donna de sa terre."

He was, however, very far from owning the whole of the vast possessions ascribed in Domesday to "Alanus Comes"; for, by a strange coincidence, three Counts Alan of Brittany came to England with the Conqueror, Alain Fergant, Alain le Roux, and Alain le Noir. They have been constantly confounded together by Dugdale and other authors: even Wace speaks of Alain le Roux as Alain Fergant, and the unravelling of their identity and genealogy has been a labour so portentous, that Eyton, in his "Shropshire," declares: "The descent of the Earls of Brittany is a problem of sufficient interest and difficulty to fill a volume." I have been guided entirely by the French authorities, whose Recherches sur le Domesday furnish the first pedigree that appears to throw light on the subject.

Alain Fergant, to begin with, was the son and heir of Houel V. Duke of Brittany, and Hawise, heiress of Duke Conan II. He himself was twice married; first to Constance of Normandy, the second daughter of the Conqueror, by whom he had no children, then to Ermengarde of Anjou; and succeeded his father as Duke in 1084, dying a monk in the Abbey of Rhedan in 1119. His father-in-law bestowed upon him all the lands, in six different counties, that had belonged before the Conquest to Earl Morcar, with the dignity of Count Palatine, but neither he, nor his son, nor his only brother the Count of Nantes, ever bore the title of Earl of Richmond. When he took the cowl, this son succeeded him in his Duchy as Conan III., or Le Gros; and left an only daughter, Bertha, who became the heiress of Brittany.

Alain le Roux and Alain le Noir were brothers, the sons of Eudes of Brittany, Count of Penthievre, and his wife Agnes, daughter of the Earl of Cornwall, and were kinsmen of the Conqueror through their grandmother Hawise, daughter of Richard Duke of Normandy. There were seven brothers in all: the eldest, Geoffrey dit Botherel, Count of Penthievre, was killed at Dol in 1093; and his fourth brother Stephen succeeded him in the title, as the two Alains, who were second and third in seniority, were then established in England. Alain le Roux or Le Rebre, the first Earl of Richmond, "Gentil home de grant parage," as Gaimar calls him, held all the great Yorkshire domain that in Saxon times had been Earl Edwin's; and chose Gilling as the head of his barony. There, on a towering hill washed by the Swale, he built the splendid keep that, scarcely harmed by the wear and tear of eight centuries, still lords it proudly over Richmondshire; planted, like a beacon, to command the whole country round. His banqueting hall (now unroofed) looks down upon the wild mountain river that eddies round the foot of the rock, and, beyond it, over one of the most beautiful views that all England can afford. Dugdale truly describes Richmond Castle as "situate upon the highest, most defensible, and pleasant place of all that Territory, the swift River Swale running at the skirt thereof, and half encompassing it." The Red Earl's suzerainty was worthy of its lofty throne. It extended over nearly two hundred manors, of which one hundred and sixty-six were in Yorkshire; and no less than one hundred and eight of these are entered as "Wasta"—marking the Conqueror's ruthless progress through the North. He seems to have been a good ruler. "He was ever," writes the monk of Utica, "studious for Peace, a great lover of the Poor, an especial honorer of the Religious; and that his death, without Issue, occasioned no little sadness to all good People." This was in 1089, when his brother Alain le Noir succeeded him in the Earldom.

This second Alan, who styled himself Comes Britanniae et Angliae, had received at the Conquest a great barony of one hundred and twenty manors, in Hampshire, Dorset, Norfolk, and Suffolk. He only survived the first Earl four years, and, like him, left no children. The fourth brother, Stephen Count of Penthievre, then became the heir, and is chiefly mentioned as a benefactor to various religious houses; in one of which—St. Martin's of York—he desired that his heart might be buried. His wife's name is not known, but she is believed to have been the heiress of Guingamp, and he had certainly two sons and a daughter. Maud, the latter, became the wife of Walter de Gaunt, with a splendid dowry, for she had all Swaledale "in Frank Marriage." The elder son died young; and the second, Alan, third of the name, also styled Niger or Le Noir, succeeded as fourth Earl of Richmond in 1137. Not one of the chroniclers of his time has a good word to say of him. He "stood firm to King Stephen against Ranulph Earl of Chester;" and in 1142 scaled the walls of Lincoln Castle, and took it by storm "with much treasure therein:" but soon after was either captured in this very fortress, or taken prisoner in battle, and forced to surrender all his castles into the Earl's hands. One writer says that "he fell off before any blow strucken" in this battle: another makes the Earl of Gloucester, as it was about to begin, say to the Earl of Chester: "Against whom is it that we fight! Here is Alan, Earl of Britanny, in Arms against us; nay, against God himself; a wicked person, and full of all manner of iniquity: No man for malice to be compared with him; being always disposed to mischief, thinking it a dishonour that any one should equal him for cruelty."

He married the heiress of Brittany, Bertha, daughter of Conan Le Gros, and died in 1149, leaving four sons, Conan, Robert, Bryan, and Reginald. The eldest, Conan, surnamed Le Petit, succeeded to the Dukedom on his grandfather's death, and took possession of his new dominions in 1154. He was also Earl of Richmond; "though," says Dugdale, "without the complete fruition of that barony:" and from that time forth this great English honour was only held as an appanage of the Dukes of Brittany. Conan married Matilda of Scotland, and their only child Constance—another heiress of Brittany—was the wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet, and the mother of the murdered Prince Arthur. She had two other husbands. From the second, Ralph de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, she was divorced; but by the third, Guy de Thouars, she had two daughters; and Alice, the elder of these, conveyed her princely inheritance to Peter de Dreux, surnamed Mauclerc, who was of the blood royal of France. With this great house it remained for about one, hundred years, till John de Dreux, who had done homage as Earl of Richmond, and been summoned to parliament in 1335 as "Duci Britanniae, et Comiti Richmund," died without posterity. Though his niece Joan, Countess of Blois, was constituted his heir, and laid claim to his Duchy, the Earldom of Richmond reverted to the Crown, and was given in 1342 by Edward III. to his son John of Gaunt. This prince resigned it in 1372, when it was granted to another John de Dreux, surnamed de Brenon (a nephew of the last Duke's) as a compensation for his own Earldom of Montfort, which he had forfeited by taking part with Edward III. His son, John Le Vaillant, Duke of Brittany, Earl of Montfort, and Earl of Richmond, was, on the other hand, deprived of his English honour by special act of parliament in 1383, for having deserted the banner of England for that of France. There is some question of its having been afterwards restored; and one of his successors, Arthur Duke of Brittany, was styled Earl of Richmond. But the line terminated with the nephew of the latter, whose only daughter, Duchess Anne, successively became the Queen of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and thus quartered her famous ermine^[31] shield with the Royal lilies of France.

She was the last—and not the most enviable—of the many heiresses of Brittany, for King Charles, coveting her fair province, forced her to marry him, sword in hand.

The younger brothers of Duke Conan le Petit remained in England. Brian was father of Alan, Lord of Bedale; whose descendants all bore the name of Fitz Alan, and were great Yorkshire barons. For some reason or other, instead of their paternal coat, they took as their bearing Barry of eight, Or and Gules. These arms appear on the "noble Monument, with his Effigies in Armor, Crossleg'd," that was erected in Bedale Church to the memory of the last Brian Fitz Alan, who was summoned to parliament as a baron in 1295. Two years afterwards he was "constituted the King's Lieutenant for the whole realm of Scotland." He left two daughters, Maud and Catherine—only eight and six years old at the time of his death—in the custody of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. One married Sir Gilbert de Stapleton; the other John Grey of Rotherfield.

Another and still more powerful branch of the House of Brittany was founded by Ribald, a younger brother of Alain le Roux, first Earl of Richmond, who, as I have said, was one of seven brothers. Ribald had from him a gift of the great Fee of Middleham in North Yorkshire, which he held in 1086 (Domesday). He died a monk of St. Mary's, York, whither he had betaken himself in his old age, and was succeeded by his son Ralph, who married Agatha de Bruce, daughter of the Baron of Skelton. Another Ranulph, in the time of King John, translated the canons of Swainby to Coverham, an abbey he had founded near his castle of Middleham; thus lodging them close to his own gates, for the extraordinary reason (assigned by Dugdale) that he had "had much contest with them." The line ended with his son, Ralph Fitz Ranulph, whose eldest daughter Mary was his heiress, and brought the whole of the great Yorkshire fief in marriage to Robert Lord Nevill. Her husband was killed, early in life, in a disgraceful private quarrel, and the "fair and gentle Mary of Middleham" mourned for him till the day of her death. She would never consent to marry again, and lived a widow for forty-nine years. For some reason that has remained unexplained, she passed over her eldest son in her will, and bequeathed all her possessions to her grandson Ralph, the arrogant "Peacock of the North,"

"He who in bold prosperity
Of colours manifold and bright,
Walked round, affronting the day light."

Rochford :

de Rupa fortis: a great Essex family, that gave its name to Stoke Rochford in Lincolnshire, and held other lands in Warwickshire, Hertfordshire, and Yorkshire. Several of the Rochfords received writs of military summons during the early part of the fourteenth century, till the heir-general of the family failed in 1340; and from one of them, who had gone over to Ireland nearly two hundred years before, descended the Earls of Belvedere. Yet the name must be here dismissed as an interpolation; for, though it has been derived from Rochefort, in the Viscountcy of Rouen, it was in reality taken from the town and hundred of Rochford in Essex—the "Rochefort" of Domesday, then held by Swein of Essex, one of the principal barons of the county. "King Henry II. gave the manor of Rochford's Hall, with the estate, to a family hence surnamed De Rochford, descended from Pagan, second son of Eustace Fitz John. Pagan was Lord of Ewyas in 1136. His son was Guy de Rochford."—Morant's Essex.

Raimond :

"Giraldus Raimundus" appears in Domesday as a mesne-lord in Essex: and the name continued there till about 1272, when John Reimund is found in the Rotuli Hundredorum. At the same date the family was numerous in Kent. Their original seat was at Raymond's, near Rye. They "were for a great length of time Stewards to the Abbot and Convent of Battel for their lands near this place; and it is probable that it was once the original stock from which the Raymonds of Essex, Norfolk and other counties, derived their extraction. The family was extinct here before the thirty-sixth year of King Henry VIII."—Hasted's Kent. They probably removed from their old home when they lost the hereditary Stewardship of Wye at the dissolution of the monasteries. It was a post of great dignity and trust; for the Royal manor of Wye was by far the most splendid of the gifts conferred by the Conqueror upon his Abbey. According to Lambarde, it comprised the fifth part of the whole county of Kent; "appertaining to it were twenty hundreds and a half": and it was held from the Crown "with all its liberties and Royal customs, as freely and entirely as the King himself held them, or as a King could give them." It enjoyed all the "maritime customs" owned by the Crown at Dengemarsh, which formed part of the soke of Wye, including the right of wreck; and no Royal edict was ever issued to the sheriffs and justiciars of Kent respecting the affairs of the Abbey without an especial direction that "they should preserve all the Royal liberties and customs of the manor of Wye."

From this Kentish stock Philipots, in his Villare Cantianum, concurs with Hasted in deriving the Raymonds of Essex. Their first move, however, appears to have been to Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, where we find Philip Raymond, in the sixteenth century, married to a county heiress who brought him Essendon. Their great-grandson John (who was living in 1627) bought Belchamp-Walter of the Wentworths, and transplanted the Raymonds to this new home in Essex, where they still flourish. No doubt it was unwittingly that they thus returned to the county in which the name had originally taken root at the Conquest. The next heir, Oliver, served as knight of the shire in the two parliaments summoned by Cromwell in 1653 and 1656, and was the happy father of twenty-one children. His eldest son, St. Clere, married against his consent, was cut out of the succession, and became "a haberdasher of hats in London" : but the inheritance was restored to his grandson. The direct line failed in the next following generation, and Belchamp-Walter passed to a collateral branch that is still represented.

Another was seated at Little Coggeshall Hall in the same county; of whom James Raymond is mentioned by Morant in 1768. They bear Sable a chevron between three eagles displayed Argent; on a chief of the second, three martlets of the first.

Souch :

de Stipite Sicco.^[32] All authorities are agreed in deriving this great house from the Sovereign Earls of Brittany; but they differ materially as to the affinity it bore to the parent stock. Dugdale tells us that William La Zusche, who died in 1199, in his confirmation charter to Swavesey Priory, calls Roger La Zusche his father and Alan La Zusche Earl of Brittany (son of Geoffrey) his grandfather. "But," objects Eyton, "the only Earl Alan of Bretagne whose father's name was Geoffrey was guardian of William I. when Duke of Normandy, and died by poison in 1040: whereas Alan, first Lord Zouche of Ashby was living in 1186, and is not said on good authority to have been son of any Earl Alan, but of Geoffrey, Vicomte of Rohan. Moreover, this Alan La Zouche of Ashby was succeeded by his son William, William by his brother Roger, and Roger by his son Alan—a descent not strictly identical with anything implied in the Swavesey charter.

"That document, if it proves anything (and is accurate as well as genuine) proves that other descendants of the Earls of Brittany, besides Zouche of Ashby, were called La Zouche and had claims upon Swavesey."—History of Shropshire. No one has (as far as I know) yet explained why the name was originally borne.

The Vicomtes de Rohan "were," it appears, "at one time seized of considerable estates in England," which they retained till the reign of King John, when Alan, the last Vicomte, forfeited them by adhering to his French allegiance. Part of his fief was granted to his kinsman Roger La Zouche.

Alan La Zouche, the undoubted founder of the family, who in his charter to Lilleshall Priory styles himself "son of Geoffrey le Vicomte," lived in the time of Henry II., and acquired a great estate through his wife Alice, the heiress of the elder male line of De Belmeis. She brought him Ashby—since, as Ashby-de-la-Zouche, the head of his barony, in Leicestershire, Tong and other manors in Shropshire, and lands in Sussex and Devonshire. Their eldest son William commonly went by his mother's name; but when he died s. p. in 1199, he was succeeded by his brother Roger, who had always called himself La Zouche. In 1203, when the rumour of Prince Arthur's murder roused the Bretons to "join Philip Augustus in that united attack on John's territory that ended in the loss of Normandy," Roger, himself a Breton, at first took part with his countrymen, and forfeited his English fief. But it was not for long. Hardly had the new grantee, William de Braose, taken possession, than Roger suddenly returned to his allegiance; electing to sacrifice his Breton rather than his English inheritance: and he was amply compensated for its loss. King John gave him Maple Durham and Petersfield, with other grants in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, and some land in Norfolk that had been the Vicomte de Rohan's. He "remained faithful to the King in every later extremity," and lived to a great age, dying about 1238. He was succeeded by his son Alan II., "distinguished by steady loyalty, much capacity, and a proportionate advancement of his house in riches and honour. This great Jurist married Ela, daughter and coheir of Roger de Quinci Earl of Winchester, in whose estates, involving a share of the older Earldom of Leicester, Zouche of Ashby was thenceforth a co-parcener."—Eyton. He was pre-eminently favoured and trusted by Henry III., who gave him the custody of Cheshire and North Wales in 1251; the Wardenship of all his Forests South of Trent in 1260; named him one of the guarantors of his treaty with Louis of France in 1261, and appointed him Constable of the Tower in 1264. In 1268, "having commenced a suit against John Earl of Warrenne, who chose rather to determine the matter by Sword than by Law, he was kill'd by him in the King's hall at Westminster."—Camden. But Lord Zouche was not killed, though both he and his son Roger were sorely wounded. He died two years afterwards, and was followed by this Roger, and then by Roger's son Alan, the last heir-male of the line. Alan III., first summoned to parliament in 1297, was one of Edward I.'s train of soldier-peers, who did good service in Scotland and Gascony, and had charge of the Castle and Forest of Rockingham. He died in 1314, leaving three daughters; 1. Ellen, married first Nicholas de St. Maur, and secondly Alan de Charlton; 2. Maud, the wife of Robert Lord Holland; and 3. Elizabeth, a nun at Brewood in Staffordshire. The two elder divided the estates, with the exception of the caput baroniae, Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and the manors of Swavesey and Fulborne in Cambridgeshire, which were settled on his cousin William de Mortimer.

This cousin, thenceforth known as William La Zouche, was the second son of Joyce La Zouche, daughter and heir of a younger brother of Roger La Zouche I., and the second wife of Robert de Mortimer, Baron of Burford. He was summoned to parliament in 1323 as Lord Zouche of Mortimer, and held the offices of Constable of the Tower, and Justiciar of the Royal Forests S. of Trent. He was twice married, both times to a widowed heiress, first of the De Toesnis, and next, of the De Clares; and by each of them left a son. The eldest, another Alan, was renowned in arms under Edward III., and numbered among the heroes of Cressy. He died shortly afterwards, and was succeeded by two Hughs, his son and grandson, the latter of whom was childless, and the inheritance passed to a daughter, Joyce de Botetourt.

Another longer continued baronial line represented the heirs male of this great house. Eudo La Zouche, the uncle of Alan III., last Baron of Ashby, married Milicent, widow of Roger de Montalt, and one of the sisters and heirs of George de Cantelupe, Baron of Bergavenny, who brought him estates in eight different counties, Haryngworth in Northamptonshire, held of the King in capite, being the head of the Honour. He died in 1298. His son and heir, summoned to parliament in 1308, was the first of five Williams who successively bore the title of Lord Zouche of Haryngworth. In 1312, he and Sir John Grey of Rotherfield having a dispute "which was heard before the King and his Council, and there falling out high Words between them, Grey drew his Knife upon him in the King's presence, for which both of them were committed to prison." We find him afterwards throwing off his allegiance, and on the King's flight into Wales in 1325, he was, "having Lands and Interest in those parts," sent in pursuit with the Earl of Lancaster, and captured the ill-fated fugitive near Llantressan. He was a Knight Banneret, with the reputation of a stout soldier, and followed Edward III. three times to France, and once to Flanders, with a train of twenty men-at-arms and as many archers. His grandson William II., again a Banneret, could count up one Scottish and four French campaigns, and led to the field a retinue more than twice as numerous, comprising fifteen knights, thirty-four esquires, forty men-at-arms, and forty archers. William III. "was he, who being accused by a Frier-Carmelite, that he had scandalized John of Gant Duke of Lancaster, with evil Machinations against the King, was brought before the Parliament (though at that time very sick) to answer the Charge; but stoutly denying all, he was at length acquitted."—Dugdale. Not only acquitted, but taken into favour, for in 1386 he obtained a market and fair at Haryngworth, with license to castellate his manor house,^[33] and two years later was banished the Court by the nobles then in arms at Haringay Park, as one of the King's evil counsellors. He was styled of Totness ("the Lordes Souche," says Leland, "were long time Lordes of this towne and Castell"); and in 1391 was found next heir to John de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, in virtue of his descent from Milicent de Cantelupe. William IV., Lieutenant of Calais in 1413, acquired a second barony through his wife Alice, the posthumous daughter and sole heir of Richard, last Lord St. Maur, who himself represented a former Zouche heiress. They had two sons; William V., Lord Zouche and St. Maur; and John, ancestor of the Zouches of Codnor. The sixth Lord, who greatly added to his Devonshire estate by marrying one of the co-heirs of the Lord Treasurer Dinham, fought against Henry VII. at Bosworth, and suffered attainder; but his son was restored in blood, and the inheritance passed without further molestation to three subsequent generations. Edward,^[34] the last Lord, was one of the peers who sat in judgment on Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringay. Elizabeth afterwards sent him on an embassy to Scotland, and appointed him her Justiciary for North and South Wales: and he was Constable of Dover and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports under her successor. "He built the magnificent mansion of Bramhill, Hants, as a residence (it is said) for Prince Henry, the son of James I. The architect, it is believed, was Thorpe (who built Holland House in 1607): the effigy over the N. front is that of Lord Zouche, and the pipes bear the initials E. Z. and the date 1612, the year in which the Prince died. Lord Zouche bequeathed the estate to his cousin, Sir Edward Zouche of Woking, who died in 1634; and (being a dissolute character) it is likely that he sold the whole in his lifetime, as neither he nor his son are described of Bramshill."—Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica. Lord Zouche himself died in 1625. His wife was his kinswoman Alianor, daughter of Sir John Zouche of Codnor, by whom he left two daughters; Elizabeth, married to William Tate of De la Pre, near Northampton;^[35] and Mary, married to Thomas Leighton. The barony of Zouche fell into abeyance for nearly two hundred years, till it was claimed and obtained by Sir Cecil Bisshop as a descendant of Elizabeth Tate. At his death in 1828, it again lapsed between his two daughters, but was eventually granted to Harriet, the eldest, who conveyed it to the Curzons.

The pedigree of the Zouches of Codnor is only carried down to about the same date—the first half of the seventeenth century. Their ancestor, Sir John, in the time of Henry VI. married Elizabeth, aunt and heir of the last Lord Grey of Codnor, who brought him considerable possessions, and notably the caput
baroniae in Derbyshire. Five generations of successors inherited them; the last of whom was Alianor Lady Zouche's brother, another Sir John. Leland also tells us of a Northamptonshire estate that had apparently come to them through a different channel. "Benefeld Castell is clene faullen downe to the Grounde. It was never of any great Compace. It longgid, as I hard, to the Bassingburne's, and after cam to one of the Souches.

"This Souche hath also Codnor Castell, sumtyme the chefest Howse of the Grayes, wher he now doith muche Coste. This Souche is a Man of faire Landes."

The last Sir John sold every acre he possessed, and went over to Ireland, where he died. He left only three married daughters, but there must have been many collaterals; for, though his two brothers died young, his grandfather could boast of eleven younger sons! Collins, in his Dictionary (vol. ii.), mentions James Zouche, of an ancient family in Surrey and Hants; the son of James Zouche, who having raised a troop of horse for Charles I. at his own expense, in which Sir Alan Zouche and Edward Zouche were captains, died at Pedding on his return from Oxford. He was the son of Sir Edward Zouche, knt, Marshal of England; probably the Sir Edward mentioned by Weldon, in his Court of James I. This must have been the cousin "of dissolute character" to whom the last Lord Zouche bequeathed Bramshill. Then there was Richard Zouche, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, who died in 1660, described by Anthony Wood as "an exact artist, a subtle logician, an expert historian; and for the knowledge and practice of the civil law, the chief person of his time." The last notice of all is by Banks, who writes in 1808: "The family of Zouche, once so numerous, seems now almost entirely extinct, unless the Rev. Dr. Zouche, Prebendary of Durham, the ingenious Editor of Walton's Lives, be, as his name indicates, a remaining branch of this ancient stock."

It is remarkable that the name of the gallant Archbishop of York, William de la Zouche, one of the commanders at the victory of Nevill's Cross in 1346, is entered on none of the pedigrees.

Sheuile :

Sevele, or Sevale. Roger and Gerard de Sevele or Savale occur in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95; and about 1272 Roger Sevale, of Buckinghamshire, and Godard and John Sewale of Kent, are found in the Rotuli Hundredorum. "There was a family of Seville, seated at Chalford, that bore Argent upon a bend Sable three eagles displayed Or. A branch lived at Ferrier's Court, near Upper Lypiat."—Rudder's Gloucestershire. Thomas Sewale was Escheator to Ed. III. Simon de Siwell witnesses a charter of Rainham Abbey, Norfolk: and Cecilia, in the time of Henry III., gave some lands in Wiltshire to Maiden Bradley (Mon. Angli.). Robert de Shevele, in 1253, paid a fine at Sharleston in Yorkshire. Though this name bears some resemblance to that of Savile, it has no connection with it. "Passing by the fond tradition, which is altogether inconsistent with the grounds of English etymology, that this family are descended from the Savelli of Italy, suffice it to say that they spring from Savile Hall in Dodworth, near Barnsley, which gave name to them, and not they to it."—Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete. Yet there is a certain resemblance in their coats of arms, as the Saviles bear Argent on a bend Sable three owls of the field.

Seucheus :

Leland does not help us here; for the corresponding name in his list, S. Cloyis, can scarcely be assimilated to this. One point at least is clear—that it is a mis-spelling of some kind; and various conjectures are open to us for its rectification. If we bear in mind that u and n are undistinguishable in the old black letter, and f and c constantly counter-changed, the alteration of a single letter makes it intelligible. By substituting an a for a h, we have St. Saens (Sidon) Latinized S. Sydonis, a great Norman barony in the district of Falaise. Or it may be an abbreviation of Sausseusemare or Saucemare. Or, again, is it Suchuffe? Among the "Bachelors priz a Borghbrigge 'a meme loure q furent cot? le Roy,'" was "Sire Henri de Suchuffe." But this, again, I take to be a mis-spelling. "Le seig. de S. Sain," and "Le seig. de Souchoy" both appear in Tailleur's list (Chronicles of Normandy).

Senclere :

from St. Clair, in the canton of that name, arrondissement of Pont L'Eveque, where the site of the seignorial castle is still discernible. "This Norman village has bestowed its name upon a Scottish family, an English town, an Irish county, a Cambridge college, a Royal Dukedom, and a King-at-Arms."—Isaac Taylor's Words and Places. The Sire de St. Clair is mentioned by Wace at the battle of Hastings. "This was Richard de St. Clair, who held lands in Suffolk 1086 (Domesday). Britel de St. Clair, his brother, held in Somerset (Ibid.) William de St. Clair, probably a son of Britel, held in Dorset, 1130 (Rot. Pip.), and had a grant from David I. of Scotland of Rosslyn in Midlothian, whence descended the great house of St. Clair, Earls of Orkney and Caithness, etc."—The Norman People. Besides William, another of the family sought his fortunes in Scotland, Henry de St. Clair, whom we find styled "Vicecomes" of Richard de Morville, Constable of Scotland, in 1160, and was the founder of the house of Herdmanston, now represented by Lord Sinclair. But it is to the branch seated at Rosslyn that belongs the chief illustration of the race.

A namesake and descendant of the first Lord of Rosslyn formed one of that gallant company—so dear to all Scottish hearts—that went with Lord James Douglas in 1330 on his pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre with the heart of King Robert Bruce, and fell with him in battle against the Moors of Spain. "Douglas endeavoured to cut his way through the ranks of the Infidels, and in all probability would have succeeded, had he not turned again to rescue Sir William St. Clair of Rosslyn, whom he saw in jeopardy. In attempting this, he was inextricably involved with the enemy. Taking from his neck the casket which contained the heart of Bruce, he cast it before him, and cried with a loud voice, "Now pass onward as thou wert wont, and Douglas will follow thee or die!"

The action and the sentiment were heroic, and they were the last words and deeds of an heroic life; for Douglas fell overpowered by his enemies, and three of his knights, and many of his companions, were slain with their master."—Tytler. Another William de St. Clair, his successor, married Isabel, daughter and eventually sole heir of Malise, seventh Earl Palatine of Stratherne, and Earl of Orkney and Caithness. She traced her descent, through a long line of Scandinavian sovereigns, from Rognavald, Jarl of Maeren, to whom, in recompense of good service done in aiding him to obtain the crown of Norway, Harold Harfager granted in 875 the islands of Orkney and Shetland, then only recently added to his kingdom. Rognavald at once passed them to his son Sigurd, the first Jarl of Orkney. Like his younger brother Hrolf the Ganger, Duke of Normandy, Sigurd was a born conqueror, and could not rest within the narrow limits of his island home, but spread his dominion over the whole of Northern Scotland, extending his boundary as far as the Southern border of Moray, where he built a "borg" or fort. It was while returning from one of these forays that he met his death. He had set out on an expedition against "Melbrigd with the tooth" (probably the Maormar of Mar of Scottish legend), had overthrown and slain him, and was riding home in triumph with his foeman's head dangling by his horse's side: every man of his following having, in like manner, the head of a Scotsman slung to his saddle strap, in token of victory. But in this grim trophy Sigurd was unconsciously carrying his own doom; for the fang tooth that had given Melbrigd his by-name chanced to strike the bare calf of his leg, inflicting a hurt of which he died. He was buried with great honours ("how-laid" in the Northman's phrase) beneath a how or haugr near the river Oykel in Sutherland. Torp-Eynar, his brother—"Eynar, the turf-cutter," who first taught his islanders to burn peat—reigned in his stead, and is remembered in Scandinavian story for having offered his foeman Halfdane in sacrifice to Odin; scoring the murderous "blood eagle" on his bare back with his own sword. His posterity continued in the male line till about the middle of the thirteenth century. "To the last, the successors of the first Earl, Sigurd—from 875 to 1231—displayed all the characteristics of their race; and under them the story of the Orkneys was as wild and stormy as that of the neighbouring Norse lands—Norway itself, Iceland, or Faroe. The earls fell, stabbed or burnt in their drinking halls, trapped in their 'borgs' on the main-land, or in battle by sea or shore. Few died the 'cow's death' in their beds so dreaded by the earlier sons of Thor and Odin."—Quarterly Review, No. 283. They held Orkney of Norway and Caithness of Scotland, but remained more than half independent. "They had precedence of all the Norwegian nobles, and their title was the only hereditary one permitted in Norway to a subject not of the blood royal."—Ibid. They kept hospitable state in their sea-girt strongholds; for though the Saga tells us, "they were wont every summer to go over to Caithness, up into the forests, to hunt the red deer and rein deer," their principal halls were in Orkney, where they gathered round them, at the great Yule feast, followers and kinsmen from Iceland, Denmark, and England. They remained heathen till 995, when Olaf Tryggwysson came over from Norway with a mighty fleet, and—himself a newly-made Christian—enforced baptism on them by threatening to "send fire and sword throughout the Orkneys"; a summary mode of conversion that he had already practised with success at home. Nevertheless, the Earl (Sigurd Hlodverson, the grandson of Thorfinn "the skull-splitter," who afterwards became the son-in-law of Malcolm II., King of Scotland), "hardened his mind against him, and refused to leave the faith of his kinsmen and forefathers, because he did not know better counsels than they. By the Earl's side stood his young son, whose name (or by-name) was Hoelp or Hundi (whelp or hound). Suddenly Olaf sprang forward, seized the boy, and dragged him to the fore part of the ship. There he drew his sword, and swore that he would kill Hoelp before his father's eyes, unless Sigurd would listen to the preaching of the blessed message. The Earl cared more for his son than for the faith of his forefathers. He submitted and was baptised, and so were all the people of the Orkneys." Vide The Orkneyinga Saga, Quarterly Review, No. 283. His new faith sat lightly upon him, for this very Sigurd fell fighting against the Christian Brian Boroimh at the famous battle of Clontarf, where, in Dasent's words, "the old and the new faiths met in the lists face to face for their last struggle," and Odin himself, "riding an apple-grey horse and holding a halberd in his hand," was seen, on the eve of the conflict, arrayed under his own raven banner.

His son Thorfinn was, like himself, a Norseman of the true old type, "greedy of wealth and renown," who over-ran and plundered Scotland "all the way south to Fife:" but in the next generation save one recorded in these strange annals, we find a canonized saint. Sigurd's grandsons, Paul and Erlend, who received Harold Hardrada on his way to England, and went with him to the fatal field of Stamford Bridge, divided the Orkneys between them, and were succeeded by their sons Hakon and Magnus, who had in their turn to follow a Norwegian king to a disastrous battle. They were at the great sea-fight in Anglesea Sound, when King Magnus Barefoot encountered the two mighty Norman Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury. But "when the men took up their arms and buckled for the fight, Magnus Erlendson sat down on the foredeck and did not take up his arms," declaring he had no cause of quarrel against any one there. The King scornfully ordered him to go below, and not lie among other people's feet if he dared not fight; but Magnus refused to shelter himself, and taking out his psalter, sat, with the javelins whizzing around him, singing psalms all through the din and fury of the battle. This was the famous St. Magnus, loved and revered as the chosen patron of the Orcades, whose name became a household word in his native land, and in whose honour a stately cathedral was raised at Kirkwall: the "first of his house to accept the Christian teaching and act upon its precepts," a man "of blameless life, victorious in battles, wise, eloquent, and liberal." He was treacherously put to death by his cousin Hakon, who coveted his share of the Earldom. They had agreed upon a friendly conference to adjust their differences, but Hakon broke faith by appearing at the meeting with eight well-manned war-ships; and Magnus, when he found his men outnumbered, refused to allow them to draw their swords in his defence, crying, "I will not put your lives in jeopardy for mine;" and knelt in prayer, awaiting his fate. Hakon repented of the foul deed, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and first commenced building the great "stone minster" dedicated to the murdered saint.

With these two cousins the male line of the house appears to have terminated, for Paul's grand-daughter Margaret carried the Earldom, as her marriage portion, to Madoch, Earl of Athole (brother to King Malcolm Canmore), with whose posterity it remained till the early part of the fourteenth century, when Isabel, heiress to Earl Magnus, again transferred it to her husband Malise, sixth Earl Palatine of Stratheme. Her son, the next Earl, left only daughters behind him; and of these, Isabel, already mentioned as the wife of William de St. Clair, survived all the rest, and became the sole representative. Accordingly, in her right, Henry de St. Clair, her son, claimed and obtained the Earldom of Orkney, which was granted to him in 1379 by Haco King of Norway, as heir to the old Scandinavian Earls. Shetland had been separated from it nearly two hundred years before by King Skerrir, and remained under the dominion of the Crown of Norway. The next Earl, his son Henry, added greatly to his domain. He was Lord of Nithsdale and Hereditary Sheriff of Dumfries in right of his wife, the Fair Maid of Nithsdale, heiress of the Black Douglas and the Princess Egidia, daughter of King Robert II., "a mirrour of rare and singular beauty," who was accounted the fairest woman of her age. But in the ensuing generation, the Orkneys, having been pledged for the dowry of James III's Norwegian bride, the Princess Margaret, came under the suzerainty of Scotland, and William, third Earl of Orkney, had to surrender his princely fief to the King. It was annexed to the Crown in 1470: and James gave him, in exchange for all his rights, the lands of Dysart and Ravensheuch, and the castle of Ravenscraig in Fife, with the title of Earl of Caithness, never till then borne by the St. Clairs. It seemed but a poor equivalent to receive in exchange for such a birthright; and one of his descendants, the third Lord Caithness, lost his life in a desperate attempt to regain possession of Orkney. They had held their great Scandinavian Earldom for nearly one hundred years; "long enough to blend much wild Norse superstition with the traditions of their ancient house; and the tomb-fires of earlier days have their representative in the mysterious light that, on certain occasions, wrapped Rosslyn in flame:—

Blazed battlement and pinnet high,
Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair:
So still they blaze, when death is nigh
The lordly line of high St. Clair."

The newly-made Earl of Caithness was twice married: first to Lady Elizabeth Douglas, a grand-daughter of Robert III. of Scotland, who brought him an heir: but he chose to leave his estates to the sons of his second wife, for the younger of whom he obtained a fresh grant of his new Earldom in 1476. Sir Oliver St. Clair thus inherited the recently-acquired lands in Fife, with Rosslyn, which had been the cradle of the race, and William succeeded as second Earl of Caithness, and was the ancestor of the present and fifteenth Earl. His descendants, in the male line, have now held their title for more than four hundred years. Once, and once only, it appeared to have slipped out of their possession. George, sixth Earl, died childless and ruined in 1676, having made over the whole of his property "in consideration of his debts" to his principal creditor. Sir John Campbell of Glenorchy, who, becoming thus possessed of the lands, sought and obtained the title by a fresh creation in 1677. But another George St. Clair, a cousin of the last spendthrift Earl, came forward and proved his right to the dignity, and to him Sir John had to relinquish the Earldom, receiving as a compensation the title of Earl of Breadalbane. Sir Oliver St. Clair's posterity was not nearly so long-lived, for the last male heir died about the middle of the last century, having sold his ancestral castle of Rosslyn to the Master of Sinclair in 1735.

The disinherited elder son spent his life in one long contest with his more favoured brothers, and succeeded in wresting Dysart and Ravensheuch from Sir. Oliver, and obtaining from both a formal recognition of his undoubted right to be considered the head of the family. His son Henry, who fell at Flodden Field, received in 1488 the Barony of Sinclair, which was held by his successors till 1676, when John, seventh Lord, left an only daughter and heir, Catherine, styled, in Scottish fashion, the Mistress of Sinclair. She gave her hand to her namesake, John St. Clair of Herdmanston; and thus, after the lapse of five centuries, reunited the two houses that had sprung from a common stock. Their son obtained a fresh patent of his grandfather's peerage from Charles II.; but in the next generation the Master of Sinclair, having engaged in the rising of 1715, lost the title by attainder: and it continued dormant till 1782, when it was adjudged to the male heir, Charles St. Clair of Herdmanston, whose family now hold it.

The Earls of Rosslyn descend from Catherine, the second daughter of Henry, eighth Lord Sinclair, and the wife of Sir John Erskine of Alva. All her six brothers died without issue; and her grandson, James, eventually inherited Rosslyn and Dysart from the son of her elder sister Grizel. This young Erskine was, through his mother, Janet Wedderburn, the nephew of the celebrated Lord Chancellor Loughborough, who, having no children of his own, seems to have adopted him as his heir. Each title that was granted to him by the Crown was granted with remainder to James Erskine; and it was probably in view of this intended reversion that he selected for the Earldom he received in 1801 the name of the old St. Clair castle which at that time belonged to the latter. Accordingly, on his death four years afterwards, his nephew (then styled Sir James St. Clair Erskine) succeeded as second Earl of Rosslyn, and was the grandfather of the present peer.

Numerous branches of the St. Clairs remained in England. They were among the principal landowners of Somerset in the time of Edward I. At Tudwell in Devonshire they "had a noble Mansion, and flourished for many Descents. The last of them, Gabriel St. Cleere, having spent his Estate in riotous Living, pulled down the House, and sold it by Piece Meals as he wanted it, saying, That neither he nor his Posterity could prosper, so long as one stone lay upon another in that House, where so many Sins had been committed."—Magna Britannia. Achard de St. Clair held two fees of the Honour of Belvoir in Leicestershire (Liber Niger). John Seintclere of Lubbenham in the same county was outlawed for felony in 1367. In Sussex they held Firle till the fifteenth century, and gave their name to Heighton-St. Clere. Guido de St. Clair was Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28 Ed. III. In Norfolk, "Hamo de St. Cler is mentioned in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II. Gerebert de St. Cler, whose chief seat was at Bradfield St. Cler in Suffolk, held of the Peverels in 1204, and Guy de St. Cler was Escheator of Norfolk and Suffolk 29 Ed. III. Sir Philip de St. Cler died in Henry IV.'s time, Lord of Bradfield and Wetherfield in Suffolk, leaving two sons; John, s. p. and Thomas, who died 17 Henry VI., leaving three daughters and coheirs, Elizabeth, Alianore, and Editha."—Blomfield. Camden tells us that, at the siege of Bridgenorth Castle "King Henry the Second was like to have lost his life by an arrow, which being shot at him, was intercepted by a truly gallant man and lover of his Prince, Hubert de Saint-Clere, who sav'd the King's life by the loss of his own."

Sent Quintin :

Some say this family is named from the town of St. Quentin, the capital of Lower Picardy; others derive it from another St. Quentin, near Coutances, in the Cotentin. "Wido de St. Quentin, temp. William I. granted lands to Cerisy on assuming the monastic habit (Mon. i. 960): and his son Alured gave lands to the same abbey. The latter was brother of Hugo, one of the Conqueror's companions, who held lands in Essex and Dorset in capite 1086; also in Hants. He had 1. Robert, who joined in the conquest of Glamorgan, 1090, and whose descendants sat in parliament as barons: 2. William, mentioned in Normandy in 1120: 3. Herbert, who held estates in Lincoln and York 1149 (Mon. ii. 198). He had issue Walter and Alan (Ibid. i. 474). Hence the St. Quintins, baronets."—The Norman People. It is not, however, from Robert, the elder of the three brothers, who was one of Robert Fitz Hamon's "Douze Peres" of Glamorgan, that the Barons St. Quintin are generally derived, but from Herbert, the youngest. He was seated in Dorsetshire, where he held under the Earl of Gloucester, and gave his name to Frome St. Quintin. In 1110 and 1112 he (or more probably a son of the same name) held twenty fees in the counties of Somerset, Dorset, and Wilts. Though his descendants were so frequently, and indeed most usually, termed barons," the first of them actually summoned to parliament was another Herbert, in the time of Edward I. He proved the last of the line, for his wife Margery, the sister and coheir of Warine de L'Isle, brought him only two daughters. Elizabeth, the elder of these, who was the wife of Lord Grey of Rotherfield, had no children; and thus the whole inheritance came to her sister Lora, who was three times married. Her first husband was Thomas de Poole; her second, John Clinton; her third, a brother of Lord Marmion, by whom she had an only daughter, Elizabeth, her heir. Elizabeth, married Lord Fitz Hugh; and the representation passed through her grand-daughter, another Elizabeth, to the Parrs, and through Queen Katherine Parr's elder sister Anne to the Earls of Pembroke, in whom the barony is now believed to be vested. But none of Herbert St. Quintin's posterity bore the title, and the writ was at best a doubtful one.^[36] Two fine brasses of the size of life, representing Sir Herbert (the father of the first Lord) and his wife Lora de Fauconberg, remain in the chancel of Brandburton Church, Holderness. They lie on a large blue marble slab, both in the attitude of prayer; but—probably in allusion to some forgotten legend—he holds a heart in one hand.

A junior branch of this house survived till 1795. It was very remotely connected with the baronial line, for its ancestor—one of the numerous Sir Herberts—was the son of Amatellus, styled Baron St. Quintin in the days of Coeur de Lion. He married a great Yorkshire heiress, the sister of Anselm d'Estouteville, by whom he had several sons, and to Alexander, one of the younger of these, his mother gave Harpham, ever after the seat of his descendants. As long as they themselves continued, they never migrated from their early home in East Yorkshire, and they must have held it for upwards of five centuries.

"Sir Alexander, the first Lord of Harpham, took to wife Margery of the Blanch Minster, a daughter of the Justiciar William de Albini (I am here quoting the pedigree given in Poulson's History of Holderness, though I confess myself unable to identify this father-in-law), who gave him nine sons and two daughters. From this time the descents and intermarriages are carried down without a break, but with few other events to chronicle, to Sir William St. Quintin, who received a baronetcy from Charles I. in 1641. With the fourth baronet, who died towards the end of the last century, the succession was brought to a close, and the line expired. His three brothers had died young, and his own marriage was childless.

Staunton St. Quintin in Gloucestershire is, as far as I know, the only manor that still bears the name.

Sent Omere :

(mis-spelt S. Thomer by Leland): "a branch of the house of Bethune, Barons of Bethune in Artois, Advocates or Protectors of Arras. This family was descended from the old Carlovingian Counts of Artois, and ranked among the most potent and illustrious houses in Europe. The great Duke of Sully was one of its descendants. It was extensively settled in England. William, Castellan de St. Omer, was a distinguished historical character temp. Hen. I."—The Norman People. "Hugh de St. Omer is mentioned as a baron of the realm by Matthew Paris. No doubt the family was seated at Beaupre Hall, Outwell, nigh the time of the Conquest; and mention is made by Sir Henry Spelman of John de St. Omer, of Well, who wrote an answer to a monk of Peterborough who, in the time of King John, wrote a lampoon in Latin against the country people of Norfolk. Sir John de St. Omer was Keeper of the Wardrobe to Henry III. Sir William de St. Omer lived at Well 43 Henry III., and was Judge of the Assize for Cambridge. Sir Thomas, his son, married Petronilla de Malmains, temp. Ed. I., and left no issue male."—Blomfield's Norfolk. Sir William had a writ of military summons in 1263.

The last heir, Sir Thomas, was seated at Mulbarton, which he held of Fitz Roger, and was also Lord of the village of Brundale, where, as well as at Mulbarton, his father "had a grant of a fair, with free warren, in 1253, being then with the King in Gascoyn in France." He was twice married; first to Petronella, daughter and coheir of Nicholas de Malemains, and widow of Ralph Lord Tony, by whom he had a daughter named Alice; and secondly to Beatrix... who brought him another daughter named Elizabeth. "This Thomas, at his Death, settled sufficient Revenue, out of his Lands at Mulbarton, on the Pittances of Norwich Cathedral, to keep his Anniversary for ever, and treat the Convent on that Day."—Ibid. He built the present parish church at Mulbarton, where his effigy, and that of his first wife, till lately remained in one of the windows, with this inscription:

Preiz pour lez almes Monsieur
Thomas Sentomeris et Dame
Perinelle sa femme.

Alice, the eldest of his two coheiresses, married Sir William de Hoo, and was the mother of Thomas, created Lord Hoo and Hastings about 1445. Elizabeth married Thomas Waryne. Blomfield elsewhere makes mention of another sister, Christian, the wife of John de Beaupre (from whom Beaupre Hall took its name): but she may possibly have been a grand-daughter.

Besides his Norfolk estates, Sir Thomas was Lord of Bramshaw, in Wiltshire. According to Sir Richard Hoare, he died in 1365, but there must be some mistake in this date. He bore Azure a fesse between six cross-crosslets Or.

Fuller tells us that he was Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1291, and for the next four years.

Walter de St. Omer was one of the Justiciars of Salop 1266-67, but the name does not occur again in the county. Several of the name occur in the Pipe Roll of 1130.

Sent Amond :

from St. Amand in the Cotentin, a barony held in the fifteenth century by the De Balsacs.—Anselme. Wace mentions the war-cry of Saint Amant! Sire Saint Amant! at the battle of Val-es-dunes. "Almaric de St. Amand witnessed a charter of Henry II. in 1172 (Mon. i. 516.) Ralph de St. Amand held offices in Normandy in 1195 (Magn. Rotul. Scaccar Norman.").—The Norman People. We first hear of them in Gloucestershire. "Guy de St. Amand held estates in South Cerney, Wick, and Cirencester, which came to William de St. Amand, and were purchased of him by Almaric de St. Amand, Governor of St. Briavel's Castle, and Warden of the Forest of Dean."—Rudder's Gloucestershire. The pedigree given by Dugdale commences with this second Almaric and the record of his military services in the reign of Henry III. He was often employed, and amply rewarded, by the King; receiving first the Cornish manor of Liskeard; then Bloxham in Oxfordshire, and, after the Welsh campaign of 1230, the custody of the castles of Kilgarran, Pembroke, and Tymbey, belonging to the Earl Marischal, then in arms against the Crown. He was likewise Constable of Hereford, Sheriff of Herefordshire for six consecutive years; and, as a special mark of Court favour, one of Prince Edward's godfathers at his christening in 1238. His son Ralph married Asceline, the youngest sister and co-heir of Robert de Albini, Baron of Cainho, whose wardship he had obtained, at great cost, five years before: and the next in succession, Almaric III. thus became so considerable an heir, that Paulyn Peyvre ("an active Man in those days") paid one thousand marks for his disposal in marriage. This Almaric left three sons, Guy, Almaric, and John; of whom the two elder died s. p.: Guy shortly after his father. Almaric IV., who succeeded his brother about 1285, was summoned to parliament by Edward I., having served him gallantly in the Scottish and Gascon wars, and been for some time Governor of Bordeaux. He was followed by John, styled, as a professor of the canon law, Magister Johannes de Sancto Amando, who, again, was a baron by writ, summoned in 1313 by Ed. II.; and the father of Almaric V., one of the soldier-peers of the great soldier-King of the time. He was retained by indenture to serve Edward III. in all his wars; and his life was, like his master's, passed in the tented field. In x357 he was named Lord Justice of Ireland, a larger force being assigned to him than had ever before belonged to that great office; and in 1373 was Steward of Rockingham Forest and Captain of Rockingham Castle. His son and successor, Almaric VI., the last Lord St. Amand, had only two daughters, Alianor, the wife of Sir Gerard de Braybroc, who died before him, leaving a son, and her half-sister Ida, married to Sir Thomas West. At his death in 1403, his grandson, Gerard de Brayboc and Ida shared the inheritance; but Ida remained childless, and the whole was eventually vested in her nephew. Sir Gerard, again, had no heir-male. The barony fell into abeyance between his three daughters, and was called out in 1449 in favour of Sir William de Beauchamp, the husband of the eldest.

Collateral branches survived of the St. Amands. In Devonshire, where they held Ipplepen, old Westcott informs us that the name degenerated into Samund.

Sent Legere :

from St. Leger, near Avranches. Richard de St. Leger is on the Dives Roll. Robert de St. Leger was of Sussex, 1086, and appears to have been the father of William de St. Leger, who, with his son Clarembald, granted lands to Battle Abbey in the time of Henry I. (Mon. i. 318). There is a "fond tradition" in the family that it was upon this Sir Robert's arm the Conqueror leaned when he first stepped ashore in England. If so, the arm must have proved unreliable, for Wace records that the Duke, in his eagerness to land, missed his footing and fell on his face as he touched English ground. It was an unlucky accident; and the cry "Mai signe est ci!" rose on every side; but William, with ready wit, interpreted the omen in his own favour. He had stretched out his arms to break his fall, and thus taken possession of his new kingdom. "'See, Seignors!' he cried out lustily, 'by the splendour of God! I have seized England with my two hands; without challenge no prize can be made. All is our own that is here: and now we shall see who will be the bolder man.' Then one of his men ran forward and put his hand on a hut, and took a handful of the thatch, and turned to the Duke, and said heartily, 'Sire, come forward and receive seizin; of this land I give you seizin; without doubt the land is yours.' And the Duke said, 'I accept it; may God be with us.'"—Roman de Rou.

Robert de St. Leger settled in Kent, where he succeeded the Earl of Ewe as tenant of Ulcomb, holding it of the Archbishop by knight service. Many generations of his descendants—a gallant race of Kentish gentlemen—followed him there, and lie in the parish church; for "the common burial of the Sellingers hath bene," as Leland tells us, "cheiffely at Ulcombe." Ralph de St. Leger attended Coeur de Lion to the siege of Acre; another Ralph was one of the Recognitores Magna Assises in 1200; and a third, with two others of the family, was knighted by Edward I. at Carlavarock. In the following century they intermarried with the blood Royal of England. John de St. Leger, who was Sheriff of Kent 9 Hen. VI., was the father of Ralph, who succeeded him at Ulcomb, and of two younger sons, Sir Thomas, and Sir James, both destined to make great alliances. Sir Thomas married the widowed Duchess of Exeter, Anne Plantagenet, sister of Edward IV., and was beheaded by Richard III. in 1483, leaving an only daughter Anne, the wife of George Manners Lord Ros. Sir James married another Anne, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormonde, who brought him thirty-six English manors, and was the ancestor of the St. Legers of Eggesford and Annery in Devonshire. Their son, Sir George, was Sheriff of the county in 1530, as was their grandson, Sir John, in 1562 but the latter soon after sold his inheritance, and left his two sons "in a poor estate." Both died s. p.

The elder brother, Ralph St. Leger of Ulcomb, Constable of Leeds and Sheriff of Kent in 1468, was grandfather of the successful Sir Anthony, who made his mark at the Court of Henry VIII.: "a wise and wary gentleman," esteemed "a valiant servitor in war, and a good justicer in peace, properly learned, who had gravity interlaced with pleasantness." As a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, he won the favour and confidence of the King, who enriched him with some of the spoils of the monasteries, gave him the Garter, and appointed him in 1540 Lord Deputy of Ireland. He retained his post in the two succeeding reigns, holding it for sixteen years, till Queen Mary recalled him on learning that he had once written verses in ridicule of Transubstantiation. This was brought under her notice by his enemies at court; where "sundry noblemen pelted and lifted at St. Leger till they shouldered him quite out of all credit. He, to be accounted forward and pliable to the test of King Edward the VI.th, his reign, rymed against the real Presence for his pastime, and let the papers fall where courtiers might light thereon, who greatly magnified the pith and conveyance of that noble sonnet. But the original of his own handwriting (though contrary to his own judgment) wandering in so many hands, that his adversary caught it, and tripped it in his way, the spot whereof he could never wipe out. Thus was he removed, a discreet gentleman, very studious of the state of Ireland, entach'd, stout enough, without gall."—Campion.

"He was," says Fuller, "properly the first Vice Roy of Ireland, seeing Shadows cannot be before their Substance; and in his Deputyship Henry the Eighth assumed the title of King and Supreme Head of the Church in Ireland.

"To him all the Irish Nobility made their solemn submission, falling down at his Feet upon their knees, laying aside their Girdles, Skeines and Caps. This was the fourth solemn submission of the Irish to the Kings of England; and most true it is, such seeming submissions have been the Bane of their serious Subjection; for, out of the Pale, our Kings had not power either to punish or protect, where those Irish lords (notwithstanding their complimental Loyalty) made their List the Law to such whom they could overpower.

"He seized all the Abbey Lands in Ireland for the King's use; a Flower of the Crown which alone had made a Posy, if continued thereunto."

After his recall, he retired to end his days in his native county of Kent, where he died three years afterwards. He left two sons; Sir Warham, of Ulcomb: and another Sir Anthony, appointed in 1593 Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and subsequently one of the Keepers of the Great Seal by James 1st, who was seated at Wyverton Hall, Boughton-Montchensie, in Kent, in the reign of Charles I., but died without posterity.

Sir Warham, the heir, "an honest and sufficient man," was likewise employed in Ireland, and, selling most of his English estates, cast in his lot there altogether. He was first Governor, then Knight (or Provost) Marshal, and finally, in 1599, President of Munster; but was killed the same year in an engagement with Hugh Macguire, Lord of Fermanagh, "in which Sir Warham and the said Hugh killed each other at the head of their troops." His son, Sir William, was again Lord President of Munster, having been appointed on the death of Sir Edward Villiers in 1627, and took part actively for the King in the Civil War that followed. The next in succession, another Sir William, slain in 1644 while leading the Irish levies at the battle of Newbury, was the grandfather of Arthur St. Leger, created Viscount Doneraile in 1703. This title was transmitted in the direct line by two generations only; the third Viscount, being in very delicate health, was ordered to Lisbon by his physicians, and died there in 1729, leaving his uncle Hayes heir to the title and estates. He, too, the last male heir of the St. Legers, was childless; and, at his death in 1767, the Viscountcy became extinct. The property passed to the second son of his only sister Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Aldworth, who took the name of St. Leger, and was created Viscount Doneraile in 1785.

This Mrs. Aldworth was a Freemason, and is supposed to have been the only woman in the world ever initiated into the secrets of the craft. Her father, a zealous Mason, sometimes opened Lodge at Doneraile; and on each of these occasions his young daughter was seized with a devouring curiosity to watch the proceedings. She could, however, devise no hiding place in the Lodge room, till, one day, the works of an old clock that stood there were taken out to be repaired, and, she, being a slim and lissome girl, contrived to ensconce herself in the vacant case. She could thence, in perfect security, observe what she had so passionately desired to see—the initiation of a new member. But, after witnessing the first two steps of "that awful and mysterious ceremony," she became frightened, "and those who understand this passage," her biographer impressively adds, "must know what the feelings of any person" in similar case would be. She resolved at all hazards to get away; and, watching her opportunity, succeeded in stealing noiselessly out of her hiding-place, and reaching the door unperceived. Softly turning the handle, she opened it and darted out, thinking she had made her escape; but found herself face to face with "a grim and surly Tiler," guarding the threshold with a long rusty sword. She screamed aloud; the Lodge, alarmed, rushed to see what was the matter; and "finding from the Tiler that she had been in the room during the ceremony, in the first paroxysm of rage and alarm actually, it is said, proposed to put her to death." This is a part of the story which it is very difficult to believe. "It was only by the moving and earnest supplication of her younger brother that her life was spared, on condition of her going through the two steps she had already seen."—Life of the Honorable Mrs. Aldworth. The diploma (or whatever the document may be called) that she received is carefully preserved: and her portrait, with a glass case containing the apron and jewel she used to wear, remains in the Lodge room at Cork.

Someruile :

from Somerville, now Sommervieux, near Caen. In 1165 Walter de Summerville held a fief from the Earl of Derby, two from the barony of Stafford, and one in York, from De Lacy. (Liber Niger.) His seat was at Whichnor in Staffordshire, held as a member of the Honour of Tutbury, and from him descended Roger de Somerville, who was summoned to parliament as a baron, and died in 1327. Roger's son was the Sir Philip to whom John of Gaunt granted Tatenall, &c. "for certain services," and in his charter enjoined to keep a flitch of bacon hanging in his hall at Whichnor at all times of the year except in Lent; to be given to any man who had been married a year and a day, and could take his oath that he had never repented of the deed. He was required to bring with him two neighbours to confirm his words. "Then shall the baconne be brought down and laid at the hall door; and shall there be laid upon it half a quarter of wheat and half a quarter of rye; and he that demandeth the baconne shall kneel upon his knee, and shall holde his right hand upon a booke, which booke shall be laid above the baconne and the corne, and shall make othe in this manner: Hear ye, Syr Phylippe de Somerville, Lord of Wichenour, mayntayner and giver of this baconne, that I, sythe I wedded my wyfe, and sythe I had her in my keeping and at my wylle, by a year and a daye after our marriage, I wold not have changed her for none other, fairer ne fouler, richer ne poorer, ne for none other descended of gretter lynage, sleeping or waking, at no time; And if she were sole, and I sole, I wolde take her to be my wyfe before all the wymen of the worlde, of what condytions soever they be, good or evyle; so help me God and His saints, and this flesh and all fleshes." Then the two witnesses he had brought with him were called to give evidence as to his condition; and he received, with his bacon, the measure of wheat and a cheese if he was a freeman, and the measure of rye if he was a villein. The sub-tenant of Sir Philip at Rudlowe (for a long time of the name of Knightley) was bound, under a heavy penalty, to furnish "a horse, a sadyle, a sakke, and a pryke," (spur) to convey these trophies one day's journey out of the county; with the exception of the cheese, which the winner of the bacon was to carry before him on his own horse. The happy pair—it should be noted that the poor wife's opinion had never been asked at all—were finally escorted to the boundary of the manor by all the free tenants on horseback, with "trumpets, tabors, and all manner of minstrelsy." Wichnor passed away from the Somervilles in the very next generation, and the old moated Hall itself has long since vanished, but the custom lingered on well into the last century, and is fully detailed in the "Spectator." "It is thirty years," writes Horace Walpole to Lady Ailesbury in 1760, "since the flitch was claimed, and Mr. Offley was never so near losing one, as when you and Mr. Conway were at Ragley. He so little expects the demand, that the flitch is only hung in effigy over the hall chimney carved in wood." This wooden flitch is now kept in the modern Lodge that has replaced the old house; and the county history furnishes us with the last jokes current on this well-known jesting tenure, that has so amply carried out its founder's intention, in providing food for mirth to generation after generation. "Of the few that have ventured to claim the prize, three couple only have obtained it; one of which, having quarrelled about the mode of preserving it, were adjudged to return it. The other two couples were a sea-officer and his wife, who had not seen each other from the day of their marriage till they met in Wichnor Hall: and a simple couple in the neighbourhood; the husband, a good tempered man, and the wife, dumb."

Sir Philip left, as I have said, no male heir; and Wichnor went, as the marriage portion of his daughter Joan, to her Welsh husband Rees-ap-Griffith. But a branch of the house remained in Gloucestershire, where Somerville Aston, first held by John de Somerville in 1250, was passed down in uninterrupted succession for five hundred years (see Atkyns' Gloucestershire). The Somervilles lived in a moated house, now ruinous, on the south side of the church that was their burial place. Dugdale recounts the tragic end of one of them. "John, who in 25 Eliz. being a hot-spirited Gentleman and about twenty-three years of age, but a Roman Catholique by profession, is said to have been so far transported with zeale for the restoration of that religion, by the instigation of one Hall a Priest, that he resolved to kill the Queen, and to that purpose made a journey to London, and that upon his apprehension he confesst his intent; but being arraigne'd, condemn'd, and committed to Newgate, within three days after he was found strangled in his lodging. How far forth he was guilty of this, God knows; for with what a high hand things were then borne through the power of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester is not unknown to most men; which Earl had a particular spleen against Mr. Arden of Park Hall, father in law to this Gentleman, as by sundery aged persons, of credit, I have often heard." The last heir was a poet—William Somerville, author of "The Chase:" a kindly and hospitable man, who spent more money than he had, and (according to Shenstone) was driven to drink himself into pains of body in order to get rid of pains of mind. He died in 1742, having settled his estate or what remained of it, (it had been accounted worth,£1,500 a year) on his Scottish kinsman, James, thirteenth Lord Somerville.

No more remote kinsman ever enjoyed an inheritance. The connection between them dated as nearly as possible six hundred years back. Lord Somerville derived from a William de Somerville, who, about the year 1150, witnessed a charter of Malcolm King of Scotland for Sawtrey Abbey in Huntingdonshire (Mon. i. 851), and in 1158 was indebted to the Crown twenty marks of silver, but was in Scotland (Rot. Pip.). He had attached himself to the fortunes of King David I., from whom he received a grant of the lands of Carnwath. His grandson further obtained in 1174 the barony of Linton in Roxburghshire. According to an old MS. in the Advocate's Library, quoted by Sir Walter Scott, "he was made by King William (the lion) his principal falconer, and got from that king the lands and baronie of Linton, in Teviotdale, for an extraordinaire and valiant action, which, according to the manuscript of the family of Drum, was thus: In the parochen of Lintoun there happened to breede a monster, in forme of a serpent or worme: in length, three Scots yards, and somewhat bigger than an ordinarie man's leg, with a head more proportionable to its length than greatnesse. It had its den in a hollow piece of ground, a mile S.E. from Lintoun church: it destroyed both men and beasts that came in its way. Several attempts were made to destroy it, by shooting of arrows, and throwing of darts, none daring to approach so near as to make use of a sword or lance. John Somerville^[37] undertakes to kill it, and being well mounted, and attended with a stoute servant, he cam, before the sun-rising, before the dragon's den, having prepared some long, small, and hard peats" (bog-turf dried for fuel) "bedabbled with pitch, rosett, and brimstone, fixed with a small wire upon a wheel, at the point of his lance; these, being touched with fire, would instantly break out into flames; and, there being a breath of air, that served to his purpose, about the sun-rising the worme appeared with her head and some part of her body without the den: whereupon his servant set fire to the peats upon the wheel at the top of the lance, and John Somerville, advancing with a full gallop, thrust the same with the wheel, and a great part of the lance, directly into the serpent's mouth, which wente down its throat into the belly, and was left there, the lance breaking by the re-bounding of the horse, and giving a deadly wound to the dragon; for which action he was knighted by King William; and his effigies was cut in ston in the posture he performed this actione, and placed above the principal church door of Lintoun, where it is yet to be seen, with his name and sirname; and the place where this monster was killed is at this day called the Wormes Glen. And further to perpetuate this actione, the barons of Lintoun, Cowthally, and Drum, did always carry for crest a wheel, and thereon a dragon." The rude piece of sculpture that commemorates the exploit is still in its place; and a falcon on the knight's arm probably denotes his office of falconer. His son, Sir William Somerville of Linton and Carnwath, distinguished himself at a great tournament held at Roxburgh in honour of the marriage of Alexander II.: and the descendants were worthy representatives of the gallant knight, "brave even to madness," who first dared to meet the poisonous breath of the Linton Worm. We find them deeply engaged in the wars and politics of their day, wounded in battle, carried off prisoners, delivered up as hostages, and now and again receiving remissions and "pardons under the great seal." Thomas Somervile "held the office of justiciary of Scotland south of the Forth in November 1430, and appears to have been created a peer the same year, Thomas, Dominus Somervile, being one of the conservators of a truce with the English, 13th December, 1430." The eighth Baron, Gilbert, "splendidly entertained King James VI. at his castle of Cowthaly (called by the King in a jocular way, Cow-daily, because he observed a cow and ten sheep killed daily), and by his extravagance run through his estate." Probably for this reason, his brother, Hugh Somerville of Dram, who inherited the title in 1618, never assumed it: nor was it borne by any of his successors for upwards of a century, till James Somerville petitioned for its restoration, and it was adjudged to him by the House of Lords in 1723. A fortune followed it in due time: for in 1742 he came into the old family estate in Gloucestershire, bequeathed to him by the poet Somerville (see p. 104), and was enabled to "build an elegant house, and lay out plantations" at his own Scottish home, Drum. The last bearer of the title was Aubrey John Somerville, nineteenth Lord, at whose death in 1870 it is presumed to have become extinct.
Siward. This name appears in Brompton's "Liste des Conquerants d'Angleterre" as Sewrard. In the Roll of Carlaverock it is Suwart:—

"Richard Suwart, ke o eus converse,
Noire banniere ot aprestee
O crois blance o bouz flouretee."

This Siward was a Scottish knight, married to a sister of Simon Fresel, who, having more than once shifted his allegiance, was at that time serving in the English army. Edward II. appointed him Constable of Dumfries in 1309, and he is supposed to have died in the following year.

It cannot be this Scotsman who is here designated, but one of two Siwards who were of considerable note at the Conquest, the one in Shropshire, the other in Cheshire.

Siward :

surnamed Grossus, is more than once mentioned in Domesday, and was "a great assistant to Earl Roger in the foundation of Salop Abbey." According to Ordericus, he was a kinsman of the Earl's, and probably of Danish blood: "the name Siward is Danish rather than Saxon, and Earl Roger's great-grandmother was a Dane." He was consequently suffered to retain the manors in Shropshire that he had held under the Confessor, and bequeathed them to his son Aldred. The succession cannot be traced further. (See Eyton's Salop.)

The other Siward was one of the "Barones et Homines" enumerated by Hugh Lupus in his charter to Chester Abbey, and the ancestor of the Lancelyns, seated at Poulton-Lancelyn in that county till the reign of Henry VIII.

A Seward was among the twelve knights who, under William Rufus, went with Robert Fitz-Hamon to the conquest of Glamorgan, and formed the "Douze Peres" between whom he divided his newly-won territory. The Devonshire family of Seward of Stokeinteignhead probably derived from him: and Banks believes him to have been also the progenitor of the Sywards of Winterborn-Clinston, in Dorsetshire. Of this latter house was "Richard Syward, who, 26 Ed. I., was one of those who then had summons to attend a great council at Carlisle, furnished with horse and arms; on which occasion he is denominated a baron. But, excepting at this period, and in the following year to the same place, the name of Syward is not noticed as of baronial consideration.

"Matthew Paris mentions a Richard Sward, who, in the reign of Henry III., was a very martial person, and during that troublesome era made a conspicuous figure. In 1236, with Richard Earl of Cornwall, and many other noble persons, he was signed with the cross for an expedition to the Holy Land, after when, he died, anno 1248. He very probably was father to Richard before mentioned, 26 Ed. I.; and to Thomas Sward, who, by Matthew Paris, is represented juvenis militia praeclarus."—Banks.

Saunsouere :

or Sans-avoir; a family that belied its appellation by acquiring considerable property in this county. "It is," says Banks, "recorded to have been of very early note, inasmuch as Matthew Paris recites that Walter Sensavior was one of the first Crusaders, anno 1096, but afterwards miserably perished in that expedition of holy infatuation." The first mentioned in England is Sir Ralph Sanzaver, who in 1165 held one knight's fee in Devon of the King in capite. From him came another Ralph, "who had a license for free-warren at his manor in Spartegrave (Spargrove) in Somersetshire, and at Biggeneure (Bignor) with the hamlet of Rogate, in Sussex. This Ralph is probably the same who, in 45 Hen. III., had summons to attend the parliament convened to meet at London in that year, but which, according to Holinshed, the barons refused to attend. When he died there is no mention; but Hugh Saunzauer, 12 Ed. I., appears to have died possessed of the estates before mentioned; to whom succeeded Ralph Saunzauer, his son, according to Collinson, who settled a great dispute respecting certain lands appertaining to his manor of Saunzaver, in Somersetshire, with the Abbot of Glastonbury. This Ralph, though unnoticed by Dugdale in his History of the Nobility, is mentioned by him in his Lists of Summons to parliament, where his name is among those who, in the character of barons, were summoned the 22nd Ed. I., to attend the King to advise on the affairs of the realm, though no place of meeting was appointed in the writ. He died 8 Ed. II., being then seised with Christian his wife of Bignor in Sussex, Gratisden, in Huntingdonshire, and Croxton, in the county of Cambridge. He had issue another Ralph Saunzaver, but he never was noticed in the same baronial capacity as his father."—Banks. Was this the same Sir Ralph spoken of by Hasted as of Tramhatch in Kent, temp. Ed. III.? The arms of Hugh Sauzaveir are thus given in the Camden Roll; Azure, 3 crescents, 2, and 1, between 9 cross crosslets Or. In the reign of Henry VII., John Seintsaver, no doubt their descendant, was among the gentlemen of Somersetshire "qualified to be Knights of the Bath."

In Norfolk "Simon Senzaveir gave to the church of the Holy Trinity at Norwich a third part of his tithes at Trekestone, which gift he confirmed upon the altar before the monks of the place, for the soul of his brother Warine, whom the monks had taken into the bede roll of their brethren, when he died."—Blomfield. The first mention of the family in the Eastern Counties is in 1165, when Thomas Sanzaveir held of Walter Fitz Robert's barony in Essex.—Liber Niger.

Then we meet with them again in Cumberland. Gilbert Sanzaver witnesses Robert de Vaux's foundation charter of Lanercost Priory.—Mon. Angl.

Sanford :

This name was certainly to be found in Normandy, for it is several times entered in the Exchequer Rolls of the twelfth century. But the ancient Shropshire family of Sandford, though no doubt of Norman lineage, did not derive it from thence. They, like so many others, adopted the name of their English manor. In Domesday, Gerard de Tornai holds Sanford under Earl Roger; and it is believed that his son-in-law, Hamo Peverel, enfeoffed their ancestor Sir Richard in the time of Henry I. It has never since changed hands. "Sanford Manor is one of the very few Shropshire estates which may be said to be held by the lineal descendant, in the male line, of its earliest known Feoffee."—Eyton's Salop. As a local English name, first borne in the. twelfth century, it cannot, however, claim a place here.

Other Sandfords there were, not included in the Shropshire pedigree, that may possibly have imported the name from Normandy. Jordan de Sandford, in 1165, held four knights' fees de veteri feoffamento of the Abbot of Abingdon, and one of the Bishop of Ely in Cambridgeshire.—Liber Niger. John de Sanford (perhaps his son?) held the manors of Hormede, Fingrie, Ginges, and part of Wulfmeston, in the time of King John, "by serjeanty of service in the Queen's chamber;" and his son Gilbert, succeeding to the office, was Chamberlain to Queen Eleanor in the ensuing reign. He died in 1250, leaving a daughter and heiress, Alice, married to Robert de Vere, third Earl of Oxford. "By virtue of her inheritance, she carried the office of Chamberlain to the Queen into the Vere family, which before was the King's hereditary Great Chamberlain."—Banks. The name was then sometimes written Samford (though it is always Sanford in the earlier records v. Lib. Rub. Scacc. fol. 137, and Lib. Foed. vol. ii. p. 243), and Dugdale styles her father "Gilbert Lord Samford." "From thus obtaining the Samford estate, the subsequent Veres, Earls of Oxford, added the title of Samford to their baronial honours, but with what degree of propriety is somewhat questionable. There is no record to demonstrate that the Samfords were ever summoned to parliament as barons, or that they held their lands in capite of the Crown, per baroniam; and the mere serjeanty of the bedchamber is no proof that the manors to which that serjeanty was attached were ever erected into an hereditary baronial dignity."—Banks. Nicholas Sanford, who held Aston-Sanford of Richard Earl of Cornwall in Buckinghamshire, "a man not so memorable for his wealth as famous for his valour" (v. Matthew Paris) is conjectured to have been Gilbert's brother. He died two years after him, it is said of grief at the loss of his sister Cecilia, "the most beautiful woman of her day," who was the wife of Sir William de Gorham, and governess to Henry III.'s sister, Princess Eleanor. A Thomas de Samford, tenant of the Abbey of Abingdon at the same date, was probably likewise a member of this family.

Henry Sanford—of unknown lineage—was consecrated Bishop of Rochester in 1227, and died 1235. "Thomas Saunford was one of those who 24, Ed. I., had summons to attend at Newcastle upon Tyne, well furnished with horse and arms, for an expedition into Scotland, and to obey such orders and directions, as by the great council, which was commanded then to assemble, might be ordained: but, on this occasion, he is not mentioned in the capacity of a baron. He probably is the same who died 27 Ed. I., leaving Alda his sister heir to his lands in Chester and Devon."—Ibid.

Lastly, the old Somersetshire family of Sanford, seated at Ninehead Flory since the early part of the seventeenth century, bears arms that entirely differ from those of the Shropshire house. Henry Sanford, who died in 1644, married the heiress of Ayshford in Devonshire, and adopted her name in addition to his own.

Sanctes :

Sainct Tese is the corresponding name in Leland's list. This was probably derived from Saintes or Xaintes, the capital of Haute Saintonge in Acquitane, often mentioned in Edward III.'s wars. There was also, however, a Seigneurie de Santes, held by the De Launays in 1366. Of Gilbert de Launay, Lord of Santes, came the Seigneurs de Villerval. See Anselme. "Episcopus de Saintes" held lands in Hampshire, 1086.—Domesday.

The name is of very rare occurrence in records. Richard de Seign (if, which I think is more than doubtful, Seign stands for Saintes), in 1202, was one of the Justices Itinerant in Staffordshire. (Staff. Hist. Collect.) Thomas Seynt was of Kent, c. 1272. (Rotul. Hundred.) Sir Aylmer Saint was, as Holinshed tells us, one of the forty-six Knights of the Bath made at the coronation of Henry IV. "Sante was a Doctor of Divinitie, and was imbassador at Rome bothe for King Edwarde the Fourth, and Henrie the VII.th."^[38]—Leland. The Saints (a Newcastle family) bore, in honour of their name, Azure, three cherubs Or, their wings countercrossed saltierwise: see Robson.

Sauay :

"Dominus Petrus de Sauvey" held land in Norfolk, Lincoln, Sussex and Kent, in the reign of Edward I.—Rotuli Hundredorum. In the Camden Roll, Henri de Sauueye bears Argent, an Eagle displayed Sable, and Amys de Sauueye the same eagle, beaked Gules.

Sauley :

Souley or Suylly in Leland's list, where the name is twice given. Holinshed also repeats it. Robert de Sully is entered by Duchesne in his Feoda Normanniae as holding one knight's fee of Hugo de Montfort. Raymond de Sully, in the time of William Rufus, went with Robert Fitz Hamon to the conquest of Glamorgan, and was one of the twelve knights that shared the territory they had helped to win. His descendants were seated at Iddesleigh, in Devonshire, where they had "a fair house and two parks;" and before 1292 had acquired a share in the barony of Torrington through one of its five co-heiresses. A second Raymond de Sully, who died about 1316, was the son of Walter de Sully and Mabel, second daughter and co-heir of Roger de Somerie, Lord of Dudley, by Nichola his wife, a co-heiress of Hugh de Albini, the last Earl of Arundel. "He died seised of his mother's inheritance at Barewe and elsewhere in the co. of Leicester. The name of his wife is not expressed; but he is stated to have had a daughter Elizabeth, who died without issue."—Banks. In the same reign Henry, styled Dominus de Sulle, was appointed Governor of the Channel Islands, and sent on an embassy to France and "other countries" in 1324.—Ibid. Another contemporary was Sir John Sully, "a doughty chevalier, one of the four barons of this province that subscribed to the answer sent to Pope Boniface VIII. in the name of all the temporal lords of this kingdom assembled in parliament at Lincoln, in answer to his letter wherein he forbid King Edward I. to vex the Scots further by wars."—Westcote's Devon. In 1310 he "went to the holy wars," where he greatly distinguished himself. "Sir John de Sully, renowned for his exploits in the Holy Land against the Saracens, in which he was weakened by many wounds, return'd home after many yeares discontinuance; whereupon his officers, bringing in the accounts of his rents, which amounted to a great masse of mony, he caused his cloake, being of clothe of golde, to be spread on the grounde, and commanding the mony to be put thereon, cast himself thereinto, that it might be sayd for once he tumbled in gold and silver; whereof he afterwards gave one part to his wife, a second to his officers and tenantes, and a third part to the poor."—Sir William Pole. This childish excursion into Tom Tidler's ground is his last recorded act, as he died not long after his return to England. According to Westcote, his seat was at "Rookesford" (Ruxford, in the parish of Sandford, two miles from Crediton) "lately the land of Chichester, and alienated to Davye." There was formerly to be seen in Crediton Church "a fair monument of alabaster" of which no vestige now remains, "of a knight clad in his armour, with his lady lying by him: at his feet, a lion; at her's, a lamb. It is said to be the interment to John de Sully." Yet it seems more likely that the effigy of a crusader with a plain shield, lying under an arch in Iddesleigh Church, is intended for him. Both monuments are likewise claimed for his son and namesake, the last Lord of Iddesleigh. This Sir John Sully "fought at Halidon, Cressy, Poictiers, and in Spain; and at the reputed age of 105 (in 1387) gave evidence at his residence in the Scrope and Grosvenor controversy:—he died soon after, and is said to have been buried at Crediton; but the figure of a Crusader at Iddesleigh is also assigned to him."—Worth's Devon. Iddesleigh passed by his gift to his cousin Lord Martyn; and his share in the barony of Torrington was inherited by Guy de Bryan, (v. Lysons.)

Collinson, in his History of Somerset, speaks of a Sir Raymond de Sully who held some land at Allestone-juxta-Hunspill in the time of Ed. III., and left a daughter Sarah, married to William Malet Lord of Enmore. Were it not for a slight discrepancy in the dates (Collinson is not invariably accurate) and the difference in the daughter's Christian name, we might safely conclude this to have been the son of Walter de Sully and the Somerie heiress.

Sules :

(Soules, Leland): from Soules, arrondissement of St. Lo. "The men of Sole," according to Wace, were conspicuous at the battle of Hastings, "striking at close quarters, and holding their shields over their heads so as to receive the blows of the hatchet." The fief of Soules was held of the Honour of St. Lo at the time of the Conquest; but was soon afterwards granted to the chapter of Bayeux. Under Henry II., there was a William de Soules who held three knights' fees in Normandy; two of them in the Comte of Mortaine.—M. de Gerville. John Soule, of Salop and Oxon, and Ralph Soule, of the latter county, occur in the Hundred Rolls about 1272. In the Camden Roll the arms are thus given: "Munsire Bartho de Sulee l'escu d'or a deux barres de gueules." The Kentish family of this name (of whom John de Soles bought Betshanger in 1347) derived it from the manor of Soles (Domesday) in the parish of Nonington. This family was in early times most powerful in Scotland, where it gave its name to the barony of Soulistoun—now Saltoun—in East Lothian. Ranulph de Soulis witnesses a Stirling charter of David I.: and either he, or one of his successors, is styled Pincerna Regis. They were frequent benefactors to Newbottle Abbey and other monasteries; and "their power," says Sir Walter Scott, "extended over the South and West Marches, where they appear to have possessed the whole district of Liddesdale, with five rich baronies in Roxburghshire. Near Deadrigs, in the parish of Eccles, in the East Marches, their family bearings still appear on an obelisk. William de Soulis, Justiciarius Laodoniae, in 1281, subscribed the famous obligation, by which the nobility of Scotland bound themselves to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Maid of Norway and her descendants; and in 1291 Nicholas de Soulis appears as a competitor for the crown of Scotland, which he claimed as the grandson of Margery, a bastard daughter of Alexander II., who, could her legitimacy have been ascertained, must have distanced all other competitors. His grandson was John de Soulis, a gallant warrior, warmly attached to the interests of his country, who, with fifty Borderers, defeated and made prisoner Sir Andrew Harclay, at the head of three hundred Englishmen, and was himself slain fighting, in the cause of Edward the Bruce, at the battle of Dundalk, in Ireland, 1318. He had been joint-warden of the kingdom with John Cummin, after the abdication of Wallace in 1300, in which character he was recognized by John Baliol, who, in a charter granted after his dethronement, and dated at Rutherglen (1302), styles him Custos regni nostri. The treason of William, his successor, occasioned the downfall of the family. This powerful baron entered into a conspiracy against Robert the Bruce, in which many persons of rank were engaged. The object, according to Barbour, was to elevate Lord Soulis to the Scottish throne. The plot was discovered by the Countess of Stratherne. Lord Soulis was seized at Berwick, although he was attended, Barbour says, by three hundred and sixty squires, besides many gallant knights. Having confessed his guilt in full Parliament, his life was spared by the King; but his domains were forfeited, and he himself confined in the castle of Dumbarton, where he died. From this period, the family of Soulis makes no figure in our annals."

Tradition, however, tells a widely different tale. It recounts how Lord Soulis retreated to his Border castle of Hermitage, and fortified it, by the help of a familiar sprite named Redcap,^[39] whom he held in thrall by magic spells; how he forced his unwilling vassals to labour, like beasts of burden, in dragging materials for the work; and how, worn out by his cruelties, they laid their case before the King. They could not tell how to help themselves. Not only was the sorcerer of prodigious bodily strength, but he was held to bear a charmed life, not to be harmed by "forged steel," and not to be bound by chain or "hempen band." Again and again did they present themselves with their complaints and grievances, till at last the King, wearied and irritated beyond endurance, peevishly exclaimed, "Boil him an ye list, but let me hear no more of him!" The messengers, accepting this as their answer, departed forthwith; and when the King, thinking over his hasty words, and of the savage temper of the men to whom they had been spoken, hurriedly sent over to the Border to recall them, the work was already done. They had managed to seize Lord Soulis in despite of Redcap, and carried him to the Nine Stane Rig (an old Druidical circle on the hill descending to the Water of Hermitage), where they swung a huge cauldron on an iron rod laid across two of the stones, kindled a fire beneath, and made it red-hot. Then, rolling up the wizard in a sheet of lead, they plunged him in, heaped on fresh fuel, and boiled him till they had melted "lead, and bones, and a'." It is said that this cauldron was long preserved at Skelfhill, a village between Hawick and the Hermitage. The stones used are still pointed out; and on the place where they "boiled the pot" no grass has ever been known to grow. The old castle itself—half buried as most old buildings are—is believed to have sunk into the ground "under the load of its iniquity": and the wizard's chamber still harbours the demon to whom Lord Soulis, before crossing its threshold for the last time, flung the keys over his left shoulder, bidding him keep them till his return. Once only in seven years Redcap unlocks the door. "Into this chamber, which is in reality the dungeon of the castle, the peasant is afraid to look; for such is the active malignity of its inmate, that a willow inserted at the chinks of the door is found peeled, or stripped of its bark, when it is drawn back."—Sir W. Scott. The Borders are rife with stories concerning this wicked Lord Soulis. Close under his castle wall is the deep black pool in the Water of Hermitage where his great Northumbrian rival, the Cout of Keeldar, was held down by the spears of his troopers till they had drowned him. A young chief of the Armstrongs, who had once saved his life when in great jeopardy, and sheltered him under his own roof at Mangerton, was brought as a guest to the Hermitage, and, while sitting at supper, treacherously put to death.

Sorell :

Bardsley, in his 'English Surnames,' describes this as a nickname given to red-haired persons. "The young hind, from its early indefinite red, is known as 'Sorrell'; and Aubyn, in his 'Lives,' describes Butler, author of Hudibras. as having 'a head of sorrell haire.'" Hinds are, however, never called sorells; this appellation properly belongs to the young fallow deer, who grows from a fawn into "a pretty, pleasing prickett," thence to a sorell, a sore, and finally becomes a buck. Nor are we, I trust, bound to draw the inference that Agnes Sorel's hair was red.

This name is of very early occurrence in Leicestershire. Henry II. confirmed to Leicester Abbey by charter the churches of Thornton and Siresham, the gift of Thomas Sorrel; Simon Sorel witnesses a deed of Robert Blanchemains, Earl of Leicester, about 1180; and Lucas Sorell was a landowner in the time of John.—Nichol's Leicestershire. This is the last mention I can find of them in that county.

In Yorkshire Helias Sorel, for the health of himself and of Quinild his wife, gave some lands in Billingley to Monk Bretton.—Hunter's Deanery of Doncaster. In Gloucestershire Robert Sorell witnessed Edward II.'s charter to Keinsham Priory (Mon. Angl.). Tebbald Sorell, of Norfolk, occurs about 1199 in the Rotuli Curiae Regis: and there is some subsequent mention of the family in that county during the reign of Henry III. Thomas and Simon Sorel then held of the Earl Warren; Thomas gave some lands to Sibton Abbey in Suffolk; which were afterwards confirmed by Simon his brother. John Quirel, alias Sorel, and Agnes his wife were benefactors of Castleacre Priory in 1257.—Blomfield's Norfolk. In the Rotulus Magnus Pipae of the reign of Henry I., I find entered William Sorell of Suffolk. Thomas Sorel, resident in the Liberty of the Bishop of Ely in Cambridgeshire, was summoned to serve against the Scots in 1322.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. Two others of the name, Richard and Robert, are also mentioned; the former in Wiltshire. In Essex, there was a John Sorell, living before 1626, whose son of the same name bought Hide Hall in 1650; the line ended with Richard Sorel in 1728. They bore Gules, two lions passant Ermine.—Morant's Essex.

Somerey :

from Sommeri, near Rouen. Roger de Someri is on the Dives Roll. William de Sumeri held the lordship of Catsfield, in Sussex, in the time of Henry I., when Helia, his son, is also mentioned. They were near neighbours and frequent benefactors of Battle Abbey. Simon de Sumeri feoffed to the Abbey a mill-pool at Piperenges (this name still survives under the grotesque alias of Pepper-in-Eye), and Samfrid de Sumeri gave lands in Beausse and Ninfield, which his nephew Robert confirmed; besides some gifts from others of the family.^[40] They first emerge into importance in the early years of the thirteenth century, when John de Somerie (the same John who, before 1210, feoffed land in Bexhill to Simon, Bishop of Chichester) attained baronial rank through his marriage with Hawyse Paganel. She was the sister and sole heir of Gervase Paganel, Baron of Dudley, and brought him a great inheritance in Staffordshire, with Newport-Pagnell and thirteen knight's fees in Buckinghamshire. Their son Ralph had to pay three hundred marks for livery of these lands, and was further mulcted of a sum of £50 in aid of Coeur de Lion's ransom. He exchanged Wolverhampton, part of his mother's barony, for three other manors in Staffordshire with King John, and died in 1210. William his son was then a minor, and at his own death in 1221 he again left an heir under age, Nicholas de Somerie, who, with all his lands, was committed to the charge of Ranulph Earl of Chester. Seven years afterwards he, too, died, and died childless, whereupon the inheritance devolved on his uncle Roger, the husband of Nichola de Albini, one of the sisters and co-heirs of Hugh Earl of Arundel. She "had for her principal Seat," Dugdale tells us, "Barewe in Cheshire"; and in 1244 their joint possessions amounted to fifty-one knight's fees. Sir Roger followed the King to Gascony in 1252, and on three subsequent occasions was summoned for service against the Welsh; but fell into disgrace in 1261 for venturing to castellate his manor house at Dudley without the customary Royal license. His works were summarily prohibited; but two years afterwards, when he took part for the Crown in the baronial war, the requisite permission was forthcoming, and they were resumed, but, as it would seem, not altogether completed in his lifetime. He was taken prisoner at Lewes, and died soon after Edward I.'s accession. His son, Roger II., was the father of the two childless brothers with whom the line was brought to a close. The elder, Roger III., either died in his minority, or did not long survive it; and John, the younger, succeeded in 1299, "being not then of age." He was summoned to parliament by Edward II. in 1308; served in seven Scottish campaigns, and died in 1321, when he can scarcely have been much over forty. Dugdale pourtrays him as one of the local tyrants who made their rule intolerable to their neighbour. "In 4 Ed. II. it was reported that John de Somery, Baron of Dudley, had taken upon him so great authority in Staffordshire, that no man could have Law or Reason by means thereof: and that he domineer'd there more than a King; as also that it was no abiding for any man in those parts, except he well brib'd the said John de Somery for protection, or yeilded him much assistance towards the building of his Castle; and that the said John did use to beset Men's Houses, in that Country, for to murther them; as also thereby extorted large summes of money from them." He adds that the King sent William Trussel and Alan la Zouch, as his commissioners to enquire into the matter, but does not inform us of the result.

Lord de Somerie's heirs were his two sisters. The eldest, Margaret, who had married John de Sutton, succeeded to Dudley Castle, the town of Dudley in Worcestershire, Pensnet Chace, and other manors in Staffordshire. Her son John had summons to parliament as Baron Dudley in 1342. The other, Joan, the wife of Thomas Bottetourt, had for her share Bradfield and two other manors in Berkshire, with Rowley-Somery, etc., in Staffordshire.

This was certainly not the only family of the name. Stephen de Someri held a barony in Cambridgeshire prior to the reign of Stephen: and in 1139 Roger de Somerie paid five marks of silver for livery of the lands he derived from his mother:—no doubt the same Christian de Somerie who was a benefactress of the nuns of Stratford. She, with her sons, had bestowed upon them some land at Haselingfield in Cambridgeshire; her grant being confirmed by King Stephen. Courthope makes Stephen father of the John de Somerie that married the heiress of Dudley; but neither his name nor that of Roger appear in the records of the Sussex Someries. In the time of Henry III., there was a John de Somerie, the son of Adam, who was in arms with Simon de Montfort, and is conjectured to have belonged to Hertfordshire, where Adam and Stephen de Somerie are mentioned in 1289. Stephen, who had an elder brother named Roger, had died s.p. in 1240, leaving four sisters to inherit. Sir John de Somerie, of the same county, has already been mentioned as occurring in Sir H. Nicolas' Roll of Arms of 1308-1314, where we also meet with a Sir Perceval^[41] Somerie of Warwickshire, bearing the baronial lions counterchanged. Then there was a Robert de Somerie, called "the brother of the Lord of Dudley," but unnamed in any of the Somerie pedigrees, who in 1299 held land at Bishampton in Worcestershire, and was knight of the shire in 1315. He left a daughter Julian, married to Thomas de Luttelton, ancestor of the Lords Lyttelton of Frankley. Richard de Somerie had likewise an estate at Bishampton in 1315: Roger de Somerie is noticed in the Cal. Inq. ad quod damnum in 1320 and 1326 in connection with the same place; and in 1339 Thomas de Somerie was patron of the church there.
The name was in process of time abbreviated; like St. Omer, it became Somer: and there is little reason to doubt that John Somer, the son of a Worcestershire attorney, who became illustrious as Lord Chancellor of England, and is said to have added an s as an intended improvement to his patronymic, belonged to this family.

Besides Rowley-Somery in Staffordshire, there is a manor in Bedfordshire named Great Hampstead-Someries.

Sent Iohn :

from St. Jean-le-Thomas, near Avranches. "The men of St. Johan," are spoken of at Hastings in the Roman de Rou; and their leader, according to family tradition, had the charge of the transport and munitions of the invading army, or which reason his posterity ever after bore the horse-hemes (or collars) as their cognizance.^[42] The name is missing in Domesday; but in the reign of William Rufus John de St. John was one of the twelve knights that invaded Glamorgan with Robert Fitz Hamon, and received the castle of Falmont or Faumont as his share of the conquest. He was the younger son of William de St. John (who first came to England), and succeeded his childless brother Thomas, Lord of Stanton-St. John in Oxfordshire, who was a benefactor of St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, in 1112, and with whom Dugdale commences the pedigree. John had two sons: 1. Roger; and 2. Thomas, who inherited Stanton St. John. Roger married a great Sussex heiress, Cecily, the daughter of Robert de la Haie, who brought him the honour of Halnac (now Halnaker) that had been granted to her father by his kinsman Henry I. He, again, had two sons, with whom his line expired; and a daughter named Muriel, married to Reginald de Orival, whose only child in the end became the heiress of Halnaker. This Mabel de Orival was the wife of Adam de Port, Baron of Basing in Hampshire; the great-grandson of the Hugh de Port who fought at Hastings, and is entered in Domesday as holding fifty-five manors in that county alone. Basing was thus the head of a great barony, and held by the representative of a potent Norman house. Yet the son of Adam and Mabel adopted his grandmother's name and arms as his own, and was the founder of the existing family of St. John. Before continuing their descent, however, I must revert to the male line, represented by Roger's younger brother Thomas.

He was living at Stanton St. John in 1166, and bestowed lands on the monks of St. Peter's, as his father had done. His son, Sir John de St. John, went with Coeur de Lion to the Holy Land, and, at the siege of Acre, was one of the chosen knights whom the King, "on the inspiration of St. George, had distinguished by causing them to tie a thong or garter around the leg." According to another account, the King himself tied on this leathern thong "(for such he had then in hand), whereby being put in mind of the future glory that should accrue to them, with assurance of worthy rewards if they overcame, they might be roused up to behaving themselves stoutly in the wars, &c." Further, "after a long interval of time and divers victories obtained by him, the King, returning to this country, determined to institute this most noble Order of St. George, on whose protection the English so much relied." This account of the origin of the Knights of the Garter was given in 1527 by the Master of the Rolls at the investiture of Francis I.; without vouchsafing a reference to any historical proof, or explaining its application to the mysterious motto, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." It is almost needless to say that it has not been accepted by modern authorities. "Even admitting that Richard I. did make use of this device in the Holy Land, as a signal or distinction of a party going out on some warlike exploit, yet that he thence had occasion to frame a distinct Order of Knighthood afterwards, there is not the least mention, or any ground to imagine."—Ashmole.

The next heir, Sir Roger, took up arms with the barons against Henry III., and was summoned to parliament by them after the victory of Lewes; but was slain at Evesham in the following year. His eldest son John died s. p., but he left another, named Roger, who obtained 46 Hen. III. license to fortify his house at Lageham in Surrey,^[43] and to hold it as long as he and his heirs should remain loyal to the King. This obligation was not long observed, for he joined the baronial standard within less than two years of that time, and was one of the Council of Nine appointed to govern the kingdom after the battle of Lewes. His son was summoned to parliament as Lord St. John of Lageham, as were his grandson and great-grandson; but no summons was accorded to the next in succession; with whom the direct line terminated in 1353. There remained a nephew, Peter, who also died s. p., and other collateral heirs, descended from Nicholas de St. John (a younger son of the first Baron) who were seated at Glimpton in Oxfordshire, "and continued," says Burke, "for several generations."

With them expired the male line of the house, and its representation passed to the Barons of Basing. One of these, John de St. John, who was eminent in the Scottish wars of Edward I., was a baron by writ in 1299; and "li preus Johan de St. Johan," to whom, as the oldest and most distinguished commander in the army, the charge of the young Prince of Wales was entrusted at the storming of Carlaverock. His heir, "ki de son pere avoit le nom," succeeded
him two years afterwards, and was followed by Edmund, the last Lord St. John of Basing, who died during his minority in 1347, leaving two sisters as his heirs. Margaret de St. Philibert, the eldest, lost her only child in infancy, and the barony was inherited by the second, Isabel de Poynings, whose husband had summons to parliament in her right in 1368. Her great-granddaughter conveyed it to the Paulets in the time of Henry VI. This heiress, Constance de Poynings, was the grandmother of the first Marquess of Winchester, who built a great palace on the site of the venerable castle of Basing, where Queen Elizabeth was twice entertained, and Philip and Mary spent their loveless honeymoon. It covered more than fourteen acres of ground, but one poor gateway is now all that is left of it, for it was demolished by act of parliament in 1645, after having stood the famous siege that has given it a place in history. John, fifth Marquess of Winchester,

"Ark of his age's faith and loyalty,"

as he is called by Dryden, declared that "if the King had no more ground in England than Basing House, he would defend it to the last extremity," and victoriously kept the rebels at bay for more than two years, two thousand soldiers having fallen before the walls, till Cromwell at last surprised the garrison, and took it by storm.^[44] Many of its inmates perished by fire and sword—among them a woman and six priests; and one poor player, who begged hard for quarter, was shot through the heart by Major-General Harrison with the words, "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." A vast amount of booty, computed at £200,000 in jewels, cash, and furniture, was taken; and after having been "slighted" and dismantled, the noble old house was left to perish ignobly as the common stone-quarry of the neighbourhood. The motto Aymez Loyaulte, which the "Loyal Marquess" had adopted, and inscribed with his own hand on his window-pane, and the ancient badge of the house, the crowned Key of Basing, encircled by a knotted cord (the old emblem of troth), are still borne by the family, though the honoured ruin, with the whole of the great Domesday domain, has long since passed into other hands. The barony of St. John of Basing is now in abeyance between the descendants of the two co-heiresses of the last Duke of Bolton; Lady Mary, Countess of Sandwich, and Lady Katherine, the wife of the first Duke of Cleveland.

The name of St. John was carried on by a surviving branch of the Barons of Basing, derived from a younger son named William, who had for his appanage Faumont Castle in Glamorganshire, and lived in the reign of Edward I. His descendant in the sixth generation, Sir Oliver St. John of Penmark in the same county, first became possessed of Bletsoe and Lydiard Tregoze, temp, Henry VI., by taking to wife a great heiress, who was the grandmother of Henry VII. "Margaret, granddaughter of Lord Beauchamp of Bletsoe, who, on failure of male issue, became his sole heir, married Sir Oliver St. John, whose family were already possessed of large estates in Bedfordshire, inherited, by a female heir, from the Paveleys. Her second husband was John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, by whom she had one daughter, Margaret, the wife of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and mother of King Henry VII. This illustrious lady, who was foundress of St. John's and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge, is said to have been born at Bletsoe. That her mother, the Duchess of Somerset, resided there in great state, may be collected from the epitaph of Ralph Lonney, formerly in the church. He is styled Cofferer and Keeper of the most noble Margaret Duchess of Somerset, then married to a third husband, Leo Lord Welles. The greater part of the mansion has been long ago pulled down; but vestiges of the ancient castellated building are plainly discernible."—Lysons' Bedfordshire. Margaret de Beauchamp had two sons by her first husband: 1. Sir John, of Bletsoe, ancestor of the extinct Earls of Bolingbroke and the present Lords St. John of Bletsoe; 2, Sir Oliver, of Lydiard Tregoze, the ancestor of the Viscounts Bolingbroke.

The eldest son, Sir John, was the great-grandfather of Oliver, who received the title of Lord St. John of Bletsoe at the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558. The fourth Lord was created Earl of Bolingbroke by Charles I. on a similar occasion in 1624. He survived his son and heir Lord St. John, who was killed fighting against the King at the battle of Edge Hill, having been, according to Lord Clarendon (who gives him a very evil character) one of the first that received a commission to command a troop of horse in the army of the Parliament. At his own death in 1646, the Earldom passed to his grandson, Oliver, and ended with Oliver's brother Paulet, third Earl, in 1711. The barony then devolved on one of the descendants of Sir Rowland St. John, fifth son of the third Baron of Bletsoe, the immediate ancestor of the present Lord.

Sir Oliver, the second son, described by Leland as "a stout black Man," who inherited from his mother Lydiard-Tregoze in Wiltshire, was the progenitor of several men that have left their mark on the history of their time. Of him, in the fourth generation, came another Sir Oliver, a brave and resolute soldier, who, for his services as Lord Deputy of Ireland, was created Viscount Grandison in that country in 1622, and received an English peerage as Lord Tregoze of Highworth four years afterwards. The latter expired with him in 1630, for he died s. p., but the Viscountcy passed, by special limitation, to the son of his sister Barbara. She was the wife of Sir Edward Villiers, and the ancestress of a distinguished family; for no less than four Prime Ministers are numbered among her immediate descendants. His estate at Battersea went to another nephew, Sir John, the head of the family, who was created a baronet in 1611, and lost three of his seven sons in the King's service during the Civil War.

The two youngest—one of whom, Sir Walter, became his heir, and was the founder of Battersea School—both married daughters of Chief Justice St. John, "that great lawyer over whose birth was the bar-sinister," a scion of the elder branch. Sir Walter was the father of Henry, created Viscount St. John in 1716, and the grandfather of another Henry, the "all-accomplished St. John," who had been raised to the peerage as Viscount Bolingbroke four years before.

There can be no need for me to enlarge upon so threadbare a theme as the "great but ill-regulated genius" of Lord Bolingbroke. All alike admit that he was a man of splendid talents. His intellect was of the rarest and loftiest order: keen, incisive, logical, comprehensive, inexhaustible in fertility and resource; "his penetration resembled intuition;" and he united the two gifts so seldom found together, of writing and speaking equally well. His style is absolutely faultless—a perfect model of pure English diction; and he was pronounced to be the most eloquent man of his day. "I would rather," says Pitt, "have a speech of Bolingbroke's than any of the lost treasures of antiquity." Yet, with all his unequalled powers, his career was a failure. "Ever pursuing fortune, and as constantly disappointed by her," his life was given up to fruitless intrigue, and he has the unhappy fate to be

"Remembered
As one who could do all things but succeed."

His great gifts were marred by a feeble and impetuous character, that left him at the mercy of every passing impulse and emotion; swayed hither and thither by the capricious tyranny of passion. "His head was hot, but his heart was cold;" and his private life was profligate and scandalous. He quickly gained distinction in the House of Commons; was appointed first Secretary of War, and then Secretary of State; and took his new place in the House of Lords in 1712.^[45] But, two years later, he was deprived of the seals by George I. for his intrigues with the Court of St. Germains; fled to France to avoid the prosecution that was impending over him, and was attainted. He entered the service of the Pretender, and was for a short time his Secretary of State. Then, being summarily and curtly dismissed, "he resolved to make his peace at home, and obtained promises of pardon. A peerage was accordingly granted to his father, Sir Henry St. John, with remainder to his younger brothers, in 1716; but it was not till 1723 that his pardon passed the Great Seal, without, however, giving him back his forfeited estate, or his seat in the House of Peers."—Coxe's Walpole. He died in 1751. "To the last philosophy was the ornament of his discourses, but ambition the mainspring of his life. Only a few months before, he had been secretly mingling with and in some degree directing the cabals of the Prince of Wales, and eagerly planning his own advancement in the peerage.

His great anxiety seemed to be that he might die an Earl. Yet in the progress of a painful and at length fatal disease he showed a far higher degree of courage and firmness than might have been expected from a spirit which rested not on hopes of immortality."—Stanhope's History of England. He left no heirs, though he had been twice married;—the last time to a niece of Madame de Maintenon, the widowed Marquise de Villette; and by a special provision in the patent, his title passed to his half-brother, Frederick St. John, whose descendant now bears it.

Sent George :

from St. George, near St. Lo, in the Cotentin. Helias de St. George occurs in Sussex in the time of Henry I. (Mon. i. 593): and Baldwin de St. George, at about the same date, witnesses a charter of William Peverel of Dover (Mon. i. 382). The family, who came to England at the Conquest, and bear on their shield the red cross of St. George, claim to have been seated at Hatley-St. George in Cambridgeshire for fully five hundred years; but Lysons' account somewhat abbreviates this tenure. "The manor of Hatley-St. George was, as early as the reign of Henry III., in the family of St. George, who had their chief seat and a park here. Among the descendants of this family were Sir Richard St. George, Clarencieux, Sir Henry St. George, Norroy, and Henry St. George, Garter King of Arms; the latter, in whom the male line became extinct, died in 1715 at the age of ninety-two. The estate appears to have been alienated many years before his death." Eudon-George in Shropshire took its name from William de St. George, who held it about the year 1240. Sir Baldwin St. George, knight of the shire for Cambridge 1381, married the heiress or co-heiress of John d'Engayne, who brought him several manors in the county. Sir Richard, Clarencieux King of Arms, the first herald in this family of heralds,^[46] and stated to be eighteenth in descent from the first Baldwin de St. George, had two younger sons who both settled in Ireland. One of them, Sir George, was grandfather to another Sir George, created Lord St. George in the peerage of Ireland in 1715. His title expired with him, but in 1763 was revived in favour of St. George Usher, who was the son of his only child, Mrs. Usher. The other brother Richard had a numerous posterity. From him descend the St. Georges of Parsonstown, the St. Georges of Wood Park, co. Armagh, the St. Georges of Woodside, Cheshire, the St. Georges of Camma Lodge in Roscommon, and the St. Georges of Woodsgift, who received a baronetcy in 1766.

Sent Les :

or Senlis: Dugdale spells it St. Liz, according to the accepted English orthography; from the town so named in France. Simon de Senlis and his brother Garnerius, who together came to the Conquest of England, are described in the Monasticon (v. 90) as the sons of "Raundoel le Ryche," but I can find no further account of their lineage. Yet it is clear that Simon was of high account and consideration, for in 1076 the Conqueror offered him the hand of his niece Judith, dowered with her two Earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton. She had been married to Waltheoff, the son of Siward Earl of Northumberland, at the time that he had made his submission to the Conqueror, and received back his father's principality four years before. But she had proved an evil wife, for when the Earl was charged with being a favourer and accomplice of the Earl of Norfolk's rebellion, it was she "who had stood forth as his accuser in the ears of her uncle:" and though he maintained his innocence to the last, he was executed at Winchester in 1076. In this treason to her own hearth, the Countess Judith had probably a second and more congenial husband in view; but she indignantly refused to marry Simon de Senlis, who "halted on one leg," and incurred the full measure of the Conqueror's wrath by her disobedience. He seized her castle and honour of Huntingdon, and gave her town of Northampton to the disappointed Simon, "with the whole Hundred of Falkeley, then valued at £4o per annum, to provide shoes for his horses." She fled, with her three daughters, in great terror to the Isle of Ely, where Hereward then offered an asylum to all malcontents and refugees, and there, and "in other obscure places, they were exposed to shift for themselves." She reappears, however, as a great landowner in Domesday, and the foundress of a nunnery at Elstow, near Bedford; for she lived to be deeply sensible of her guilt, and "in great penitency continued all her life a widow." She is said to have visited her husband's tomb at Croyland—then venerated as the shrine of a martyred saint and working miracles of healing—with the offering of a superb pall; "but the gift was thrown back by unseen hands."

Meanwhile, Simon, no whit discouraged, had patiently bided his time; and about 1089—or thirteen years after he had been rejected by the mother—he wooed and won her eldest daughter, Maud. She brought him the two long coveted Earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon as her marriage portion; and was the mother of three children; Simon, his successor; Waltheoff, Abbot of Melrose; and a daughter named after herself. Her husband was the founder of the castle of Northampton and the neighbouring Priory of St. Andrew's; and in his latter years assumed the cross, dying in 1115, on his way home from Jerusalem, at the French Abbey of Our Lady of Charity. "Maud consoled her widowhood with a loftier marriage. She became the wife of David of Scotland, one of the sons of Malcolm and of the holy Margaret, and who himself became one of the most renowned princes who ever wore the Scottish Crown. Through this marriage came the long connexion between the Earldom of Huntingdon and the royal house of Scotland, and through it too the blood of Waltheof, and thereby of the long list of his forefathers, human or otherwise,^[47] passed into the veins of the later Kings of England, and also, if genealogists are to be trusted, into those of many of their subjects."—Freeman.

Simon II. succeeded to the Earldom of Northampton only; for the Earldom of Huntingdon was, by special grace of Henry I., conveyed to his stepfather, David of Scotland, who, on ascending the throne on the death of Alexander I. in 1124, transferred it to his only son Henry. It was not till Henry died in 1152 that, after an interval of thirty-seven years, it reverted to Simon. This Earl, called by a hostile contemporary "a man forward in promises but slow in performance," took part with Stephen, and "shared the bad fate" of the battle of Lincoln. He married Isabel de Beaumont, and died about 1154, leaving Simon III., his son and heir. Again the honours were divided. Simon III. became Earl of Northampton; but the Earldom of Huntingdon was obtained from Henry II. by Malcolm IV. King of Scots, the eldest son of Prince Henry (who had not lived to succeed his father on the throne), and therefore the grandson of David I. and the heiress Maud. It was, however, apparently not granted to him on account of his lineage, but in lieu of the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, "which he then rendered to the King." When Malcolm died after a thirteen years' reign, it passed to his brother and successor William the Lion, who forfeited it by joining the rebellion of the barons in favour of Prince Henry. The King, who was then in Normandy, sent over orders that an army should be forthwith levied to seize the castle and honour of Huntingdon, and deliver them to Earl Simon as the rightful heir. On receiving these "acceptable tidings," Simon himself took the field; and appearing before the castle with a large force, obliged the King of Scots to surrender it into his hands. Thus the grandson of the first Earl actually became the eighth bearer of this erratic title. But the contest for its possession was far from being at an end; for his right was disputed by David Earl of Carrick (the younger brother of William the Lion): and the strife was prolonged with such persistence that "the King, moved with anger, swore, That neither of them should have it: and so caused the Castle to be demolished."—Dugdale.

Earl Simon, in 1165, certified to eighty knight's fees, and "notwithstanding King Henry's rash Oath, enjoy'd the Earldom till his death in 1184." He had married a very great heiress, Alice, sole child of Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln, who brought him her father's princely Honour; but they had no children, and the Earldom of Northampton expired with him. That of Huntingdon was given by the King to William the Lion, who at once made it over to his brother; and the long-vexed question of David's claim was finally set to rest.

This third Simon had two sisters, Amice and Hawise, of whom Dugdale tells us nothing, except that they were, at the time of their father's death, in the custody of Hen. II. But he speaks of a branch surviving in the male line, derived from a junior Simon, who was a benefactor of Delapre Abbey, and the father of another Simon, mentioned under King John as having a suit for one knight's fee in Cumton against David Earl of Huntingdon. Their descendants, "fixing at Seton in Com. Rutl. assumed that place for their surname; whose Heir-female Temp. Hen. VI. became the Wife of Sir William Fielding of Newnham in Com. Warr. Knight. From whom the Right Honorable Basil, now Earl of Denbigh, is Lineally descended."

Sesse :

in Leland's list, Sesee; probably from the city of Seez, on the river Arne, in Normandy. Simon de Sais, of Gloucester and Stafford, occurs in the Pipe Roll of 1130. Thomas and William de Sais witness Geva Ridel's foundation charter of Canwell Priory in Staffordshire; and Robert de Ses Fulk Fitz Fulk's charter to Rowcester Priory in the same county (Mon. Angl). Hugo de Seis vel Saxo was a benefactor of Leicester Abbey; and about the year 1210 Gilbert de Seis occurs as a tenant to Chartley Priory. "This," says Mr. Roper, "was the Seis whose heir was married to Villiers, by which match he had Brokesby, as appears by several deeds in my custody." Nichols, on the other hand, tells us that it was William de Seis of Donington who was the father of Juliana de Seis, who became the wife of Alexander de Vilers in the time of Henry III. The house that William built at Donington-on-the-Heath (as it is now called), an oblong square with buildings projecting on the North side, is still perfect, and a fine example of the domestic architecture of that age. Reginald Sesse owned a tenement in the city of Durham, fourteenth century.—Surtees. William and Robert de Sais witness a grant to Chester Abbey of William de Meschines, whose tenants they were in Lincolnshire. Sir Desgarry Seys and Radegund his wife are afterwards mentioned in the county, as well as Cadogan Seys, their heir; but "appear to have been Welsh settlers, and had extensive possessions in Wales."^[48]—Ormerod. The Seys of Shropshire had probably a similar origin. Griffin Seys held land at Marton in 1263. Robert Seys, at the Assizes of 1256, was denounced as one of the murderers of William de Albo Monasterio by Clemencia his widow; and outlawed in the Curiae Comitatus.—Eyton's Shropshire. John Gouiz, 22 Richard II., granted the manor and advowson of Durweston and Knighton to John Seys and Martin Moulish.—Hutchins' Dorset.

Saluin :

The French house of Salveing was seated in Dauphiny: and "Loyaulte de Salveing" was a proverbial saying in the province. The English Salvins, however, claim no descent from it, deriving their name from Le Silvan, probably assumed by their ancestor from his dwelling in Sherwood Forest. The patriarch of the line "Joceus le Flamangh," who came to England at the Conquest, held the third part of a knight's fee in Cukeney in Nottinghamshire, and two ploughlands of the King "by the service of shoeing the King's palfrey on all four feet, with the King's nails, as oft as he should lie at his manor of Mansfield; and if he lame the King's palfrey, or prick him, or shoe him too strait, he shall forfeit to the King a palfrey worth four marks." His grandson Thomas built a castle at Cukeney during the war between Stephen and the Empress Maud, "when," says Surtees, "almost every landed gentleman in England turned his house into a peel or castlelet:" and after the peace, in Henry II.'s time, founded Welbeck Abbey. His only child was a daughter: but his brother, Ralph le Silvan, of Woodhouse, carried on the line, and was the father of Osbert Silvan, Sheriff of Notts in 1140. "His descendants held the manor of Woodhouse, in the Forest of Sherwood, at least as late as 1330, but were more frequently styled of Thorp-Salvin,^[49] a small parish on the extreme Southern border of Yorkshire. From this principal stem, before 1260, branched a younger line of Herswell and North Duffield: but the exact point from which the Salvins of Newbiggin branched off does not seem clearly ascertained. George Salvin, who died 5 Hen. V., acquired very extensive possessions by marriage with the sister and co-heir of Peter Lord Mauley, of Mulgrave. Their knightly descendants continued in wealth and splendour for several descents: but their fortunes gradually declined, and most of their extensive estates were alienated before 1700. The line terminated with Thomas Salvin, an officer in the Austrian army, who died unmarried: his only sister, Mary, married Sir John Webb, Bart.; their daughter and sole heiress, Barbara, married Anthony, sixth Earl of Shaftesbury, whose only issue, Barbara, born 1788, and now wife of the Honourable William Ponsonby, is the sole representative of Salvin of Newbiggin, and co-heir of the ancient Barony of Mauley."—Surtees. The title of De Mauley was granted to her husband in 1838, and is now borne by her son.

Of the other branches of the family, above enumerated, one only remains. A cadet of the house of Herswell in Yorkshire, Gerard Salvayn (great-grandson of the Sir Gerard who was High Sheriff of Yorkshire 24 Ed. III.) married Agnes, styled Lady of Croxdale, in the county of Durham, about the end of the fifteenth century. She was the grandchild and sole heiress of Robert de Walton, Treasurer of Brittany in 1350, and the picturesque domain that she brought to her husband has descended in uninterrupted succession, through fifteen generations, to the present owner. Its ancient name was Croixdale, from a cross that once stood in the deep glen below the house. This glen—probably from being so gloomy, and overhung by great rocks that the sun is said to have scarcely touched the roof of the old mill which stood in the narrowest part—was believed to be haunted by evil spirits. "To banish the infernal inhabitants, a cross was erected here, which gave name to the adjacent lands: so the desert of Cross Fell, in Cumberland, is in old authors and charts styled Fiend's Fell; and since the erection of a cross thereon, to vanquish the legions of Satan, it has obtained the present name of Cross Fell."—Hutchinson's Durham.

Say :

"Cil de Saie," mentioned by Wace in his account of the battle of Hastings took his name from the vill of Saium or Say, about nine miles to the west of Exmes, the caput of Roger de Montgomeri's Norman Viscountcy, and held under Roger in Normandy, as he afterwards did in England. He is known as Picot de Say, for Ficot, or Picot, at first a sobriquet only, is given as his recognised appellation in Domesday; though the son and grandson that inherited his barony were always styled De Say. There is still extant the charter by which he with his wife Adeloya, and his two sons, Robert and Henry, bestowed lands in 1060 on the Abbey founded by his suzerain at Seez. He came over to England in Roger's train; and was one of those to whom, according to Orderic, the new Earl "gave commands" in Shropshire. Twenty-nine manors were allotted to him; and Clun, as the largest of them, gave its name to his barony. In 1083, he, with the other principal men of the county, was summoned to attend at the dedication of Shrewsbury Abbey. His son Henry succeeded him, and was followed in the next generation by Helias, "whose era was nearly co-equal with Stephen's usurpation. It was probably during this period of civil convulsion, that the Baron of Clun converted Clun into an independent jurisdiction."—Anderson's Shropshire. He left an only daughter, Isabel, Lady of Clun, who was three times married, conveying her barony first to William Fitz Alan; then to Geoffrey de Vere; and lastly to William Boterell. On her death in 1199, it passed to the son of her first husband, William Fitz Alan II., and is now held by his descendant and representative, the Duke of Norfolk.

The junior branches of this family were unusually numerous. Those spoken of by Eyton in Shropshire alone form no inconsiderable list. Within thirty years of Domesday, Theodoric de Say, a cadet of the Barons of Clun, was enfeoffed by Roger de Lacy of Stoke, afterwards called Stokesay. One of his descendants, Hugh II., was possessed of Moreton Say as early as 1243, and about 1250 exchanged Stokesay with his suzerain, John de Verdon, for some property in Ireland, where he took up his abode. Robert de Say held Moreton Say in 1255, and, with William de Say, had summons to attend a great Council at Westminster. Roger de Say, in 1203, was a tenant of Robert de Buller's at Hope Bowdler and Amaston, and left Lucia and Amice his co-heirs. Then we have Eustachia de Say, co-foundress of Westwood in Worcestershire, who, in the time of Henry I., married Hugh Fitz Osborn, Baron of Burford and Richard's Castle, "Most accounts," says Eyton, "would induce us to associate her with the Barons of Clun or the Lords of Stokesay. Either supposition is, as far as I know, without foundation. Nevertheless, Eustachia must have been a person of some importance, for she left her own surname with her descendants." Both her sons married Cliffords, sisters of the Fair Rosamond, for whose "soul's health" the elder was a benefactor to Godstow in 1176. Hugh de Say, the second, eventually succeeded to Richard's Castle, and transmitted it to his son Hugh II., killed in the Welsh wars, whose daughter Margaret carried the barony to the Mortimers. His younger brother Richard was seated at Rochford. Hopesay was another of their manors.

Yet, in none of these pedigrees do we find the name of Engelram de Say, Stephen's gallant soldier, who took prisoners two of the Empress Maud's chief adherents, Reginald de Dunstanville and Baldwin de Redvers, and was himself taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, where, "when others turned their backs, he manifested his courage, fighting stoutly to the last."—Dugdale.

The Barons Say descended from William de Say, who married Agnes, daughter of Hugh de Grentemesnil, and gave his name to Hamme-Say (now Hamsey) in the county of Sussex. "Soon after the Conquest, the De Says built a castle here upon a little peninsula formed by the sudden winding of the Ouse, of which very slight traces now remain, and continued in possession till 1383."—Lower. In 26 Hen. III. they held fourteen knight's fees in the county of the Honour of Warren. William's grandson and namesake married the divorced wife of Hugh Talbot, Beatrix de Mandeville, who lived to be the sole heiress of that renowned house. She was the mother of two sons, William and Geoffrey. William died in his father's lifetime leaving two daughters, of whom the elder, Beatrix, was the wife of Geoffrey Fitz Piers, one of the greatest men of the kingdom, who, after a long contest, succeeded in obtaining the vast Mandeville inheritance in her right. When the last Earl of Essex died in 1190, his aunt Beatrix de Say, then a very old woman, claimed the lands and barony on behalf of her surviving son Geoffrey, and her claim was allowed; but in the end Fitz Piers carried the day, and, endowed with Mandeville's lands, sat in Mandeville's place as Earl of Essex (see Mandeville).

The despoiled Geoffrey found, however, an heiress of his own, the sister of Walkelin Maminot, who brought as her marriage portion a Kentish barony of twenty-seven knight's fees; and his son Geoffrey II. obtained a large estate in Norfolk by his wife Alice de Cheney. This latter Geoffrey was one of the twenty-five barons appointed to enforce the observance of Magna Charta. The next heir, William de Say, Constable of Rochester, fought on the King's side at Lewes, and died in 1294, as he was about to follow Edward I. to the wars of Gascony. Geoffrey III., his son, at that time a boy of fourteen, was the first Lord Say, having been summoned to Parliament in 1313. His successor, Geoffrey IV., a Banneret, and Admiral of the King's Fleet from the river Thames westwards, did such good service in France and Flanders, that, 23 Ed. III., "in expectation of the like for the future, he was entertained to serve the King in his Wars during his whole Life, with twenty men at Arms and twenty Archers."—Dugdale. He married Maud de Beauchamp, the daughter of Guy Earl of Warwick; and had (besides two sons who died young), William, third Lord, and three daughters; Idonea, married to Sir John Clinton; Elizabeth, married to Thomas de Aldone; and Joan, married to Sir William Fiennes whose grandson had summons to Parliament as Lord Say in 1447 (see
Fiennes).

The third Lord Say had only two children; John, fourth Lord, who died during his minority, while in ward to the King, in 1382; and Elizabeth, who became his heir, and was then sixteen years of age. "She married first Sir John de Falvesley, who fought the French in the battle of Rottingdean, and was there taken prisoner. He died without issue in 1392, and was buried at Lewes Priory. His widow re-married Sir William Heron, who also died without posterity. Both the husbands of Elizabeth were summoned to parliament as barons."—Lower's Sussex.

The manor of Straffend or Stratfield, since Stratfieldsaye, was granted to Robert de Say by Henry III,; and passed from his descendants to the Dabridge-courts.—Woodward's Hants. Lawford-Says, in Norfolk, was held by Sir John Saye in 1478.

Solers :

from Soliers, near Caen. In the fifteenth century the De Forbins held Soliers, and two hundred years afterwards took their title from it on receiving a Marquisate. See Anselme. "The family came to England at the Conquest. Thurston de Solariis settled in Hereford, and Humphrey his brother with Bernard de Newmarch, 1088, in Brecon (Jones, Brecon, i. 92), where the family continued in the seventeenth century. Richard de Solariis in 1165 held three fees of ancient enfeoffment (Liber Niger.) Walter de Solars held Hope-Solar, Herefordshire, in the thirteenth century."—The Norman People. We also find; in the same county, Hopton-Solers, Bridge Solers, Solers-Dillwyn, and Neen Solers. "So many of this name are mentioned in connection with property during a lengthened period in the counties of Hereford and Gloucester, that it is difficult to identify them with any genealogical accuracy. It seems probable that the term "de solariis" was a nomen commune, and that the parties of the same designation were not descendants of a common ancestor" (Cook's 3rd vol. of Duncumb's Herefordshire). They held Neen-Solers at the end of the twelfth century, and had held Hope-Solers for several generations as mesne-lords before Simon de Solers became its owner through his wife Isabel Stokes, the youngest of two co-heiresses (the elder, Alice, married Robert le Archer, and brought him Aston). "William de Solers inherited Pauntley in Gloucestershire thro' his mother, only child of John de Pauntley. He left two sons, Richard and Simon. Walter, son of Richard, was mesne-lord of Hope, and a Thomas de Solers occurs as owner of Hope and Pauntley 51 Hen. III.; but whether he was Simon's son is uncertain. Sir John, Thomas's son, married Joan de Sitsylt (Cecil), and left an only daughter and heir Maud, married to William Whyttyngton of Warwickshire."—Ibid. Her grandson was the famous "model merchant of the Middle Ages," Sir Richard Whittington, three times Lord Mayor of London, whose picturesque story has been familiar to us from our nursery days.^[50] According to "the local tradition of four centuries, he was born at Hope-Solers; though Lysons, in his Memoirs, suggests Pauntley, contrary to the hitherto accepted tradition. The fact that Sir William his father died under sentence of outlawry, suggests that the isolated dwelling of Hope-Solers would be the safest retreat."—Ibid.

Shipton-Solers in Gloucestershire came through a co-heiress of the Pohers in the time of Henry III., and in the following century passed to the Tyrrels.—v. Atkyn's Gloucestershire. Simon de Solers, of Wyneston in the same county, was pardoned in 1322 as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster, on condition of his serving the King in his wars. John de Solers, of Potteslop in Gloucestershire and Dorsinton in Herefordshire, in the same year was one of the Commissioners of Array for Gloucester, and in 1324 was summoned from Herefordshire to the great Council at Westminster.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.

The family was, it would appear, to be found in other counties. Richard de Soliers, of Notts and Derby, occurs in 1189-90. (Rot. Pip.)

Saulay :

a duplicate.

Sent Albin :

from a place so named near Evreux: another West-country family. Mauger de St. Albyn witnessed the foundation charter of Barnstaple Abbey in the time of the Conqueror, and his posterity remained for many generations in Devonshire. Their earliest recorded residence was Pickwell, in the parish of George Ham, where Sir Mauger de St. Albino was seated in the latter days of Henry III. "This knight and his lady are interred in the church, under a fair monument of free stone, with their representations neatly cut; and he lying in his armour makes show of large stature, something more than ordinary. The inhabitants report from their ancestors that he was of giant-like stature, and therefore named Major St. Aubyn, mistaking Major for Mauger or Maugis, a common name in those days. He was of so great and extraordinary strength that he was able to cast a huge main stone a very large length. The stone is yet there to be seen, and the throw marked out by two erected monuments yet extant, and the stone is so weighty that two strong men of this age are but able to lift it."—Gilberts Cornwall. In 1280, it appears by a charter that Stephen de St. Aubyn possessed Hengestridge (now written Hentsridge), where he lived, and that the bezants of the family coat were then on a cross, as the Cornish branch bears them, while the Somersetshire St. Aubyns have them on a bend. Baldwin, his descendant, was in 1369 settled at Paracombe, of which the manor and advowson were still retained in the last century by the St. Aubyns of Alfoxton. About a hundred years later John de St. Aubyn transplanted the family into Somersetshire by his marriage with Joan Popham, who, on her death in 1493, devised Alfoxton to their son, who has transmitted it to a long line of successors.

Clowance, "for many ages the seat of the Seyntaubins" in Cornwall, had been acquired somewhat earlier by Geoffrey de St. Aubyn, through his wife Elizabeth Kymyel: "from whence downwards we look upon this Family as Cornish."—Wotton's Baronetage. Yet it seems evident that they had been settled in the county at least during one generation; for Sir Guy de St. Aubyn was Sheriff of Cornwall 2 Richard II., and married a co-heiress of the old house of Sergreaulx, Seriseaux, or Ceriseaux. But this Alice Sergreaulx re-married Richard Earl of Oxford, and passed away her possessions to the children of her second husband. Fifth in descent from Geoffrey was Thomas, Carew's "Mr. Saintabin, whose very name (besides the Conquest roll) deduceth his first ancestours out of France. His grandfather married Greinville; his father one of Whittington's heirs, on which latter estate he, in a long and peaceable date of years, exercised a kinde, liberal, and never discontinued hospitality. Himself took to wife the daughter of Mallet, and with ripe knowledge, and sound judgment, dischargeth the place which he beareth in his country."—Survey of Cornwall. His grandson John married the heiress of Francis Godolphin of Trevenege, and bought from the Bassets, who had been greatly impoverished by the Civil Wars, the picturesque hold of St. Michael's Mount in 1660. The next heir, created a baronet in 1671, was the first of five successive Sir Johns, several of whom again added to their estates by marriage. About the beginning of the last century, the third Sir John St. Aubyn took to wife Catherine Morice, who eventually inherited from her brother Sir Nicholas Stoke Damarell, "now by far the most valuable manor in the West of England."^[51] For more than six centuries it had remained an obscure hamlet, while the neighbouring vill of Sutton had developed into the burgh of Plymouth, "a naval port of resort of the first rank." But it had no dockyard. "Until 1690, the royal ships at Plymouth were wholly dependent upon the accommodation of private yards. William of Orange saw the need of remedying this state of things soon after he came to the throne, for plans for 'a dock in the Hamoaze' were prepared in 1689; and in the following year a little creek was utilized in the construction of the first basin and dock. This was the germ from which has grown the great naval arsenal of the West, the works of which now all but monopolize, in one form or another, the water-side for miles along the eastern shores of the Tamar estuary."—Worth's Devon.

The last and fifth Sir John St. Aubyn died in 1839 without legitimate issue. The old home at Clowance was then inherited by the son of his sister, Mrs. Molesworth; and the representation of the family passed to the descendants of the younger son of John St. Aubyn, and the Godolphin heiress, in whose favour the title was revived a few years ago. With it, by virtue of an old entail, they hold the golden manor on which stands the town of Devonport, and still dwell

"Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
Looks towards Numancos and Bayona's hold."

Furthermore, on the occasion of Her Majesty's Jubilee, June 21, 1887, the title of Lord St Levan was conferred upon Sir John St. Aubyn.

Sent Martin :

from St. Martin in Normandy. "This family descends from Walter, Lord of St. Martin, who about 980 married a niece of Duchess Gunnora. William his son was father of Roger, Lord of Mortemer, and of Ralph, Sire de Garenne, and of the Sire de St. Martin, from whom came the family of St. Martin in Normandy and England."—The Norman People. Notwithstanding the splendour of their lineage, no St. Martin is to be found in Domesday, either as tenant in chief or mesne-lord, though "Le Seigneur de St. Martin" is entered in the list of the combatants at Hastings given by Tailleur in the Norman Chronicle. Roger de St. Martin was Lord of Hempton, Norfolk, in the time of Henry I., and founded a Priory for Black Canons of the Order of St. Augustine, dedicated to St. Stephen. He had been enfeoffed by his kinsman Earl Warrenne, and his descendants continued there till the reign of Ed. II.—v. Blomfield's Norfolk. Was he the same Roger de St. Martin that is mentioned in Richard, second Earl of Chester's confirmation charter to St. Werburgh's? In Essex, Abel de St. Martin has left his name to "the capital manor of Halsted, call'd Abel's, which name is still retained in the Court Rolls. His habitation was on the left hand side of Heningham Lane, in a house still called Abel's, but now very much decayed and mean. His heirs held two knights' fees in Halsted and Belchamp of Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, who died 47 Henry III."—Morant's Essex. They bore Sable, six lioncels Or.

Two of the name occur in the Liber Niger: Alured de St. Martin, who held of the Earl of Eu in Sussex: and William de St. Martin, who held of the Abbess of Wilton in Wiltshire. Alured, who appears as a witness to one of Henry II.'s charters, and is frequently mentioned in the Norman Exchequer Rolls, must have had many other possessions besides the solitary knight's fee credited to him in Sussex. He married the widowed Countess of his suzerain, Alice, eldest daughter of William de Albini "with the strong hand," Earl of Arundel, and Queen Adeliza; and in 1176, with his brother Robert, founded the monastery of St. Mary's near Salehurst. Robert then built a bridge over the Rother, which was called after him Robert's Bridge, and gave its name to the new foundation, as well as to the town that grew up around it, always written Pontus Robertus in the muniments of Battle Abbey. The Countess of Eu endowed it with seventy acres of her land. I can find no further mention of the St. Martins in Sussex: but the Wiltshire branch flourished till the latter end of the fourteenth century, and have left their name to Barford St. Martin in that county. They acquired a third part of the barony of Waleran the Hunter through the heiress Joan de Nevill, and held Ulsefeld St. Martin in Hampshire, and part of Bardolveston in Dorsetshire. Laurence, the last heir-male, died an idiot in 1383, and the inheritance passed to his nephew Henry, the son of Sir John Popham by his sister Sibyl. Another sister, Joan de St. Martin, the elder of the two, would appear to have died unmarried.

A romantic story is told of a knight of this family about sixty years before. "On Monday before Ascension Day, 1317," writes Walsingham, one of the greatest heiresses of the kingdom, Alice de Lacy, the only child of Thomas Earl of Lincoln, Constable of Chester, and wife of the Earl of Lancaster, was carried off from her husband's house at Camford in Dorsetshire, "by a certain knight of the house of John, Earl of Warrenne," as was alleged, with the King's assent, and conveyed "in great triumph" to the Earl's castle at Reigate. But, "by the way, the conductors supposing they had seen flags or banners between the hedges and woods of Halton and Farnham afar off (which was nothing but priests in their surplices walking in procession with the people in the fields, according to their custom), were struck with a great fear, thinking the Earl of Lancaster, her husband, had been coming with a power to revenge her injury, and so ran away, leaving the lady almost alone. But the matter being discovered, they returned with threatenings and pomp: with whom there was a low, lame, hulch-back'd fellow, called Richard de St. Martin, who being back'd with great aid, challeng'd the miserably derided lady as his wife." He declared that she had been contracted to him before her marriage with the Earl of Lancaster, and had lived with him as his wife: and although "reputed a most noble lady all her lifetime before," the Countess was forced to acknowledge this to be true. "Whereupon the said Richard, triumphing over her, presumes to challenge the Earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury in the King's Court, as in right of his wife." He certainly did not succeed in establishing his claim in Westminster Hall: and as Camden tells us that Alice de Lacy was only nine years old when she became Countess of Lancaster, the allegation of a previous clandestine marriage is an absurdity. But that she had always been well "reputed," is, on the other hand, a glaring and complete falsehood. She was a woman of notoriously bad character, repudiated by the Earl several years before his death, who "lived in unlawful familiarity with Eubolo Le Strange," her second husband, long before she married him. Singular as it may appear, it seems proven that this little hunchback was a favoured lover, and that the pretended abduction was in reality concerted between them. Dr. Whitaker, in alluding to this "very disgraceful story," adds; "On the authority of a memorandum in Dodsworth's MS., I will mention that the fact which gave rise to the tragedy of Sir John Elland, of Elland, was a fray between the retainers of Earl Warrenne and the husband of this lady, on her account."

In Sir Francis Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs, I find mention of a Henry de St. Martin, Lord of Hollyn, Yorkshire, in 1316: and of a John de St. Martin, who at the same date held parts of the manors of Chilton and Easington in Buckinghamshire.

Sourdemale:

for Surdeval, as it stands in Leland's list. "Ricardus de Surdeval, in 1086, was one of the two great tenants of the Count of Mortaine in Yorkshire, holding of him, out of some one hundred and eighty manors no less than fifty-five in various parts of the county; more than most of the tenants in capite possessed. He seems to have accompanied his lord from his Comte of Mortaine, and to have come from Sourdeval-le-Barre, near the town of Mortaine. We have no doubt a brother of Richard in Robert de Sourdeval, one of those Normans settled in Italy, who went with Bohemund, Prince of Tarentum, to the Holy Land in the first crusade. (Ord. Vit. ix. iv.)

"Richard has not been met with as a benefactor to the monasteries, nor even as witness to a charter. He probably died not long after the date of the Survey; and some of his manors were, in the next reign vested in Ralph Paynell, apparently in right of his wife Matilda, who will have been daughter and co-heiress, if not sole heiress, of Richard. He must, however, have brought one kinsman at least with him; and in Eudo de Surdeval, the second Abbot of Furness, in the reign of Henry I., and in Peter and William de Surdeval, who, as tenants of Walter Espec, the Baron of Helmsley, witness the foundation charter of Rievaulx Abbey, 1131, we probably have nephews. William de Surdevalle, in the next generation, gave lands in Ampleforth to Byland Abbey."—A. S. Ellis.

The Seigneurs de Sourdeval were, according to M. de Gerville, a branch of the House of Verdun, and took the name of Le Moigne in Normandy. They were long seated in Holderness. Amandus de Surdival, in 1280, was a benefactor of Routh Priory: and "John de Surdeval" (with Thomas de Monceaux) "4 Ed. III. received the Ring's mandate to appoint and array the men of Holderness, and lead them by night and by day to join the King at Carlisle and proceed to the Scottish marches, no one capable of bearing arms to be excused under forfeiture of body and goods."—Poulson's Holderness. This John was of Beningholme; but Amandus was seated at Routh, and sometimes styled De Routh—the name borne by all his descendants. They continued there till the time of Henry VII., when Brian Routh's heiress married John Cutt; and bore Barry of six, Gules and Azure, a bendlet engrailed Sable. Two brass effigies within the altar rails of Routh Church commemorate Sir John de Routh and his wife, living in 1420: and another figure of a crusader, brought there from the church-yard, is traditionally believed to represent one of the family. This latter is of the time of Henry III., and greatly shattered. Sir John and his wife, as good Lancastrians, both wear the collar of SS. "The unusual mode in which the knight's anclace is attached to the right side should be noticed. This mode of fastening is visible only on a very few brasses—as here, and at Brabourne in Kent." The name of Surdeval is found in Yorkshire as late as 1539. At the Dissolution of the monasteries, a presbyter named Randulph Surdevell received a pension of £6.—Ibid.

William Sturdival occurs among the gentry of Huntingdonshire in 1433.

Seguin :

Sengryn, according to Leland. Many of this name are to be met with in the Hundred Rolls of the time of Edward I. About 1272, Alan Segeyn, Segin, or Segyn, with John, Robert, and Agnes, Robert's daughter, held in Kent: Hugh in Oxon; Richard Segrim or Segin both there and in Lincoln; and Elias Walter, Henry, and Roger Segrim in Bucks.

Sent Barbe:

or St. Barbara. In Normandy a town and two villages bear the name of this saint; but from which of them the existing family is derived it would be hard to say. The town—Ste. Barbe-en-Auge—contained a Priory of Canons Regular, founded by King Stephen, and endowed by him with lands in England.

William de St. Barbara, Dean of York, was elected Bishop of Durham in 1143, during the usurpation of the See by Cumin. He was chosen, almost by stealth, by some monks that had made good their escape to York, and "was with difficulty prevailed upon to accept the arduous office." His misgivings were amply justified by the event. For sixteen months he was virtually excluded from his diocese, and driven from one place of refuge to another. He was first the guest of Roger Conyers, the Hereditary Constable of Durham, one of his few loyal subjects, at Bishopston; then had to seek sanctuary in the church of Yarrow; whence, for his greater security, he was transferred to Lindisfarne; and finally retired, "helpless and disspirited," to Newcastle. Meanwhile, the soldiers of Cumin, "sallying from the impregnable fortress of Durham, spread everywhere terror and devastation. On such of their opponents as fell into their power the most savage cruelties were exercised.... Cumin seems to have possessed an inventive genius that might have done credit to an Inquisitor General. Some of his prisoners were suspended across ropes, with heavyweights attached to their neck and feet; others were repeatedly plunged in the frozen bed of the river: of others the naked feet, protruded through an aperture in the wall, were exposed to all the severity of the night."—Surtees' Durham. At length, however, when the cause of the Empress Maud, which he had always championed, became desperate, Cumin judged it wisest to submit, and the Bishop, on entering Durham, found his sanguinary rival, attired in the humble garb of a penitent, prostrated at his feet.

St. Barbara was enthroned as Prince Palatine in October 1144, and ruled for nine years in peace and honour, spending his revenue "in restoring the ruined churches and public buildings of his diocese. He lived in harmony with the Monasteries; and though it was not in his power from the pressure of the times to bestow on their Church either possessions or ornaments, he merited their affection and esteem by the generous and unaffected kindness of his disposition. His person was venerable, his manners simple and dignified, and his eloquence impressive."—Ibid. Nothing whatever is known of his lineage.

I now come to the old Somersetshire family of St. Barbe, still represented in the neighbouring county of Southampton. They were tenants of the Abbot of Glastonbury, of whom they held South Brent, and are often mentioned in the monastic Chronicle. It is there pointed out, as a remarkable coincidence, that the coif and veil of the holy Barbara were among the relics preserved in the Abbey with which they were so early and so long connected. Their first ancestor, Robert de Sainte Barbe, is said—according to the too familiar phrase—to have come over with the Conqueror; but their tenure can scarcely have been of so ancient a date, as their name is not found in the earliest lists. About one hundred and fifty years later occurs a second Robert, whose grandson, Richard Seintbarbe, received in 1295 from the Abbey as a life-pittance or corrody, "a yearly pension of ten pounds, to be paid out of the exchequer of Glastonbury at the feast of Easter and St. Michael, by equal portions; and also a winter robe yearly to him and Richard his son and heir, during their lives, of the same suit that the Lord Abbot's esquires were wont to wear, with convenient fur thereunto belonging." For this, according to the received custom, he must have surrendered either the whole or the greater part of his estate: content to dwell as a comfortable pensioner, under the wing of the great Abbey, fed, clothed, and sheltered from harm or aggression. Those that came after him might take care of themselves; "for this fashion of corrody," writes Kingsley, "was one which brought much land to monks, and grudging to heirs at law." In this case, however, the son at least is included in the provision.

Richard's grandson, John, married Margaret Langland, whose mother had been a Furneaux: and when the great Furneaux inheritance came to be subdivided in 1420, Ashington (also in Somersetshire) fell to the share of the St. Barbes, and became their principal residence. Some seventy years later, on the decease of another Richard St. Barbe, the family formed three distinct branches, seated respectively at Ashington, Salisbury, and Whiteparish. Edward St. Barbe of Ashington, representing the elder line, acquired through a Fleming heiress the estate of Broadlands in Hampshire, which was sold to Viscount Palmerston in 1723, on the death of his great-grandson John, who left no posterity. This John had received a baronetcy from Charles II. in 1663: and is described on his monument at Ashington as "possessed of those amiable qualities that birth, education, travel, greatness of spirit, and goodness of heart produce." The second, or Salisbury branch, had ended earlier, with an heiress, Mrs. Usher, whose daughter Mary married Henry Colley, and was the great-grandmother of the Duke of Wellington and Marquess Wellesley. The third, which was seated at Whiteparish, still survives. Its founder, William St. Barbe, (the youngest son of the above mentioned Richard) obtained an introduction to the household of Henry VIII. through Cardinal Wolsey, who had originally been rector of Limington, a parish adjoining Ashington, and did not forget, in his new elevation, the family from whom he had probably received kindness when he was only a poor unknown village priest. William was named gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and so far gained his master's favour, that at the dissolution of the monasteries, the King granted him the College of St. Edmund at New Sarum, of which Whiteparish formed part. His son Edward built a house there, but it was alienated in 1576; and his descendants are now seated at Lymington in Hampshire.

Several others of the name that are incidentally mentioned, do not appear in this pedigree. William Barbe witnessed a deed relating to the Abbey Church of Bath and a grant of the manor of Bermondsey, both in the reign of Henry I.: and in that of Henry II., Roger Barbe occurs in the chartulary of Repton Priory. Henry St. Barbe was one of the Commissioners appointed to perambulate Gillingham Forest, Dorset, in 1300: and Jordan de St. Barbe, 1322-5, was an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster, and received a writ of military summons.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.

Sent Vile :

"Will'mus de Senevile" occurs in the Cheshire Domesday (p. 104) as one of the heirs of Richard de Kingslegh; and Simon de Senevile held at Lokington in Leicestershire 25 Ed. I. But I believe this name stands for Sandville, with which it corresponds in Duchesne's list, and is consequently a duplicate. See Sandvile.

Souremount :

In the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1198-1203, I find mention of a "De Soramonda," in the bailifry of Jordan de la Laund, to whom he paid a fine for license to marry. Peter de Surcomunt, 1165, held half a knight's fee of Gervase Paganell in Staffordshire.—Liber Niger. "He was heavily fined on the Stafford Pipe Roll of 22 Hen. II., under pretence of an infraction of the Forest Laws, but in reality for his participation in the rebellion of the King's sons. A note against his fine of twenty marks, stating it to be collected in Berkshire, denotes the locality of this fee, but I have been unable to identify it."—Staffordshire Historical Collections, vol. i. The name is occasionally written Suzcolmunt. Agnes de Scirmound occurs in Oxfordshire about 1272.—Rotuli Hundredorum.

Soreglise :

Of this name I am unfortunately unable to give any account at all. I have never met with it anywhere. It has some affinity to Belenglize, a Norman seigneurie mentioned in the Exchequer Rolls of the twelfth century. Or is it simply a contraction of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the well known Cotentin barony near Valognes?

Sanduile :

or Sandeville, from Sandarville, near Chartres. "In 1165 William de Sandville held four fees of the honour of Skipton, York; and Gervasius de Sandville one fee (Liber Niger). William de Sandville, temp. Hen. II., witnessed a charter of Boxgrove Priory, Sussex (Mon. i. 593). Manasses de Sandville held lands in Hants in the thirteenth century (Testa): and Thomas de Sandville or Saunderville in 1322 was summoned from Berks for service against the Scots (Palgrave's Parl. Writs)."—The Norman People. He was joint Lord of West Enborn and East Enborn, as also of South Moreton and Fowles Cote in Berkshire.—Ibid. But here my information ends.

Sauncey :

or Sacie; Latinized Salceto; from Sassy, in the arrondissement of Avranches, near Pontorsin sometimes spelt Sacie. and given as Saussai on the Dives Roll. The "sire de Sassy" figures among the combatants at Hastings in Wace's Roman de Ron. "The name appears in the Battle Abbey Roll, but we have no farther account of the lineage in England."—Sir Francis Palgrave. This is scarcely correct, for two barons of the name are entered in Domesday: "Osbernus de Salceid," holding in Devon, and "Radulphus de Salceit," holding in Hereford, whose descendants are to be met with in many parts of the country. Another Ralph de Salcei was seated in Gloucestershire 1155-1158 (Rotul. Pip.): and in 1189-90 Rogo de Saci held of the Bishop of Winchester; Robert de Salceio was of Buckinghamshire, and William de Salceio of Oxfordshire. Kiddington, in the latter county, came into their possession "soon after the Conquest. They were a family of high rank and distinction, though unnoticed in history, and were seized of very considerable lands and jurisdictions, not only in Oxfordshire, but in Buckinghamshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Herefordshire and Northamptonshire, where I am of opinion that Salcey Forest took its name from them."—Warton's Antiquities of Kiddington. It is supposed that the old church of Kiddington (of which the chancel only is now left) was built by one of them in the reign of Stephen; and they presented to this church, as well as to that of Asterley, in 1221 and 1232. "It is probably owing to the defect of the Lincoln registers, that we do not find much earlier presentations from this family to these benefices. About the year 1200, Sibill de Saucey married Richard de Willescote, or Williamscote, who, dying before or during 1232, left his son Thomas heir."—Antiquities of Oxfordshire. They were seated at Harpole in Northamptonshire. Adeline, the heiress of Norman de Montfautrel, was the mother of Sir Robert de Saucei, Sheriff of the county 7 Hen. II., whose son, another Sir Robert, left five daughters his co-heirs. Baker's Northants.

In Leicestershire Anketin de Saucey gave his name to Newbold-Saucey, a parcel of the fee of Harcourt; and Overton-Saucey passed to Simon de Saucey from the Bernevilles. The heir of Robert de Saucey held, in 1240, of the Honour de Ferrers; and Simon, in 1287, was a benefactor of Ouston Abbey; his son Robert and his grandson Robert confirmed the grant. Their residence was in the neighbourhood of Newbold, at Saucey, or Sauvay Castle, between Laund and Withcote; afterwards the seat of Lord Basset of Weldon. In old deeds the name is sometimes written Salcey. "I find," says Nicholls, "by the pedigree of Archer of Tamworth, that William Archer (whose grandson died in 1299) married Margery, daughter and heir of Sir John Sawcy of Orton-Sawcy, co. Leicester. This family had large possessions in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, which fell amongst co-heirs in or about Henry III." Lastly, we find Emeric de Sacy, early in the thirteenth century, holding Burton-Sacey (Burton Stacy it is now called) and Newton-Sacey in Hampshire, with lands at Pembere and Selborne. Burton Sacey, with its belongings, was held by new feoffment as one knight's fee. Some of his estate was by gift of Henry III.: and it further appears, from a grant made in 1224 at Southampton, that he enjoyed a yearly pension of £20. "In 1221, the Sheriff of Hants was ordered to proclaim that, unless sufficient cause should be shown to the contrary, the day of the market in the manor of Emeric de Sacey de Burton should be changed from Saturday to Friday. Some years later, we find Richard le Hayward, one of Emeric's men (the hayward of his manor, in fact) trespassing against the men of Burton, and taken into the custody of the Sheriff."—Woodward's Hampshire. In 1324 the Sacy lands had passed—probably through an heiress—to the Coudreys.

Sirewast :

for Sifrewast, or, according to the French orthography, Chiffrevast. "The Norman castle of Tamerville appears to have been held by the family of Siffrevast, so well known among our baronage. They quartered Percy and Anneville."—Sir Francis Palgrave. This must refer to the year 1412, when Robin, Sire d'Anneville de Montaigu, acquired the seigneurie of Chiffrevast through the daughter of Robert de Percy, whose wife had been the heiress of Jean de Chiffrevast. "This marriage gave the name of Anneville de Chiffrevast to a branch of the house of Anneville, who possessed Chiffrevast down to the first twelve years of the present century, when it was sold to Le Brun, afterwards Due de Plaisance."—Recherches sur le Domesday. From this it seems clear that the French line terminated with Jean de Chiffrevast, who died in the latter part of the fourteenth century. In England the family continued for about two hundred years more, and was extremely numerous. The first of whom I find mention is Robert de Sifrewast, whose grants to Leicester Abbey were confirmed by Henry II.—Nichol's Leicestershire. They were seated in Dorsetshire at an early date, having, according to the county historian, Hutchins, been "more anciently seated in Oxfordshire," where Nicholas Sifrewast occurs about 1272. (Rot. Hundred.) Coker calls them "men of great antiquity and good note;" and John Cifrewast and Robert Cifrewast several times appear as knights of the shire during the reign of Edward II. At that time they were divided into two distinct branches; one seated at Hook and Crowell, and ending with John Cifrewast, who died a minor in 1360, leaving his inheritance to his sister, married to Maltravers; and another at More-Crichel, which survived till 1581. The tomb of the last heir male bears this inscription:

"Lord of More-Crichell was he by descent,
Three hundred years possess'd in lyne and name."

His daughter Dorothy conveyed the estate to the Napiers, from whom it passed to the Sturts, its present possessors.

In Wiltshire, Richard de Scifrewast is found in the Hundred Rolls of Edward I. "Roger Sifrewast or Cyfrewas was a principal tenant of Chitterne under the Earl of Sarum, and also held some lands in capite. From him the property descended to his son Sir Richard, whose daughter and heir married John de Tichborne, Sheriff of Wilts 14 Ed. II.—Hoare's Wilts. "Robert de Sifflewast, in the thirteenth century, held two knights' fees of the Bishop of Winchester, and was succeeded by his son William. In 1255 Bartholomew Peche gave 600 marks for the custody of the lands in Berks, Hants, and Essex, and heirs (with the right of giving them in marriage) of William de Sifrewast, deceased."—Woodward's Hampshire. Hampsted Cifrewast was one of the Berkshire manors.

Again, in Herefordshire, Syferwast, an estate in the parish of Cowarne Magna, "now called Cowarne Court, was anciently held by a family of that name. Sir John Syferwast died about the close of the fifteenth century, leaving a daughter and heiress married to * * * Berrington."—Duncumb's Herefordshire.

Their coat is preserved in the "Sixth Nobility Roll of Arms," now in the British Museum. "Le Sr Cifrewast" bears Azure, three bars gemelles, a chief Or.

Sent Cheueroll :

Saltucapris, or Saltucaprioli; from Saultchreveuil in the Cotentin. The crest, "a goat statant," was in allusion to the name. "The family held a fief in Derby from the barony of Chaurces. In the thirteenth century, Patricius de Saucheverel held one knight's fee at Sallow and Hopwell, Notts and Derby (Testa de Nevill, 13). The descent is regularly traced from him."—The Norman People. Ralph Sacheverel of Hopwell in Derbyshire, and his son John, were among the esquires who, in 1474 bound themselves by indenture to serve William Lord Hastings in peace and war. John married Joan, sole heiress of William Zouche of Bulwich, who brought him Morley, the principal seat of his descendants; and was knighted by Richard III. before the battle of Bosworth, in which he was slain. His younger brother Richard obtained an estate in Notts. "After the attainder of Humphrey Duke of Buckingham, Ratcliffe-on-Soar came to Sir Richard Sacheverel, who left it to Ralph Sacheverel, his brother or near kinsman; in which name and family it continued till Henry Sacheverell, the last owner there, estated the same on Sir Thomas Hutchinson, his sister's son; but he, out of tenderness to his cousin Eleanor, the wife of Roger Columbell, the sole daughter and heir of the said Henry Sacheverel his uncle, agreed to divide it between them. This Eleanor, after her husband Columbell's decease, married her servant William Hasard, who proved a good husband to her, and a kind and faithful father to her children."—Thoroton's Notts. The great Hungerford heiress, who brought to her first husband, Edward, second Lord Hastings, the three baronies of Hungerford, Botreaux, and Molines, remarried, after his death in 1507, Sir Richard Sacheverel of Ratcliffe-on-Soar.

The Sacheverels of Derbyshire continued to flourish till the beginning of the last century. It was to Mistress Lucy Sacheverel that Richard Lovelace, "the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever beheld," addressed the exquisite lines written "To Lucasta on going to the Wars." She had reproached him for his unkindness in leaving her. He replies:

"True, a new mistresse now I chase,
The first foe in the field!
And with a stronger faith imbrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

"Yet this inconstancie is such
As you, too, must adore;
I could not love thee, deare, so much,
Loved I not honour more."

He took service with the French King, and was so badly wounded at the siege of Dunkirk that he was left for dead. When, after a tardy and protracted convalescence, he at last returned to England, it was to find his Lucasta married.

The name, abbreviated to Cheverel, is of very old date in Dorsetshire, where they were seated at East Stoke and at Chantmarle—the latter place acquired through an heiress in the time of Henry VI. During the seventeenth century they again began to call themselves Sacheverel. "What relation they bore to the Sacheverels of Newhall, co. Warwick, and of Morley, co. Derby, does not appear; but those bore the same arms as these. The family are by some writers deduced from Nottinghamshire; and there were, till very lately, some in Warwickshire."—Hutchins' Dorset. John Cheverel was Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset in 1471 and 1472. Little-Cheverell, in Wiltshire, bears their name.

One of this family attained great notoriety in the reign of Queen Anne by "the most petulant railings against Dissenters and Low church men." Strangely enough, he was himself the son of a clergyman who had been thrown into prison as a Nonconformist, and died in Dorchester gaol. This Dr. Sacheverel, "whose memory is precious in the West of England," had been burnt in effigy by his Somersetshire congregation for preaching a sermon on the day of Charles II.'s accession from the text, "But if ye do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both you and your King." When brought to trial for refusing to read the book of Common Prayer "he behaved himself so well, that the Judge said to those about him, 'Have you no other man then in your country to single out for a pattern of your severity?'" He left a numerous family, in very poor circumstances. One of the sons, Henry, was adopted by an apothecary who was his godfather, and sent him, when only fifteen, to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was the "cotemporary and chamber-fellow of Addison." He took holy orders, began life as a college tutor, and in 1705 was appointed preacher at St. Saviour's, Southwark. Four years later, "resolved to force himself into popularity and preferment," he preached the two famous sermons—one at Derby Assizes, the other at St. Paul's—for which he was impeached in the following year by the House of Commons. They were "written," says Bishop Burnet, "without either chasteness of style or liveliness of expression;" yet forty thousand copies of them were sold, for "the Lord Treasurer Godolphin was so described" (under the name of Volpone) "that it was next to naming him:" the Church was declared in danger, and they further maintained the doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, which seemed to impugn the Revolution of 1688, and consequently the Queen's title to the crown. During his trial, which lasted for the better part of a month, he was the hero of the hour: multitudes followed his coach, pressing forward to kiss his hand. "The words upon which all shouted was," says an eye-witness, "the Church and Sacheverel! and such as joined not in the shout were insulted and knocked down: before my own door, one, with a spade, cleft the skull of another who would not shout as they did." The Guards had to be called out to quell the riots. He was found guilty, but censured "very gently;" his sermons were publicly burnt, and he was suspended from preaching for three years; yet this ridiculous prosecution, which overthrew the Ministry, laid the foundation of his fortunes. During his suspension, he made a sort of triumphal procession through the country: in the same month that it ended, the Queen presented him with a valuable rectory; and soon after, a considerable estate at Callow, in Derbyshire, was left to him by his kinsman George Sacheverel. Little more is heard of him, except by quarrels with his parishioners. He died in 1724. "He was a bold insolent man, with a very small measure of religion, virtue, learning, or good sense."—Burnet. In Feckenham Park, Worcestershire, Sir Godfrey Kneller, "to mark the folly of the age, has drawn a picture of Dr. Sacheverel carried away by the Furies." On the other hand, some doggerel rhymes, current at a Cornish election, forbade voters to return any man who was not

"Sound as a bell
For the Church, the Queen, and Sacheverel:"

The Sacheverels bore Argent, on a saltire Azure, three water-bougets of the first.

Sent More :

This name, freighted with so lofty a destiny in the years to come, was taken from St. Maur, near Avranches. "Wido de St. Maur came to England 1066, and was deceased before 1086, when William Fitz Wido his son held a barony in Somerset, Wilts, and Gloucester, and ten manors in Somersetshire (of which Portishead was one) from Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances. He made conquests in Wales c. 1090, which his family afterwards held. He had 1. Peter de St. Maur, who granted Portishead to the Hospitallers (Mon. ii. 530) and was ancestor of the Lords St. Maur, barons by writ 1314, who bore Argent two chevrons Gules: 2. Richard Fitz William, who inherited the Welsh barony, and t. Stephen granted four churches in Wales to Kadwalli Abbey (Mon. i. 425). This marcher barony was re-conquered soon after by the Welsh. His son Thomas de St. Maur held three knts. fees from Humphrey de Bohun in Wilts (Liber Niger), and had issue Bartholomew, who witnessed the charter of Keynsham Abbey, c. 1170 (Mon. ii. 298). His son, William de St. Maur, conquered Penhow and Woundy, Monmouth, from the Welsh about 1235, and was the ancestor of the Seymours."—The Norman People. This is the only. attempt that I have met with to connect the historical house of Seymour with the baronial St. Maurs, who bore totally different arms, though Camden believes them to be of the same stock, as seems most probable. But the genealogy of the Lords St. Maur, given by Dugdale, does not extend to nearly so distant a date; for it commences with Milo de St. Maur, who fought in the Barons' War against King John. His line ended with his grand-daughter; but the male heir, Geoffrey—whose connection with him does not appear—was the grandfather of Nicholas, summoned to Parliament in 1314. The third Lord St. Maur acquired a second barony through Muriel his wife, the heiress of Lord Lovel of Kari, who brought with it the estates of Winfred Eagle in Dorsetshire, and Castle Kari in Somersetshire. His grandson was the first baron who received summons as Seymour, and the next in succession, Richard, proved the last heir male. He died in 1409, and his titles passed to his posthumous daughter, Alice, Lady Zouche of Haryngworth.

The Dukes of Somerset undoubtedly derive from William St. Maur, who in the thirteenth century possessed himself of Woundy and Penhow, where he took up his abode. "The church of Penhow was dedicated to St. Maur; their park there was called by their own name; and here likewise they had their castle, which continued in the family till Henry VIII.'s time."—Collins. The seal of his son Roger (who died about 1299) shows the Vol^[52] or Wings conjoined in Lure, still borne by his descendants, circumscribed Sigill Rogeri de Seimor. In the time of Edward III. they removed from their Welsh home into Somersetshire, where they had acquired a share in the great Beauchamp inheritance through Cecily, the eldest and most richly dowered of the three heiresses of the last Lord Beauchamp of Hache, who was the wife of a second Roger de St. Maur. Both their son and grandson were again matched with heiresses. The former married Joan de la Mare; the latter Maud Esturmi (see Esturmi), who first transplanted the Seymours into Wiltshire. As the last representative of the ancient Foresters of Savernake, she was very richly dowered, and her house of Wolf Hall thenceforward became their home. Although their possessions thus grew apace, they remained unpretending country gentlemen, till, nearly a century and a half afterwards, by a sudden and violent transition of fortune, they rose, at a single bound, to the highest pinnacle of place and power.

Sir John Seymour, who had been knighted for his bravery by Henry VII.'s own hand on the field of battle of Blackheath, and was no less distinguished at the Battle of the Spurs, became one of the Knights of the Body (now Grooms of the Chamber) to Henry VIII., and as such was in constant attendance at Court. His daughter Jane was placed in the household of Anne Boleyn, and attracted the attention of the King, who transferred the crown from the Queen to her maid of honour. He married her the day after poor Anne's head had fallen on the block; and in the following year she became the mother of the anxiously-expected Prince of Wales. She only survived his birth for twelve days: happy in dying thus early, before Henry's fierce love had turned to hate, with the bloom of her fair name "untarnished by the breath of reproach," honoured and lamented by all.

The Seymours had participated in her fortunes, and risen with her rise. Her father died about six months after she became Queen; but her eldest brother Edward was created Viscount Beauchamp on her wedding day, with the grant of a coat of augmentation, bearing the Royal lions and fleur de lis, ever since quartered with the Seymour Vol, and Earl of Hertford on the birth of her son. Yet he was merely placing his foot on the first steps of the ladder, for his advancement kept pace with his ambition, great as that was, till, on the accession of his nephew, he was proclaimed Lord Protector of King Edward VI. and of the realm. At the same time he was created Duke of Somerset, "whereby," as the patent recites, "the name of that family from which our most beloved mother, Jane, late Queen of England, drew her beginning, might not be clouded by any higher title or colour of dignity." By a special provision, it secured the title to the children of his second wife, giving the elder sons a reversion in the succession only on failure of her heirs male. He had first married Katherine Filliol, whom he repudiated (see vol. ii., p. 52), and was then the husband of Anne Stanhope, described on her monument in Westminster Abbey as "a Princesse descended of noble lignage," traced on her mother's side from the Plantagenet Kings. She was the daughter of Sir Edward Stanhope by Lady Elizabeth Bourchier, who derived from Anne, sole heir of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward III. She has been represented as a proud, imperious, meddlesome woman; but the only two indictments against her are that she procured the above settlement on her children, with which, as its cause was her predecessor's crime, she had not necessarily anything to do, and that she had great "contests" for precedence with her sister in law, the Queen Dowager.^[53]

The new Protector, "ardent, generous, and enthusiastic, the popular successful general," was, according to Froude, incapacitated for sovereign power by "a large vanity and a languid intellect;" and his few years of rule record "the story of authority unwisely caught at and unwisely used. Yet, for the most part, he had failed in attempts which in themselves were noble." We have all read of his pride and ostentation; of his pulling down a parish church and blowing up a chapel to make room for his new palace in the Strand; of his desecrating the N. cloister of St. Paul, and digging up the bones of the long-buried dead, to be carted away to Finsbury Fields. But, on the other hand, we are told that he was greatly beloved; "never man had the hearts of the people as he had;" and at his execution, men and women crowded round the block to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. When his great adversary, Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was himself led a captive through the streets of London two years afterwards, a woman shook one of these treasured handkerchiefs in his face, crying, "Behold! the blood of that worthy man, that good uncle of that excellent King, which was shed by thy treacherous machinations, now, at this instant, begins to revenge itself upon thee!" It was Dudley who had charged him with the real or pretended conspiracy for which he suffered the death of a traitor in 15523 and about a month later, Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Miles Partridge, Sir Michael Stanhope, the Duchess's brother, and Sir Thomas Arundell, her half-brother, were also executed on Tower Hill as privy to the plot.

His brother Thomas, who was created Lord Seymour of Sudeley on the same day that he became Duke of Somerset, had preceded him on the scaffold by four years. "He resembled the Protector in an ambition that was disproportioned to his ability, in an outward magnificence of carriage, in personal courage, address, and general accomplishments. But here the likeness ended;" for in him the higher and nobler qualities of the elder brother were altogether wanting. "He was," says Latimer, "a man farthest from the fear of God that ever I knew or heard of in England;... and the realm was well rid of him." He had been named Lord High Admiral of England, and loaded with grants and favours; but continued none the less incurably envious and dissatisfied. Ever tormented by his brother's pre-eminence, he had the audacity to ask the hand of the Princess Elizabeth before her father was cold in his grave. Failing in this, he turned to the widowed Queen, Katharine Parr (with whom he had had sundry love passages when she was Lady Latimer), and actually persuaded her into a clandestine marriage within four months—some even say within three—of her husband's death. When she died in childbed the following year, he secretly renewed his suit to Elizabeth, won over her governess and her chamberlain to his side, and succeeded in pleasing her in no common degree. But, schooled to prudence by early adversity, she was wary even as a girl of sixteen, and took care not to commit or compromise herself. For these and other intrigues, he was thrown into the Tower, and beheaded without any form of trial in 1549. His brother, who sought to save him, had to sign his death-warrant, and it was commonly said that "with his left hand he had cut off his right" in so doing. But the odium he incurred would seem to have been undeserved.

Anne Stanhope had brought the Protector three sons and six daughters. The eldest son was stripped of all his lands and titles by special act of parliament, when he was only thirteen, and continued in "this disconsolate condition" till Queen Elizabeth, on her accession, created him Earl of Hertford. Three years later, the Court was electrified by the discovery that he was secretly married to Lady Katherine Grey, who—Lady Jane being dead—was, by the will of Henry VIII., the next in succession to the throne. The vials of Elizabeth's wrath were at once discharged upon the heads of the unfortunate pair; and to add to her indignation, it was found that her cousin was soon to give birth to a child. The marriage, treated as a State conspiracy, was declared annulled; and both husband and wife thrown into the Tower as traitors and criminals, there to linger through many miserable years of captivity. Lady Katherine, at least, never left her prison-house again alive. All this unhappy lady's children—three sons and one daughter—were born in the Tower, where, by bribing the jailor, she and Lord Hertford still contrived to meet. But latterly her confinement was made more severe; she was never allowed to see the husband to whom she was devoted, and pining under the grief of hopeless separation and cruel treatment, she died after a lingering illness in 1567. Lord Hertford remained nine years in prison; and though the validity of the marriage was afterwards tried by common law, and fully confirmed, he was censured by the Star Chamber for having "vitiated a maid of Royal blood," and condemned to pay a fine of,£15,000.

Edward, Viscount Beauchamp, their eldest son, died before his father, also leaving three sons; Edward, who died young; William, second Earl of Hertford, and Sir Francis, created Lord Seymour of Trowbridge in 1641, whose grandson succeeded as fifth Duke of Somerset. The tragedy of Lord Hertford's marriage was exactly repeated by his eldest grandson. He, again, won the affection of a lady who stood dangerously near the throne;—Lady Arabella Stuart, the daughter of the Duke of Lennox, who was uncle to James I. This attachment, formed in childhood, was discovered in 1609; and Mr. Seymour (as he then was) and Lady Arabella were "summoned before the Council, sharply reprimanded, and warned as to their future conduct." Such warnings are vain; the couple were shortly after privately married, and when the marriage came to light in 1610, it was once more treated as a crime against the State. Not a moment was lost in consigning them to prison; but this time Seymour alone was committed to the Tower, while Lady Arabella was confined elsewhere. Nevertheless, they managed to communicate, and to concert and carry out a plan of escape. Lady Arabella, dressed in men's clothes, got safely out of prison and made her way to the appointed trysting-place at Blackwall; but Seymour was not there; and after waiting for him as long as she dared, she embarked and sailed without him. Seymour, arriving behind his time, followed in another vessel, and landed without accident in Flanders. Lady Arabella was less fortunate; she was captured in Calais Roads by a man of war that had been sent in pursuit, and brought back to the Tower, where she died half crazed in 1615. As she left no children, Seymour was then permitted to return from exile, pardoned, and restored to favour; "the dread of the King lest an heir should be born uniting the claims to the throne of the Stuart and Suffolk branches of the Royal family" having ceased. He afterwards married Lady Frances Devereux,^[54] the daughter of Elizabeth's favourite; was created Marquess of Hertford in 1640, and commanded the Royal forces in Somerset, Wilts, and Dorset during the Civil War. When Charles I. was ordered for execution, he, with three other peers (the Duke of Richmond and the Earls of Southampton and Lindsay) offered, if the King's life might be spared, to suffer death in his stead; and when this act of devotion was not permitted, they asked and received licence to pay their last duty to their master by laying him in his grave at Windsor. At the Restoration he received the Garter from the young King on the day after his landing at Dover; and in the following September—a month before his death—the attainder of his great ancestor was reversed, and he was restored as Duke of Somerset. "I have done," said Charles II., when announcing this act of grace to his parliament, "what a good master should do for such a servant." He was succeeded by a grandson who died at twenty, unmarried; and whose sister Elizabeth, Countess of Ailesbury, carried away the great Seymour estates in Wiltshire to the Bruces, through whom they were transmitted to her descendants in the female line, the present Marquesses of Ailesbury. This young Duke's uncle, Lord John, then bore the title for four years, also dying s. p., and it then reverted to his cousin Francis, third Lord Seymour of Trowbridge. He was killed early in life by one Orazio Botti at Lerice, in mistake for another gallant who had insulted the Italian's wife; and the next and sixth Duke was his brother Charles, "a man," says Macaulay, "in whom the pride of birth and rank amounted almost to a disease." His first wife was the heiress of the Percies, and I have elsewhere given an account of their children (see vol. ii., p. 379). The story of his second marriage is characteristic. He was far too royal to seek a bride for himself, but having decided to marry one of the numerous daughters of Daniel, Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, he deputed his chaplain, Matthew Hutton, to go to Burley and report upon the Ladies Finch. His report, still preserved at Petworth, saves appearances by speaking of the four brides-expectant as "Bookes upon the subject of Religion and Morality, which I shall describe to your Grace by the ranks they stand in upon the Classes:—

The stile of L C and L H is improved with a degree of learning which is wanting in the other two; and these differ again from one another in this, that the stile of L C is more even and uniform, the sense stronger and containing finer Rules of AEconomy; whereas L B—1 is brighter, and has more flights of Witt. The stile of L H is distinguished by a certain degree of skill in Geometry and Mathematics, and several points are prettily enough illustrated by similitudes from Painting and Limning. L B—y has the advantage in the fineness of the Paper and beauty of the Impression; but the stile of it is not embellished either with Learning or Mathematicks as the others are." Neither the Earl or Countess touched upon the subject of his visit; the negotiations were carried on with "my friend Mr. E." (Edwards, either their chaplain or secretary) who described the young ladies, and then asked, "in a pleasant manner, whether your Grace had given over buying of Bookes, and mentioned C and H as very well deserving your Grace's purchasing." The praises of Lady Charlotte were sung in her absence, as she was then in London; but though it is admitted that, while "not any of them were set off with any uncommon, outward ornament" (Horace Walpole calls them the "black funereal Finches") "L C has the least" of all, yet she was persistently designated for his choice, and became Duchess of Somerset in 1725. The mathematical Lady Henrietta married the Duke of Cleveland; and the unlearned Lady Betty was the wife of the famous Chief Justice Lord Mansfield; while poor Lady Bell, with all her bright flights of wit, was left out in the cold.

Lady Charlotte brought her august husband only two daughters; and with his son Algernon, seventh Duke, who died in 1750, the last of the male descendants of the Protector's second marriage failed.

The Dukedom then passed to the long disinherited elder branch, which had altogether escaped the strange vicissitudes of fortune of the more loftily placed descendants of Anne Stanhope. Seven Sir Edward Seymours had followed each other in peaceful and uninterrupted succession, when, after an exclusion of two hundred years, the title reverted to them in 1750. The first of these had been restored in blood by Edward VI. the year after his father's execution, and received a share of his lands, including Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire, and the castle and honour of Berry Pomeroy in Devonshire, which had been purchased by the Protector. The third Sir Edward made of the old castle "a very stately house" at the cost of the then great sum of £20,000. "The number of the apartments of the whole," writes Prince, "may be collected hence, if report be true, that it was a good day's work for a servant but to shut and open the casements belonging to them. Notwithstanding which, 'tis now demolished, and all this glory lieth in the dust." It had never been entirely finished, and was left desolate in the very next generation, when, as the home of a staunch and uncompromising Cavalier, it was burnt and plundered by the Parliamentary army. No attempt was made to rebuild so vast and costly a pile, and the family took up their abode at their present seat of Maiden Bradley. The next Sir Edward was, as "the head of a strong Parliamentary connection called the Western Alliance, the leader of the Protestant Tories in the House of Commons," and, according to Macaulay, "one of the most skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom." He was unanimously elected Speaker in 1673, and had the credit of being the first country gentleman who was ever called to the chair, till then invariably occupied by a lawyer. At the Revolution he went to meet the Prince of Orange at Exeter, and William, intending to be very civil, received him with the words, "I think, Sir Edward, that you are of the family of the Duke of Somerset." Seymour—one of the proudest of men—instantly corrected him. "Pardon me, Sir," he said, "the Duke of Somerset is of my family." This pride of place as the head of the house never forsook him. When Queen Anne, of whose household he was Comptroller, offered him a peerage in 1703, he would accept it only for his younger son Francis, preferring for the elder the slender chance—then apparently a sufficiently remote one—of succeeding to his ancestral Dukedom. Yet, within fifty years, this improbable event had actually come to pass, and the long looked-for title devolved upon his grandson, the seventh Sir Edward Seymour, and ninth Duke of Somerset, from whom the present and fourteenth Duke is directly descended.

Francis Seymour Conway, who was created Baron Conway by Queen Anne in 1703, was the second of his six sons by his second marriage with Letitia Popham, on whom their cousin, Earl Conway (whose own mother had been a Popham) settled the whole of his great domain in England and Ireland. The elder brother, Popham, a young gentleman known about town as Beau Seymour, had been killed in a duel by Colonel Kirke, and Francis, thus becoming the heir, had taken the name of Conway, and inherited the English estates with the stately mansion of Ragley, and a wide tract of fertile land in the co. of Antrim. The titles of Earl of Hertford and Viscount Beauchamp were revived in favour of his son in 1750, who further received a marquessate, with the Earldom of Yarmouth, in 1793, and is now represented by the sixth Marquess. But the title came to his father in 1870 shorn of more than half its fair inheritance, for the great Conway estate in Ireland had been separated from it by his predecessor, and bestowed upon Sir Richard Wallace.

Sent Scudemore :

The prefix to this name here given, and given, as far as I am aware, here only—alludes to its sacred significance, as a contraction of Escu d'Amour, the Shield of Divine Love. "The Surname of the Scudamores," as their historian tells us, "was derived from their bearing Scutum Amoris Divinis, which was antiently their arms, and in all Probability was given upon some gallant Action done by them in Defence of the Christian Faith." Their Cross patee fitchee Or was, however, in course of time exchanged for the arms of the great heiress through whom they were transplanted into Herefordshire. She bore three stirrups leathered and buckled Or:—scarcely a fitting substitute for the Escu d'Amour as the emblem of Divine Love; and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Sir John Scudamore, who held an office at Court, thought it well to recall the memory of the original bearing. "And to make his Atchievement in all points complete," says Guillym, "he hath annexed this Motto or Device placed in an Escrole underneath his Shield, Scuto Amoris Divini. Manifesting thereby his confident affiance in the most puissant protection and never failing helpe of the Almighty against all adverse events and occurents: grounding his assurance upon the saying of the Kingly-Prophet David, Psal. v. 13: 'For thou Lord wilt give thy blessing unto the righteous, and with thy favourable kindnesse wilt defend him as with a shield.' This noble knight hath so honourably deserved, both of his Country in generall, by procuring (together with his Lady) the Building of the goodly Bridge neere unto Rosse, over the River Wye, and likewise of my selfe in particular: as I held my selfe obliged in a double band of loving respect to yeeld him in this place, this due acknowledgement of his worthy vertues."

The family was first seated in Wiltshire, where Walter de Escudemore was Lord of Upton, near Warminster, in the time of Stephen. "In 1165 Geoffrey de Scudimore" (perhaps his son) "was a baron in Wilts (Liber Niger), and had sub-enfeoffed Waleran de Scudimore and Walter Gifford. He also held four fees of ancient enfeoffment from Robert D'Evias of Hereford (Ibid.)"—The Norman People. The latter was by "the finding one white Warhorse Every Year for the Service of a Centinel at the Castle of Ewyas, under his Custody or Guard." Peter de Schidimore was Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset in 1197 and 1199: and Sir Godfrey Scudamore Sheriff of Wilts in 1258. He married the heiress of Gifford of Brimsfield, and was the father of Sir Peter, "a man of eminence" who kept great state at Upton, and founded a chantry in the church. His effigy, and that of his wife Margery, remain in the N. aisle, still called Scudamore's Aisle. It was his grandson Thomas who, though a younger brother, "became a greater man than the elder, by marrying Clare, daughter and heir of Ewyas." The line of Upton-Scudamore ended with his nephew Peter, whose heiress married John de Keynes; and their former manor-house has disappeared, but, from some traces that were yet visible in the last century, is conjectured to have stood "in a fair meadow adjoining the church-yard." Besides Upton, Norton Skydmore and Warminster Skydmore bore the name in Wiltshire.

The posterity of the fortunate younger brother continues to flourish in Herefordshire. His wife Clare (or Clarice) was the eldest daughter of Clare de Ewyas, Lady of Ewyas Harold, and both he and his son Philip took her name. Philip's grandson and namesake "first planted himself at Holme-Lacy," which came to him from the Tregoz family, and is still, after the lapse of four hundred and fifty years, the home of his descendants. Sir John Scudamore, Gentleman Usher to Henry VIII., was High Sheriff of Hereford for three years: and his grandson (Gwillym's Sir John) was one of Queen Elizabeth's Council for the Marches of Wales, and Standard Bearer of the Gentlemen Pensioners. He and his son Sir James were both of them intimate friends of Sir John Bodley, and contributors to the noble library that he bequeathed to Oxford. Sir James had been knighted at the siege of Cadiz, and was "renowned for chivalry": "a man," says Fuller, "famous and fortunate in his time"; and preserved from oblivion in our own as the "gentle Sir Scudamour" of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.'

John, the next heir, inherited the literary tastes of his father and grandfather, and was so ardent a student at Magdalen College, that his friend Bishop Laud bade him "Book it not too much." He entered parliament and received a baronetcy when he came of age in 1620; was created Viscount Scudamore of Sligo by Charles I. in 1628; and seven years afterwards appointed Ambassador to the Court of Louis XIII. He gave offence at Paris by refusing to attend the Huguenot church at Charenton, as former Ambassadors had done, "but furnish'd his own Chappel in his House, with such Ornaments (as Candles upon the Communion Table and the like), as gave great Offence and Umbrage to those of the Reformation there, who had not seen the like; besides that he was careful to publish upon all occasions, 'That the Church of England look'd not on the Hugenots as Part of their Communion.'"—Clarendon. Yet he had a plan concerning which he corresponded with Hugo Grotius, for "uniting all the Protestant Churches against their common enemy the Church of Rome."

Another faithful and diligent correspondent was his old ally Bishop Laud, who used to visit him at Holme-Lacy on his way to and from his (then) diocese of St. David's, "and found his Entertainment as kind and full of Respect, as ever he did from any Friend." By him the Bishop was first informed of the murder of the Duke of Buckingham, and writes in reply: "Now the Court seems new to me, and I mean to turn over a new Leaf in it, for all those Things that are changeable. For the rest, I must be the same I was, and patiently both expect and abide what God shall be pleased to lay upon me."

Evil days were in store for his friend as well as for himself. Lord Scudamore suffered greatly during the Civil War. He was taken prisoner by Sir William Waller at Hereford, sent up to London, there committed to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, and kept in close confinement for nearly four years, which so grievously injured his health that he "hardly survived." Some of his houses were burned, his estates sequestered, his goods plundered and sold, and his losses in all computed to exceed £37,000. Yet he found means to be generous and hospitable to those in worse straits than himself; most of all the distressed clergy; and Fuller calls him "a nursing Father of the Church. There is no good Thing," he adds, "could be said of any good Man that cannot justly be said of him." His last years were spent in the country, where he devoted himself to gardening, and had the credit of bringing into cultivation the Red Streak Cyder Apple,

"that once
Was of the Sylvan kind, unciviliz'd,
Of no regard, till Scudamore's skilful hand
Improv'd her, and by courtly discipline
Taught her the savage nature to forget,
Hence called the Scudamorean plant."
—Phillips' Pomona.

At his death, in 1671, he was succeeded by a grandson, and then by a great-grandson, with whom the title expired in 1716. This last Viscount only lived to be thirty-two, and left as his sole heir his daughter Frances, first married to Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, from whom she was divorced; and secondly to Charles Fitz Roy. By her last husband, who took the name and arms of Scudamore, she again left an only child named Frances. This second heiress was the wife of the Honourable Charles Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, but died s. p. in 1820. Holme-Lacy then devolved upon Sir Edwyn Francis Stanhope, who represented a sister of the first Lord Scudamore's, and is now held by his descendant, Edwyn, tenth Earl of Chesterfield.

Within the last twenty years, the family still existed in the male line at Kentchurch in the same county, where they are said to have been seated since the time of Edward IV.: but it is not known when they branched off from the parent stock. The line ended with a Colonel Scudamore, whose daughter, Mrs. Lucas, is the mother of the present owner of Kentchurch, Mr. Scudamore-Lucas. They held the parish of Rowlston, of which "the name is a contraction of Rowland's town, and probably refers to some distinguished member of the Scudamore family, bearing this Christian name."—Duncumb's Herefordshire. In the time of Henry VII., Philip Scudamore of Rowlston married his kinswoman, the heiress of Kentchurch, and was the direct ancestor of its present possessor.

Neither in this nor the Holme Lacy pedigree do I find the name of Barnabas Scudamore, the gallant Cavalier who defended Hereford Castle against. the Scottish army under the Earl of Leven, till the King's advance from Worcester raised the siege. More than once Lord Leven had called upon him to surrender. "My Lord," was his reply, "I am resolved to endure all mines and storms which shall be made against this place, and doubt not, by God's assistance, to render His Majesty a good account of it."—Ibid.

Toget :

one of the many spellings of Touchet, variously given as Toget, Tochet, Tuscet, Thochet, &c. It is the next name but one to this on the Roll, as "Tuchet." Toket is probably another version. A Sir Roger Toket joined the Earl of Lancaster's rebellion.

Tercy :

for Torcy or Torchy; from the Norman fief and honour of Torcy. Both the "Sire de Torcy" and the "Seneschal de Torcy" appear in the list given in the annals of Normandy (published by Foxe) of "those that were at the Conquest of England:" the latter among the "Archers of Val de Real, and of Bretheul, and of many other places." The De Torcys certainly continued in Normandy up to the end of the last century, and bore Quarterly of 4; 1 and 4, Gules; 2 and 3, Lozengy Or and Gules, a bend Or. Ithier de Torcy was a crusader. A Marquis de Torcy was one of the signatories of the Treaty of Utrecht; and one of the name, belonging to the Bailliage de Caen, was among the Norman nobles assembled in the Church of St. Stephen, at Caen, in 1789.

In England, Hugh de Torci, and his brother Hasletus, are found in Devonshire during the reign of Henry I.—Rotulus Magnus Pipae. But I can find no further notice whatever of them in the county, and very little elsewhere.

Adam Tourcy gave one acre in Turner-riding to Selby Abbey.—Burton's Mon. Ebor. "In 10 Ric. II. a fine was levied between Eve, daughter of Harvis de Merlai, petent, and Ralph de Torcy, tenant, of forty acres of land in Hillington."—Blomfield's Norfolk.

Tuchet: from Notre Dame du Touchet, near Mortaine, in Normandy. The ruins of the old castle are still visible near the parish church: and the race of its ancient possessors is not extinct. M. de Touchet, Chevalier de St. Louis, was President of the Society of Antiquaries of Normandy in 1825, and his father, till shortly before the first Revolution, retained the Seigneurie of Beneauville, which they had held from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Their arms, Azure three hands Or, are different from those borne by the English Touchets.

Their ancestor, Orme, who possessed considerable estates in Cheshire, was surnamed the Harper, and Sir Peter Leycester fancifully derives their name from "Citharista, or Touch it." The Cheshire pedigrees generally state that his son Matthew "was the father of Simon Touchet, Lord of Buglawton and Tattenhall in the time of Hugh Kevelioc, who is said to have succeeded thereto on the death of Henry, son of Henry, son of Josceline de Touchet; but all agree in his descent from Orme."—Ormerod's Cheshire. They were seated at Buglawton shortly after the Conquest, and the manor of Tattenhall, which in Domesday belonged to William Malbeding, was vested in them by grant of Randle Gernons, Earl of Chester, in the time of King Stephen. Sir Robert Touchet, in 1319, "was one of the barons who, with the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford, assembled at Sherborne in Elmedon, and swore to stand by each other until they had amended the state of the realm; but notwithstanding this oath, Sir Robert Touchet, with many others, submitted to the King."—Ibid. His grandson, Sir John, made his mark in the French wars, chiefly at the relief of Aquillon and the siege of Rheims, 33 Ed. III., "and was slain in a desperate engagement with the Spanish fleet before Rochelle, 44 Ed. III." His wife Joan was the daughter of one of the greatest soldiers of the age, James Lord Audley, the hero of Poictiers; and the eldest of the three co-heiresses between whom his barony fell in abeyance. Their brother, Nicholas Lord Audley, only survived his father six years, and died in 1392, leaving no posterity. Joan was then already dead; but the barony, after some protest, was adjudged to her son Sir John; and he assumed the title of Lord Audley in 1403, being then "actively employed in military arrangements in Wales."

From this time forth the Touchets ranked high in power and influence in the kingdom, and played a stirring part in its annals. The next Lord Audley fell in battle with the Earl of Salisbury at Bloreheath in Shropshire, while commanding the Lancastrians of Chester and the adjoining counties. His son changed sides, took part with the House of York, and was appointed Lord Treasurer of England by Richard III.; and his grandson, joining in the Cornish insurrection of 1497, was taken prisoner at Blackheath, and "was drawn from Newgate to Tower Hill in his own Coat of Arms, painted on paper, but reversed and torn, and there Beheaded." Another Lord Audley was made a Knight Banneret in 1586 for his bravery at the battle of Zutphen; and his successor, who was for some time Governor of Utrecht, received the Irish Earldom of Castlehaven from James I. in 1617. The second Earl was executed on Tower Hill in 1631, "for certain high crimes and misdemeanours:" but both the titles were restored to his son by a fresh creation three years afterwards. This son served the King loyally in the Civil War, first under the Duke of Ormonde, and then as commander-in-chief in Ireland; and was recompensed at the Restoration by a grant of "the same place and precedence that his ancestors the Lords Audley enjoyed," and his father had forfeited, with remainder to his brother Mervyn, and Mervyn's sons and daughters.

Mervyn succeeded to the Earldom in 1684, and was followed by a son, a grandson, and a great-grandson, but the line terminated with the last named, John, seventh Earl, in 1777. The Irish title then became extinct, and the old barony, by virtue of the remainder, passed to the Earl's nephew, George Thicknesse. His only sister, Lady Elizabeth (Collins calls her Lady Mary) then long since dead, had made an unequal match with a Captain Philip Thicknesse,^[55] which her family never forgave. The Earl had good grounds for his objection to his brother-in-law. Even the polite peerages speak of the Captain as an "eccentric character," and he is described as "utterly devoid of every generous and manly quality, rancorous, slanderous, vindictive, and malicious." He was fined and imprisoned for libelling a brother officer. He wrote several books, "abounding in coarse, indecent, and revolting ribaldry," and amongst them his own Memoirs. "The account that he there gives of his first marriage, when he was forty-two years old, is the most shameful narrative ever penned by any man of himself. Under a feigned marriage he seduced the woman, who he expected was rich, in order that he might make his own terms with her parents before he really married her." She died after giving birth to three daughters, and he then, "according to his own story, at the suggestion of a learned and indecent old Judge, made love to a widow lady named Concanen, who was willing to marry him if a little longer time only were permitted her to forget the sainted and departed Concanen. In telling the story of this courtship, Thicknesse seemed to think it a fine joke. The widow, however, was unequal to the task of a courting match with the gentleman, for he goes on to tell us that when Lady Elizabeth Touchet heard of this courtship, she thought she would rather marry him herself, which she did. As the gallant gentleman puts it, 'So I left the widow to finish her second mourning, and was soon after married to Lady Elizabeth Touchet.'"—Historic Houses of Bath.

Lord Castlehaven never spoke to his sister again, and her epitaph (quoted by Banks) alludes to this life-long estrangement "in a quibbling comparison between the infinite mercy of the Lord of 'Heven,' and the unrelenting cruelty of the Lord of 'Haven:'"—

"Sacred to the Memory
of the Lady Elizabeth Thicknesse.
'The Lord of Heven forsook her not.'"^[56]

The new Lord Audley, by Royal license, added the name of Touchet to his own, and his descendants bore the title for another hundred years. The last and eighteenth Baron—counting from the first writ of summons received by Nicholas de Aldithley in 1313—died in 1872, leaving no son, and the barony fell into abeyance between his two young daughters.

Dugdale speaks of another baron of this name, William Tuchet, who followed Edward I. to Gascony in 1296; then, on three several occasions, to Scotland; and was summoned to parliament in 1299. He was a man of ample possessions, as he received charter of free warren in all his demesne lands in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire (where he held Thorpe Waterville), Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire; with a Wednesday market and yearly fair at Levenhales—probably his principal seat—in the county of Hereford. Then follows another William Touchet—not his son, but the son of a Nicholas de Touchet, whose estate this William had inherited in 1310, when he received a writ of summons to the Scottish wars, which was repeated four years afterwards. In 1318 he was pardoned as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster; but in 1321, "upon the Insurrection of that Earl, and his defeat at Burrough-brigg, being there taken with him, he was hang'd at York."

Tracy: from the castle and barony of Tracy, near Vire, arrondissement of Caen. "The Sire de Traci" is named in Wace's account of the battle of Hastings. "The family does not appear to have been of much importance in England before the time of Stephen, who bestowed upon Henry de Tracy the Honour of Barnstaple in Devonshire; but the first of the name we hear of is Turgis or Turgisius de Tracy who, with William de la Ferte, was defeated and driven out of Maine by Fulk de Rechin, Count of Anjou, in 1073: and who was therefore in all probability the Sire de Traci in the army of Hastings."—Planche Henry de Traci is said to have been the only man in Devonshire who stood firm to Stephen against the Empress Maud. He was succeeded in his barony by his son, his grandson, and his great-grandson, but the latter, who died in 1273, left only a daughter, Eve, married to Guy de Brienne.

William de Tracy, who became notorious as one of the murderers of Thomas a Becket (see Fitz Urse), had extensive estates in Devonshire and Gloucestershire, and was the second son of John de Sudeley and Grace de Traci, heiress of another William, believed to be a natural son of Henry I. He probably succeeded to his mother's inheritance, as he took her name, and is described by the monkish chroniclers as a brave soldier, but of parricidal wickedness. After the bloody tragedy at Canterbury, he and his three accomplices sought refuge at Knaresborough Castle, from whence they went to throw themselves at the feet of Pope Alexander III. at Rome. He sentenced them to expiate their sin in the Holy Land, and they accordingly set out together on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. "Tracy alone, it is said, was never able to accomplish his vow. The crime of having struck the first blow—'primus percussor'—was avenged by the winds of heaven, which always drove him back. According to one story, he never left England. According to another, and, as we shall see, more correct version, he reached the coast of Calabria, and was seized, at Cosenza, with a dreadful disorder, which caused him to tear the flesh from his bones with his own hands, calling, 'Mercy, St. Thomas!' and there he died miserably, after having made his confession to the bishop of the place. His fate was long remembered among his descendants in Gloucestershire, and gave rise to the distich that—

'The Tracys
Have always the wind in their faces.'

Such is the legend."—Dean Stanley. But William de Tracy certainly did not die in Calabria. There is evidence to show that he actually set out on his pilgrimage, and he probably got as far as Cosenza; for, in the charter by which, he grants Doccombe^[57] to the Chapter of Canterbury, as an oblation to make some amends for his crime, the first of the witnesses is described as Abbot of Euphemia. "There can be little doubt that this Abbey of St. Euphemia was the celebrated convent of that name in Calabria, not twenty miles from Cosenza, and about sixty miles north of the Straits of Messina."—Ibid. Thus it would seem most likely that he was detained by a severe illness at Cosenza, and believing himself to be on his deathbed, sought to make atonement to the Church by this deed of gift. It is plain that he must have lived to return home. "Within four years of the murder he appears as Justiciary of Normandy; he was present at Falaise in 1174 when William, King of Scotland, did homage to Henry II., and in 1176 was succeeded in his office by the Bishop of Winchester. This is the last authentic notice of him."—Ibid. There exists, however, a generally received tradition that he retired to his estates in the West of England, where "he lived a private life when wind and weather turned against him:" and, according to the local history of his native county of Gloucester, reached the good old age of ninety. His residence was at Morthoe, close to Woollacomb Bay, and the worthy folks of Devonshire aver that his tormented spirit may, even now, be heard moaning and lamenting on the Woollacomb sands, where it is doomed to wander restlessly to and fro, toiling to "make bundles of sand, and wisps of the same" for all time to come. They also believe that for a fortnight after the murder, he lay concealed in the Crookham Cavern, on the coast between Morthoe and Ilfracombe, and that his daughter—the only person entrusted with the secret—used to steal out thither at night to bring him food. He was, it is said, buried at Morthoe, where an effigy, by some believed to be his, remains in the church. But even in his grave he was not left in peace. "Morthoe," says Westcote, "is the place where for a time he rested at ease; untill some ill-affected persons seeking for treasure, but disappointed thereof, stole the leaden sheets he lay in, leaving him in danger to take cold." Woollacomb-Tracy, Bovey-Tracy, Nymet-Tracy, Newton Tracy, and Bradford-Tracy, still bear his name in Devonshire.

His daughter (an only child,) married Sir Gervase Courtenay, and their son Oliver called himself De Tracy, as did all his descendants. They were prosperous country gentlemen, seated at Toddington in Gloucestershire, and constantly to be met with on the lists of Sheriffs and knights of the shire. Sir William Tracy, who died about 1530, was one of the earliest champions of the Reformation, and having declared in his will, "I bestow no part of my goods to that Intent, that any man shall say or do to help my Soul, for therein I trust only to the promises of Christ," the document was condemned in the Bishop of London's Court, and his body taken out of the grave and burned by the Chancellor of Worcester. From his eldest son, William, came the Irish Viscounts Tracy; and Richard, the second—whom he had endowed with the manor of Stanway, a part of the domain of Tewkesbury Abbey granted to him by the Crown—was the ancestor of five baronets of the name. The last died in 1677, and Stanway passed to Ferdinando, second son of the third Viscount Tracy, and through Ferdinando's granddaughter to the Earls of Wemyss.

The elder line lasted for something less than another century and a quarter. Though Sir John Tracy of Toddington received in 1642 the title of Viscount Tracy of Rathcoole in Ireland, it does not appear that they were ever resident in that country, nor did they once intermarry with the Irish. The last and eighth Viscount left an only child, Henrietta, who on his death in 1797, inherited Toddington, and married her cousin, Charles Hanbury, who took her name and arms, and was created Baron Sudeley of Toddington in 1838. The family is now, however, extinct, and more than one claimant for the Viscountcy has laid his case before the House of Lords.

Tracies, in the parish of Newington, bears the name of its owners "in very early times," whose coat of arms "had a near affinity to that of the Tracys of Gloucestershire."—Hasted's Kent.

Trousbut :

or Trossebot. "Botevilain et Trossebot" are coupled together in the Roman de Rou as companions-in-arms that fought in the front rank at Hastings. Both of these are sobriquets. Trossebot, to my thinking, has some analogy with Talbot (Tail-le-bot): but this does not help to explain its meaning. Botte (coup-de-fleuret), means a pass or thrust (whence perchance we derive "bout"); and Taille-botte might very aptly designate a skilful swordsman, while Bouttevilain would be one that inflicted ugly wounds. But so many different meanings belong to Trousse that I cannot even hazard a conjecture as regards Trossebot; and in any case this is mere idle speculation. Their coat of arms, Trots bouts d'eau (three water-bougets) was obviously a rebus.

M. le Prevost is unable to trace the origin of this family in Normandy. The Troussebots are, however, "supposed to have been resident in the north-western part of the district of Neubourg, near the domain of Robert de Harcourt, whose daughter Albreda became the wife of William Troussebot."—J. R. Planche. This was the grandson of Pagan Trossebot, "in all probability the combatant at Senlac," and the son of Geoffrey Fitz Payne, who was seated at Wartre in Holderness before the time of Henry I., and there founded a Priory. Yet Orderic Vitalis contemptuously describes him as one of the men of low origin, whom, for their obsequious service, that sovereign exalted to the rank of nobles, raising them, as it were, from the very dust under his feet, heaping riches upon them, and setting them above Earls and Lords of castles (lib. xi. cap. 2). William Trossebot's services to the King were probably of a very different kind, as he was a stalwart soldier; but the only exploit recorded of him dates from the ensuing reign. "In 1138, being then castellan (munio) of Bonneville, he was successful in putting to flight Count Geoffrey of Anjou and his Angevine troops, having first set fire to the adjacent bourg of Touques, in which they had taken up their quarters for the night."—T. Stapleton. He married Albreda de Harcourt, the daughter of one of the two co-heirs of Pain Peverell, Baron of Brunne, and the heiress of the other, Maud de Dover, who had remained childless. They had, according to Dugdale, three sons, Richard, Geoffrey, and Robert (Mr. Stapleton adds another named William); and three daughters: Rose, married to Everard de Ros; Hillaria, to Robert de Boilers; and Agatha, to Hamo Meinfelin. None of the sons left heirs; and all Dugdale can tell us of them is that they were great benefactors to the religious houses. Geoffrey, the second, "did adde so much to what his grandfather had given to the Canons of Wartre that he thereupon had the repute to be the first Founder." The last of them died in 1195, and their sisters became co-heiresses of the great barony of Wartre. All three lost their husbands in early life, and neither Rose nor Hillaria would ever consent to marry again. Hillaria lived a widow close upon forty years, and rivalled her brothers in her munificence to the Church. Agatha, on the other hand, re-married William de Albini, Earl of Sussex, one of the barons in arms against the Crown. Blomfield recounts how "on Tuesday after the Feast of St. Dennis," eight days before King John died, Agatha came to his chamber at Lynn, and there paid the fine of one hundred marks of silver, which her husband had incurred for his rebellion. Of these three wealthy sisters, only Rose, the eldest, left surviving descendants, and to them the whole inheritance eventually accrued; but her two younger sisters both attained such a patriarchal age that her grandson was the first to enjoy it.

The name apparently did not die out with the baronial line. There were Trusbuts settled at Titleshall in Norfolk, "a family of good account," that survived for several centuries. Richard Trusbut lived under Henry III.; and his son John was seated at Shouldham in the succeeding reign. Another John, grandson of the above, was Captain of the Hobelers in the Scottish wars, 16 Ed. III. The last of the line was again John, whose heiress Jane married Nicholas Colt, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Privy Councillor of Edward IV.—Blomfield's Norfolk.

These Trusbuts did not bear the water-bougets of the Barons of Wartre, but Gyronny of eight, Azure and Ermine.

Trainel :

from Traisnel or Traignel in Champagne. In 1345, Jean Sire de Traisnel, knt., Councillor and Chamberlain to the King, filled the office of Grand Pannetier de France. He bore Vairy, and left by his wife, Marie de Brabancon, two co-heiresses. Margaret, the eldest, Lady of Traisnel, married Robert de Chateauvillan v. Anselme.

In England the Traisnels gave their name to Hatton-Traynell, near Shiffnal, in Shropshire, of which they were the first recorded possessors. By "a deed that," writes Eyton, "impresses me with the idea of very high antiquity—as high as the reign of Henry I. or Stephen 1100-1154, Adam Traynel of Hetton grants to his nephew Ivo his manor of Ivelith (Evelith), so rendering a Red Rose yearly at the Nativity of St. John the Baptist." This Adam was among the earliest benefactors of Buildwas Abbey; for, within fifty years of its foundation at the beginning of the twelfth century, he, with the consent of Reginald his son, had bestowed on it half his vill of Hatton. Reginald was succeeded, about 1202, by Robert Traynel (but by what relationship Eyton cannot determine), who died two years afterwards, leaving a son of his own name who did not come of age till 1215. About 1248, Robert II. made over to the monks of Buildwas "in frank almoigne" the remaining moiety of Hatton. The manor was held by Petit Serjeantry, the Traynels finding a foot-soldier to serve for fifteen days at Shrawardine Castle, Salop.—Testa de Nevill. In 1292, during a conflict between the Sheriff and his men and the Abbot of Combermere's party in Drayton Churchyard, one of the latter was killed; and "the Jury of the Hundred found John Traynel to have been guilty of the murder. He could not be found, and so was outlawed."—Eyton. The last occasion on which the name appears in the county is in 1339, when Richard Traynel witnesses a deed of John le Walisch at Leton.

Taket :

Gilbert Teket, Burgess of Stirling, and Philip Taket, Burgess of Perth, appear on the official deeds recording the "Submission of the two Boroughs" to Edward I. in 1295. Robert Taket was of Lincolnshire about 1272. (Rot. Hundred.) The corresponding name in Leland's list is Takel; and I am by no means clear that Takel is not here intended.

Trussel :

"Milo de Brai, father of Hugh Trussel, married c. 1070, Litheuil, Viscountess of Troyes; and c. 1064 founded Longport Abbey, Normandy. (Orderic Vital.) Guido Trussel was a distinguished Crusader 1096. (Ibid.) He was Lord of Montcheri and Seneschal of. France."—The Norman People. Osbert Trussel in 1165 was Lord of Billesley in Warwickshire, which he held of the Earl of Warwick. "From this Osbert is it that the several families of Trussell, viz. of Cublesdon and Acton-Trussell in Staffordshire; of Flore and Gayton in Northamptonshire: of Aylmesthorpe in Leicestershire; and of this and other places in Warwickshire are descended."—Dugdale. His son William married Agnes, one of the three co-heiresses of Robert Fitz Otes of Locksley, whose inheritance was distributed to them in 1178. To him succeeded Richard, who was in arms against King John in the retinue of his suzerain the Earl; and another Richard, slain at Evesham on the Baron's side. Billesley and his other lands became forfeited; but "William his brother went away with the estate," and married the heiress of Cublesdon in Staffordshire, Rose Pantulf.^[58] From him descended another William, pardoned in 1313 as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster's, who again found a wealthy wife, Maud de Mainwaring, dowered with the barony of Warmincham and other estates in Cheshire, and was the grandfather of a soldier of great renown in the French wars. This last Sir William received an annuity from the Black Prince for his gallantry at Poitiers; and after attending Edward III. in his campaigns to the end of his life, was retained by indenture to serve Richard II. in all his wars with forty men at arms, and appointed in 1378 Governor of Calais. He died the year following, leaving no son. His only daughter Katherine, who had married her kinsman Sir Alured Trussell, was already dead; and his granddaughter Elizabeth, afterwards the wife of Sir Baldwin de Freville, succeeded him, but died childless.

Sir Alured was the grandson, and, on the death of his elder brother, the representative of a man of some celebrity and rare ability, Sir William Trussell of Flore in Northamptonshire, descended from a younger son of the William Trussell that married Rose Pantulf. He it was that, "vice omnium de Terra Angliae et totius Parliamenti procurator," solemnly pronounced the deposition of Edward II. by the House of Commons. The captive King stood before him, humbly clad in the "plain black gown" of a penitent, to receive his sentence in the following words: "I, William Trussell, proctor of the Earls, Barons and others, having for this full and sufficient power, do render and give back to you, Edward, once King of England, the homage and fealty of the persons named in my procuracy; and acquit and discharge them thereof in the best manner that law and custom will give. And I now make protestation in their name that they will no longer be in your fealty and allegiance, nor claim to hold anything of you as King, but will account you hereafter as a private person, without any manner of royal dignity." As Sir William concluded, the Steward of the Household, Sir Thomas Blount, broke his staff of office, as is customary at the funeral of a King; and the reign of Edward III. was assumed to have commenced.

But Trussell, as Dugdale tells us, "did abominate that cruell murther" which followed; and though his lands were seized upon as a rebel's, he quickly obtained his pardon on making his submission, and was no sooner pardoned than employed by the new King. He was appointed his secretary, sent on an Embassy to Spain, and named Eschaetor General S. of the Trent. Then followed, indeed, a period of trouble and disgrace under the hostile influence of Mortimer, during which he fled from the kingdom, as he had been forced to do once before by his old opponents the Despencers. But he did not long continue out of favour. In 1340 we find him Admiral of the Fleet from the mouth of the Thames westwards; two years later, on the occasion of a great expedition to France, in command of the whole fleet from the Thames to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and (according to Burke) summoned to parliament among1 the barons of the realm. To this, however, Banks takes exception, as in 1342 "the great council to be holden at Westminster is not called a parliament;" and further, "as his name is not again recited in any writs of summons, so that it cannot be inferred that any heritable barony was acquired."^[59] None was evidently transmitted to his successors.

Sir Alured was, notwithstanding, "one of the most eminent men in Warwickshire," serving several times as knight of the shire, and once as Sheriff. True, he had early lost his heiress-wife and his heiress-daughter, Elizabeth de Freville, and at the death of the latter the great Trussell estates in Cheshire and Staffordshire reverted to her great-aunt, Margaret, the wife of Sir Fulk de Pembruge. But Sir Alured, "by Fine levied 6 Ric. II. between him as Plaintiff and Sir Fulk and Margaret his wife Deforciant" obtained Billesley, with Morton-Bagot and Milveston, for himself and his heirs-male: and with these a second marriage had already provided him. He had at least seven generations of descendants; the last mentioned by Dugdale—perhaps the last of the family—sold Billesley in the early part of the seventeenth century.

The "fair Inheritance of the Trussels" did not long continue with the Pembruges. Margaret had no children; and when she died in 1402 it passed to her kinsman Sir William, son and heir of Laurence Trussell, who derived from Warin, the third son of the first Sir William that was summoned to parliament, by Maud de Mainwaring. This line, again, expired in 1499 with John Trussell, a child of two years old, whose sister and heiress, Elizabeth, married Edward de Vere, fifteenth Earl of Oxford, and Lord Chancellor of England.

Trisoun :

for Tesson or Taisson, the Norman-French for badger: Tisoun in Leland's list. An r has been either substituted or mistaken for an e in the spelling of this name.

The Tessons, Lords of Cinglais, one of the most powerful houses of Normandy, are by some derived from Botho, a kinsman of Rollo; by others from the Counts of Anjou; and according to Des Bois, were first seated near Angouleme (from whence their Gothic origin may be inferred), and distinguished by feats of arms against the Saracens in the eighth century. "They obtained their sirname, the badger, from their peculiar talent of burrowing or fixing their claws wherever they could gain possession; a significant, if not a noble epithet. 'La-Roche-Tesson,'—it was also a common saying—'holds one third of broad Normandy: one third of Normandy belongs to La-Roche-Tesson.'"—Sir Francis Palgrave. Their castle of La-Roche-Tesson was near St. Lo: and their forest of Cinglais was among the most celebrated in the Duchy. When, in 1047, the Norman and French armies encountered at Val-es-dunes, near Cinglais, the lord of the fief appeared on the field with a great following, but held aloof from either party. "Raol Tesson de Cingueleiz saw the Normans and French advancing, and beheld William's force increasing. He stood on one side afar off, having six score knights and six in his troop, all with lances raised, and trimmed with silk tokens" (called guimples, no doubt their ladies' colours). "The King and Duke William spoke together: each armed, and with helmet laced. They divided their troops, and arranged their order of battle, each holding in his hand a baton; and when the King saw Raol Tesson with his people standing far off from the others, he was unable to discover on whose side he was, or what he intended to do. 'Sire,' said William, 'I believe those men will aid me: for the name of their lord is Raol Tesson, and he has no cause of quarrel or anger against me.' Much was then said and done, the whole of which I never heard: and Raol Tesson still stood hesitating whether he should hold with William.

"On the one hand the Viscounts besought him and made him great promises: and he had before pledged himself, and sworn upon the saints of Bayeux to smite William wherever he should find him. But all his men besought and advised him for his good, not to make war upon his lawful lord, nor to fail of his duty to him in any manner.... They said William was his natural lord; that he could not deny being his man; that he should remember having done him homage before his father and his barons; and that the man who would fight against his lord had no right to fief or barony.

"'That I cannot dispute,' said Raol, 'you say well, and we will do even so.' So he spurred his horse from among the people with whom he stood, crying Tur aie^[60] and ordering his men to rest where they were, went to speak with Duke William. He came spurring over the plain, and struck his lord with his glove, and said laughingly to him, 'What I have sworn to do that I perform: I had sworn to smite you as soon as I should find you: and as I would not perjure myself, I have now struck you to acquit myself of my oath: and henceforth I will do you no wrong or felony.' Then the Duke said, 'Thanks to thee!' and Raol went his way back to his men."—Wace.

This Ralph Tesson, the founder of the Abbey of Fontenay, was the father of Ralph II., who married a cousin-german of the Conqueror's, and was present at Hastings, where he, and old Roger Marmion, "carried themselves as barons ought, and afterwards received a rich guerdon for their service." No such guerdon, however, appears to have been offered to Ralph, whose name is not written in Domesday; but we there find a Gilbert Tison or Tesson, holding a barony in York, Notts, and Lincoln. It is conjectured that Ralph II. was either slain in the battle, or died before 1086: when his eldest son, Ralph III., inherited the great fief of La-Roche-Tesson: and that Gilbert was his second son, who then received or succeeded to the English possessions that rewarded his services. "Gilbert has been called Lord of Malton and Alnwick (Reg. of Alnwick Priory); and though the former was Crown land at the date of the Survey, 'it is not improbable,' as Mr. Stapleton remarks, 'that the defence of Alnwick Castle in the turbulent district N. of Tyne was undertaken by this great military officer, and that he made it the caput of his barony:' and that 'the influence of Roger de Mowbray, the Earl of Northumberland, may have, in that case, drawn him in to share in the rebellion (1095) which ended in the expulsion from their seigneuries of many Norman barons, whom the chroniclers omit to name.'

"There is no doubt this barony was escheated about this time, and divided by William Rufus between Nigel de Albini and Ivo de Vesci. Under Henry I., Gilbert could never regain his estates, but he continued to hold a large share of them as tenant to the grantees, one of whom (Ivo), it is not improbable, was his son-in-law or brother-in-law."—A. S. Ellis. Dugdale makes Ivo de Vesci's wife Alda, the daughter and heiress of William Tyson, and granddaughter of Gilbert Tyson, who fell fighting on Harold's side at Hastings. But in this case the son would never have been allowed to inherit: and the statement that the Tysons were Saxon, although it has been generally accepted, seems to be no longer tenable. Neither could Ivo have received his bride and his barony at the hand of the Conqueror, since, as a matter of fact, he never obtained Alnwick until the following reign.

Gilbert survived till about 1131, and left at least two sons, Adam and Richard. "Adam Tison, who succeeded to his father, gave to Selby Abbey, with consent of Emma his wife and William his son, Atoncroft on Spalding Moor, and to the Knights Hospitallers his manor of Winkburne. He was also a benefactor to the Priories of Rufford and Thurgarton. William was living 1166 (Liber Niger), when he held his inheritance as seventeen knight's fees; fifteen of Roger de Montgomeri and two of William de Vesci. He seems to have left daughters and co-heirs, represented by Constable and Belver.

"The other son, Richard Tyson, had from his father, it is said, the manor of Shilbottel, in Northumberland and other lands (two knight's fees of the barony of Alnwick, 1166). He founded the chapel of the nuns at Gayzance, dedicated to St. Wilfrid, and witnessed the foundation charter of Alnwick Abbey by his feudal lord, Eustace Fitzjohn. The Hiltons are descended from the daughter and heiress of his grandson German Tyson, but Tysons still exist, derived from one of the younger sons."—A. S. Ellis.

"M. le Prevost speaks of an opulent family existing in France, that claims descent from the Norman Lords of Cingueleiz."—J. R. Planche.

Talbot :

This victorious name, that has triumphantly withstood the "waves and weather of time," and shone in the baronial rank for more than seven centuries, is believed to have been borne by a branch of the Counts of Eu, and can thus be traced back to the royal house of Normandy.^[61] "The family originally bore Bendy of ten (the arms of the Counts of Eu being Barry of ten), and descends from Hugh Taleboth, probably a younger son of William, first Count of Eu (son of Richard I. of Normandy). He, about 1035, granted a charter in favour of Trinite du Mont, Rouen, which was witnessed by his brother Count Gilbert of Eu (Forester's Ordericus, iii. 452). William Talebot, his son, is mentioned in the foundation charter of Treport, Eu, by his cousin Robert Count of Eu, and was a benefactor to that abbey (Gall. Christ, xi. 15). This William Talbot came to England 1066, and had two sons, Richard, and Geoffrey."—The Norman People. Both "Ricardus" and "Gosfridus Talebot" are inscribed as under-tenants in Domesday; the latter held in Essex, the former in Bedfordshire under Walter Giffard, Earl of Buckingham. This elder brother was the founder of the great historical house of Talbot. He married a daughter of Gerard de Gournay, Baron of Yarmouth, and had two sons, Geoffrey, a zealous partizan of the Empress Maud, ancestor of the Talbots of Bashall; and Hugh, ancestor of the Earls of Shrewsbury, who was Constable of Plessey Castle in Essex, and, in his latter years, a monk of Beaubec in Normandy. From the beginning of Henry II.'s reign his descendants were seated in Herefordshire, where Eccleswell became the head of their barony; and fourth in succession to him we find Gilbert Talbot, in the middle of the thirteenth century, Governor of Monmouth and several other Welsh castles, and married to a Welsh princess, Gwendoline, daughter and eventually heiress of Rhys-ap-Griffith, King of South Wales, whose arms the Talbots thereupon adopted, and bear to this day. His grandson, another Gilbert, Justice of South Wales, who in 1331 had summons to parliament, was the first baron by writ; and each generation that followed added to the power and possessions of the house. His son Richard obtained Goderich Castle through his wife Elizabeth Comyn of Badenoch (the unfortunate woman who was kidnapped and kept in fear of death by the Despensers^[62]); and the fourth Lord Talbot not only acquired the barony of Blackmere by marrying the heiress of the Le Stranges, but succeeded to the whole vast inheritance of the Earls of Pembroke, in right of his great-grandmother, Joan de Valence, whose daughter and co-heir this Elizabeth Comyn had been. His son in consequence claimed the hereditary right of carrying the Great Spurs at the coronation of Henry V. This Gilbert, the fifth Baron, Captain General of the Marches of Normandy, was joined with Gilbert de Umfraville in 1415 to "subdue all the Forts and Castles to the King's obedience," and married two wives of Royal blood; Joan Plantagenet, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, and Beatrix, the illegitimate child of John, King of Portugal. But he had only one daughter, born of the second marriage, Ankaret, who died in minority in 1431; and the brother who succeeded him was the celebrated Earl of Shrewsbury, the "victorious Talbot,"

"Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength,
Durst not presume to look once in the face."

The Talbots had always approved themselves stout and ready soldiers. They had shed their blood both by sea and land in the many wars of the three Edwards; and one of them, when challenging the right of a part of the Comyn estates, invaded Scotland on his own account with three hundred of his retainers, and won a complete victory at Gleddesmore. Another had attended John of Gaunt into Spain. But to this great captain was reserved a place in the history of England, and an eulogy in the pages of Shakespeare, that were to be the crown and glory of his house, and the pride of a long line of generations yet to come.

John Talbot, born in 1373, was summoned to parliament in 1409 as Lord Furnivall, in right of his wife Maud de Nevill, the eldest daughter and co-heir of the fifth Lord Furnivall, who brought him, with his barony, its great Yorkshire appanage. Five years afterwards, he was appointed Lieutenant of Ireland, from whence he was summoned to join Henry V. in France. On his way thither he deposited for safe keeping in the Tower a famous rebel chieftain named Donat Mac Murrough, whom he had subdued and captured. He attended the King on his triumphant entry into Paris, and was by his side throughout his victorious career but it was not till after its close, when he commanded in chief during the regency of the Duke of Bedford, that his great military genius found full scope. Then it was that he showed himself in good sooth the terror and "the scourge of France;" and that his name became a tower of strength to his soldiers, and a weapon of offence against their adversaries—^[63]

"So fear'd abroad
That with this name the mothers still their babes."

When, after a long series of successes, during which town after town had surrendered to his arms, he was at last defeated and taken prisoner at Patay by Joan of Arc in 1429, the discouragement among the English party was so overwhelming that several places at once fell off from their allegiance. He remained a captive four years, when he was exchanged for Ambrose de Lore, paying a heavy sum for ransom; and no sooner was he set at liberty than he took the field with fresh ardour, and achieved fresh triumphs. In 1442 he was created Earl of Shrewsbury (nomen et honorem comitis Salop): and in 1446, having been again sent to govern Ireland, he received, "in consideration of his great services, and blood spilt in the Warrs," the two Earldoms of Waterford and Wexford, "to the end that the said kingdom of Ireland might be thenceforth the better defended and preserved." With them he had a grant of the city of Waterford, with the castle, honour, land, and barony of Dungarvan; and the high office of Great Seneschal of Ireland in fee. He was by this time well stricken in years, yet ready as ever to buckle his armour on; and when his presence was needed in France, where the power and authority of the English were declining day by day, he promptly resumed his command, and once more met his enemies in the field. In 1451 he was appointed Admiral of the Fleet, and the year following Lieutenant of Acquitaine, having under him as captains of his men-of-arms and archers, his son (by his second wife), Lord Lisle, Sir John Hungerford, Lord Molines, Sir Roger Camoys, Sir John Lisle, and the Bastard of Somerset. He marched straight to Bordeaux, where "the bare fame of his approach frighted the French from the siege," put a garrison into the rescued city, and received the submission of many distant places, that hastened to send in their adhesion. For a moment it seemed as if the return of the terrible old captain was to bring with it a return of the old success, when, on his way to the relief of Chatillon-sur-Dordon, in 1453, he met and gave battle near that town to the French, and was unhorsed and mortally wounded by a cannon ball. His death turned the wavering fortune of the day, and with him for ever departed the old English dominion in France, for which he had so long and so valiantly contended. He had won no less than forty pitched battles and "dangerous skirmishes," and died, as he had lived, sword in hand,^[64] at the great age of eighty. Lord Lisle refused to leave his wounded father, and was killed by his side. Few passages in Shakespeare are more touching than the scene between the dying hero and the "young John Talbot," when the father entreats the son to fly and save his life—

"Shall all thy mother's hopes lie in one grave?"

and the son rejoins:

"Is my name Talbot? and am I your son?
And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,
Dishonour not her honourable name,
To make a bastard and a slave of me;
The world will say,—He is not Talbot's blood
That basely fled, while noble Talbot stood."

On the day after the battle, the faithful herald who had worn his coat of arms all his life came to claim the body; kissed it, and, with tears trickling down his face, made his lament over his dead master.^[65] "Alas! is it you? I pray God pardon all your misdoings: I have been your officer of arms forty years or more, it is time I should surrender it to you:" then, disrobing himself of his tabard, according to the custom observed at all feudal funerals, he flung it over his master's body. The Earl had desired that his bones might rest in his native land, and they were brought home and buried at Whitchurch in Salop. When the church was rebuilt in 1722, an urn was discovered which contained his heart, embalmed, and wrapped in a crimson velvet cloth.

He was twice married; first to the Furnivall heiress, by whom he had John, who succeeded him as Earl of Shrewsbury, with two other sons; and secondly to Lady Margaret Beauchamp, the elder of the two co-heirs of the twelfth Earl of Warwick, who brought him three more sons and two daughters. She was the great-granddaughter of the last Lord Lisle, and in honour of this descent her eldest son John was created Baron Lisle of Kingston Lisle in 1443, and Viscount Lisle the year before he was slain. Thomas, second Viscount, who fell in a private quarrel in 1469,^[66] was the last heir male; and the barony passed to his sister Elizabeth, whose husband, Sir John Grey, was created Viscount Lisle.

The "great Alcides of the field" stands at the head of the longest existing roll of English Earls. Till now, no other house has rivalled the often vaunted illustration of the De Veres, who could count up twenty successive Earls of their own lineage; but in the present generation the title granted nearly 550 years ago to the victorious Talbot is borne by the twentieth representative of his name and blood, who takes rank in the peerage as Premier Earl of England. The elder line of his posterity ended with the eighth Earl in 1617, when the succession passed to the Talbots of Grafton, descended from a third son of the second Earl. Alathea, the heiress of his elder brother Gilbert, seventh Lord Shrewsbury, had previously carried away the whole array of ancient baronies—Talbot, Strange of Blackmere, Comyn of Badenoch, Valence, Montchensie, Furnivall, Verdon, and Lovetot (as used on his "lodging escutcheons," when he was sent Ambassador to France by Queen Elizabeth), to her husband the Earl of Arundel.

In the following century Charles, twelfth Earl, received a Dukedom. His father was the unhappy Earl Francis who was killed in a duel by his wife's paramour, Villiers Duke of Buckingham, while the shameless Countess herself stood by, in the disguise of a page, and held the Duke's horse. The son of this "wanton Shrewsbury" was "allowed to be," says Macaulay, "one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his time. His person was pleasing, his temper singularly sweet; his parts such as, if he had been born in a humble rank, might well have raised him to civil greatness." He had early tendered his sword and purse to the Prince of Orange, and was among the principal promoters of the Revolution of 1689. Burnet relates that he "was one of the nobles whom William chiefly trusted, and one by whose advices he governed all his motions, and drew his declarations;" and no sooner were he and his wife proclaimed King and Queen of England, than the Earl of Shrewsbury was appointed one of their two principal Secretaries of State. "No man so young had, within living memory, occupied so high a post in the Government;" for he was then barely twenty-eight. "He seemed to be the petted favourite of nature and of fortune; but scarcely any other part of his life was of a piece with that splendid commencement." His temper proved weak and unstable; ill-fitted for the strain and stress of the time; he lost heart amid the vexations and responsibilities of office, and resigned the seals within the year. He wavered in his allegiance, and secretly tendered his services to James II: then repented and retracted: again took office in 1694 at the personal request of the King, who created him Duke of Shrewsbury and Marquess of Alton in the same year: once more resigned on the score of health in 1697, and finally left England in 1700. He was five years abroad, three of which were spent at Rome, where he fell in love with an Italian widow, whom he afterwards married. On his return home, though coldly received by his Whig friends, he was loaded with preferments by Queen Anne, who named him Lord Chamberlain, Ambassador Extraordinary to France, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and during the political crisis that embittered her last days, delivered to him the white staff of the Earl of Oxford: "so that at the Queen's death he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, High Treasurer of Great Britain, and Lord Chamberlain: three great employments never in the hands of one person before." He died in 1717, leaving no children to inherit his new honours, which expired with him. He was the first of his race that joined the communion of the Church of England, having abjured the tenets of Rome, on the discovery of the Popish plot, but at his death the Earldom reverted to a Roman Catholic heir, and so continued till the extinction of the elder line with the seventeenth Earl in 1858; when Henry, third Earl Talbot, established his right to the title and estates. He was the grandfather of the present representative of this renowned house, and the descendant of a great-uncle of George, ninth Earl, from whom came Charles Talbot, created Lord Talbot of Hensol on becoming Lord Chancellor in 1733. William, the next in succession, received the Earldom of Talbot on the accession of George III.; but it died with him, and was re-granted to his nephew and heir in 1784. The barony of Dynevor had been given to him in 1780 with special remainder to his daughter Lady Cecil Rice.

The Irish Talbots branched off from the English house at an early and uncertain date; but it must at all events have been subsequent to the twelfth century (the one given by Mr. Shirley), as they bear the golden lion of the Princess Gwendoline, first assumed by her husband Sir Gilbert Talbot, who died in 1274. The present head of the house is Lord Talbot of Malahide, whose Irish title dates from 1831, and his English peerage from 1856.

Of this stock was Richard, the youngest of the eight sons of Sir William Talbot of Cartown, who was created Viscount of Baltinglass and Earl of Tyrconnel in 1685, and Marquess and Duke of Tyrconnel in 1689 by James II. We first hear of him as the gay and handsome Dick Talbot, who "diced and revelled with Gramont," and married "the loveliest coquette of the brilliant Whitehall of the Restoration," Frances Jenyns, the sister of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, and the widow of Count Hamilton. He was a man of savage and imperious temper, and very indifferent character, "of whom much ill has been written, and more believed;" but not the brutal bravo and bully represented by Macaulay. He had courage as well as wit, and remained unalterably faithful to the unhappy master in whose service he died. In 1687 he had succeeded Clarendon as Lord Deputy of Ireland; and while making preparations for the defence of Limerick in 1691 he was struck down by a fit of apoplexy, from which he never rallied. His honours were attainted; but he had left only two daughters, of whom one became Princess of Ventimiglia. His widow obtained permission to build a nunnery for Poor Clares at Dublin, in which she took the veil, and there, in 1730, La Belle Jenyns—once the petted and admired beauty of Charles II.'s Court—ended her days at the great age of ninety-two. There is a tradition that, at the time of her husband's death and forfeiture, she was left absolutely penniless, and not venturing to make her necessities known, gained her livelihood for some weeks as a sempstress. On the south side of the Strand then stood the New Exchange, originally built in the days of James I. from the rubbish of the old stables of Durham House, where long rows of shops were occupied by milliners and sempstresses, and the gallants of the day used to resort for a lounge in the afternoon. Here Pepys, among the rest, often came to gossip with the fair stall-holders; here Anne Clarges, afterwards Duchess of Albemarle, sold wash-balls, powder and gloves at the sign of the Three Spanish Gipsies; and here, it is said, Frances Jenyns, Duchess of Tyrconnel, disguised in a white mask, and always dressed in white clothes, kept a little shop, and became known as the White Milliner.^[67]

The now extinct elder branch of the Talbots originally held of the honour of Lacy in Lincolnshire, and were transplanted into Yorkshire 37 Hen. III., when Edmond Earl of Lincoln granted to Sir Thomas Talbot in fee the manors of Bascholfe (Bashall) and Mitton in Craven. Sixth in descent from him was another Sir Thomas, who betrayed King Henry VI. to his pursuers, and for this "good service" received from Richard III. in 1484 an annuity to him and his heirs of £40 a-year. In 1485 his three sons also had annual grants made to them. The story of his treachery is thus told by Holinshed. "King Henrie was taken in Cletherwood, beside Bungerleie Hippingstones, in Lancashire, by Thomas Talbot, sonne and heir of Sir John Talbot of Basshall, and John Talbot, his cosin of Colebrie, which deceived him, being at his dinner at Waddington Hall,^[68] and brought him toward London, with his legs bound to the stirrups." There was a tradition in the neighbourhood, recorded by Christopher Townley as current in his time, that the unhappy King, when betrayed by the Talbots, foretold nine generations of the family in succession, consisting of a wise man and a weak man by turns, after which the name should be lost. Something like these hereditary alternations of sense and folly—not uncommon in most families—may have happened; but I can only trace five generations that succeeded the traitor. The last heir—again Thomas—died in 1627; leaving two daughters, Elizabeth and Margery. Both were married—Elizabeth twice—but neither of them had children.

Touny :

for Toesni or Todeni, from Toesny, in the commune of Gaillon, arrondissement of Louviers, Normandy. Six of this name are on the Dives Roll; Raoul, Robert, Juhel, Ibert, Berenger, and Guillaume; but Juhel is inserted by mistake, for he was named De Toteneis, or Totness, from his Devonshire barony (see Maine). Raoul or Ralph de Toeni—called by Wace De Conches (from his barony of Conches, near Evreux, where his father Roger had founded an abbey), was the Hereditary Standard Bearer of Normandy, and, as such, offered the honour of bearing the consecrated banner at the battle of Hastings. "The Duke called a serving man, and ordered him to bring forth the gonfanon which the Pope had sent him; and he who bore it, having unfolded it, the Duke took it, reared it, and called to Raol de Conches: 'Bear my gonfanon,' said he, 'for I would not but do you right; by right and by ancestry your line are standard bearers of Normandy, and very good knights have they all been.' 'Many thanks to you,' said Raol, 'for acknowledging our right; but, by my faith, the gonfanon shall not this day be borne by me. To-day I claim quittance of the service, for I would serve you in other guise. I will go with you into the battle, and will fight the English as long as life shall last, and know my hand will be worth any twenty of such men.'"—Wace.

The De Toenis were "royal, descended from an uncle of Rollo;" and one of the greatest houses in Normandy. Ralph de Toeni was among Duke William's chief barons, and "through the malicious suggestion of some who bore a grudge towards him" had been at one time expelled from the Duchy, but by "the intercession of Friends" reinstated in his estates and office of standard-bearer. He appears as a great landowner in Domesday, and though his principal estates were in Norfolk, chose Flamstead in Hertfordshire as his chief residence. His mother was a sister of William FitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford, and on the failure of that family he received some share of their estates, with the castle of Clifford, which FitzOsbern had "newly built upon a piece of waste ground." He died in 1102, and was buried with his ancestors in his Norman Abbey of Conches. All his descendants made great alliances. His son Ralph married a daughter of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland; Roger, his grandson, a daughter of the Earl of Hainault; and another Roger, his great-grandson, Constance de Bellomont, whose grandmother had been a daughter of Henry I., with whom he obtained some lands in Devonshire, originally granted by that King, and a gift from King John of the Norfolk manor still called Saham-Tony. Ralph, their son, was in arms with the rebellious barons, but was subsequently appointed one of the Barons Marcher of the Welsh frontier by Henry III., and died in the Holy Land, having been "signed with the cross" in 1239. The monks of St. Albans recount how his dead brother was brought back to life to induce him to build a monastery in the West of England. "Roger (a valiant and expert Soldier) lying on his Death Bed near Reading, his brother Ralph desired to have some Conference with him, and being then distant some thirty miles, rode with all speed, to come to his life: But when he got thither, finding him speechless and void of sense, with great lamentation he cryed out, 'My dear Brother, I conjure thee in the name of God, that thou speak to me:' adding that he would never eat again, unless he might have some discourse with him. And that thereupon the dead man sharply rebuked him for thus disquieting his spirit, by those importunate clamors; telling him, that he then beheld with his eyes the torments of evil men, and the joys of the Blessed; and likewise the great punishment whereunto he himself (miserable wretch) was destined. And going on in their discourse, Ralph replied, 'Shalt not thou then be saved?' 'Yes,' quoth Roger, 'for I have done one good work, though but a little one; that is to say, a small gift to the honour of the Blessed Virgin; for which, through God's mercy, I trust for redemption.' 'But,' quoth Ralph, 'may not these punishments whereunto thou art designed be mitigated by good Works, Masses, and Alms Deeds?' 'Yes,' quoth Roger: 'Why then,' quoth Ralph, 'I do faithfully promise thee, that for the health of our Souls, and the Souls of our Ancestors, I will found a Religious House, for good Men to inhabite; who for the health of our Souls, shall always pray to God.'" This may probably be taken as a fair sample of the means then employed for extending the possessions of the Church.

Third in descent from the crusader was Robert, the last of the line, who for his good service in the wars of Scotland and Gascony was summoned to parliament as Baron Toni in 1299. He is the knight of the Swan spoken of at Caerlaverock:—

"Blanche cote et blanches alettes
Escu blanche et baniere blanche
Avoit o la vermaylle manche
Robert de Tony ki bien signe
Ke il est du chevalier a cigne."

"According to the popular romance of the Knight of the Swan," says Sir Harris Nicholas, "the Counts of Boulogne were lineally descended from that fabulous personage,^[69] and genealogists of former ages have pretended to trace the pedigrees of the Beauchamps, Bohuns, and Staffords to the same source, whence they say they derive their respective crests. It would therefore not be difficult to deduce the descent of Robert de Toeni from the Counts of Boulogne, and the accurate knowledge of genealogy that the poet has displayed in his account of Lord Clifford's pedigree, justifies the idea that he referred to Toeni's pedigree; an opinion further supported by the fact of the shield, on his seal affixed to the Baron's letter to the Pope, 1301, being surrounded by lions and swans alternately." He died s. p. in 1310, and his only sister Alice inherited. She was then a young widow of twenty-six, having been married to Thomas de Leybourne, son of William Lord Leybourne, the doughty Kentish knight who would know nothing of if or but:—

"Guillemes de Leybourne ausi,
Vaillans homs, sanz mes et sans si."

Her daughter Juliana was the famous heiress known as the "Infanta of Kent." Alice had two other husbands; Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (Noir Chien d'Arden), and William la Zouche of Ashby. The name of this great house survives in different counties; it was given to Zell-Tony in Devonshire, Stratford Tony and Newton Tony in Wiltshire.

The first Ralph that came out of Normandy had a younger brother named Robert, Baron of Stafford, whom the author of the 'Norman People' believes to be the same Robert de Todeni who built Belvoir Castle (vol. i., p. 177). But though they may have been namesakes, they were distinctly different persons. According to Domesday, Robert held in all one hundred and thirty-one manors in different counties; and Dugdale supposes that he took his name from the then newly-built castle of Stafford, of which the Conqueror appointed him the first castellan. He lived till the time of Henry I., and founded an Augustinian priory at Stone in Staffordshire (on the spot where one Enysan de Walton had murdered two nuns and a priest), which became the burial-place of the family. By his wife, Avice de Clare, he was the father of Nicholas, Viscount of Staffordshire with whose grandson Robert the male line terminated. A sister named Millicent carried the barony, with a great inheritance, to her husband Hervey Bagot (" a Gentleman of an antient Family in those parts"; vol. i., p. 194), who thereupon bore the title of Lord Stafford. But he had to pay so heavy a fine to Coeur de Lion for permission to marry this heiress, and obtain livery of her lands, that he was forced to sell Drayton—one of her manors—to the canons of St. Thomas. Their son, who bore the name of his mother, founded one of the loftiest of our English houses, which rose to the highest point of splendour only to fall to the other extreme of reverse. Third in descent from him was Edmund Stafford, summoned to parliament in 1299, who followed Edward I. into Scotland, and distinguished himself in his service. He had two sons: Ralph, and Richard, ancestor of the Staffords of Clifton. Ralph, a renowned captain in the wars of Edward III., defended Aguillon triumphantly against the whole power of the French, commanded in the van at Cressy, and was appointed, first Seneschal, and then Lieutenant-General of Aquitaine. He was one of the Founder Knights of the Garter, Earl of Stafford by creation in 1351, and Earl of Gloucester and Baron Audley in right of his wife Margaret de Audley, daughter and heir of Hugh, Earl of Gloucester, who had married one of the co-heirs of Gilbert de Clare. The next Earl followed in his father's footsteps, for he was fighting in France in the train of the Black Prince when a stripling of only seventeen, and died in 1386 at Rhodes, on his way home from the Holy Land, leaving four surviving sons: Thomas, William, and Edmund, successively third, fourth, and fifth Earls, and Sir Hugh, who married Lord Bourchier's heiress, and was summoned to parliament as Baron Bourchier, but died s. p. Earl Edmund, who fell in the battle of Stafford, had married Lady Anne Plantaganet (the daughter of Thomas Earl of Woodstock by Alianore, one of the great Bohun heiresses), who had been already "in her tender years" the wife of his brother Thomas; and in honour of this illustrious alliance their only son Humphrey was created Duke of Buckingham in 1444, with precedence next to the blood royal. But this rank was disputed by Henry de Beauchamp, the new Duke of Warwick, and it was found that nothing less than an Act of Parliament, granting each precedence on alternate years, could adjust their rival claims. Humphrey, in his turn, "receiv'd deep scars in France and Normandy," and died fighting for the Red Rose at Northampton in 1460. His eldest son had been slain five years previously at St. Albans; and thus, three loyal generations, one after the other, faithfully laid down their lives for the House of Lancaster. The second son, Sir Henry, married Henry VII.'s mother, Margaret Countess of Richmond, the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, "allied, by blood or affinity, to thirty kings and queens": and John, the youngest, was created Earl of Wiltshire, but the line failed in his son.

Humphrey's grandson, Henry, second Duke, was married to Katherine Widville, the sister-in-law of Edward IV.; yet, on his death, took part against Edward V. (his own nephew), and offered his services privately to the Duke of Gloucester, promising "to wait upon him with 1,000 good Fellows, if need were." He was one of the emissaries sent to the poor Queen, then in sanctuary at Westminster, who succeeded "by fair pretences and promises in gaining her young sons out of her hands;" he connived at their murder; and bore Richard III.'s train at his coronation, with the white staff of Lord High Steward of England. The guerdon of his crime was dealt out to him with no niggardly hand. He was appointed Chief Justice of North and South Wales, and Lord High Constable, with a grant of the lands of Humphrey de Bohun, as cousin and heir of blood, and such great riches that "he then made his boast, that he had as many Liveries of Stafford Knotts, as Richard Nevill the late great Earle of Warwick had of Ragged Staves." Yet his allegiance to the new King proved of brief duration. Some doubt whether he actually got possession of the coveted Bohun estates; others conjecture he had "trouble of conscience," or perceived that Richard's regard for him was waxing cold: at all events, from some cause or other, he retired in dudgeon to his Welsh castle of Brecknock, and plotted fresh treasons. In concert with the Marquess of Dorset, the Courtenays, and others, he took up arms for the heir male of Lancaster: but "from extraordinary floods" (long remembered by the name of "Buckingham's Water") he could not pass the Severn; his Welshmen dispersed "for want of money and victual," and the rising ended in disaster. The Courtenays fled into Brittany, and the Duke himself was forced to seek shelter in the house of a servant "whom he had tenderly brought up, and above all men trusted." This fellow delivered him up to the King, and he was beheaded in the market place at Salisbury, "without Arraignment or Judgment" in 1483. The betrayer did not, however, receive the promised reward of £1,000; for the King refused to give him anything, declaring "that he who would be untrue to so good a Master, would be false to all other."

Buckingham left three sons: 1. Edward, third Duke; 2. Henry, who married Lady Wiltshire, the widow of his cousin Edward Stafford, the second and last Earl, and was himself created Earl of Wiltshire, but died s. p. in 1523, and 3. Humphrey, who died young. Edward, the heir, was restored by Henry VII. to his Dukedom and other honours, and appointed Lord High Constable of England. Henry VIII., two years after his accession, granted him license to empark 2,000 acres at Thornbury in Gloucestershire, where he commenced building a magnificent castle: and for some time he was in high favour at Court. Yet he, too, was to end his life on the scaffold. He had, from some trivial cause, a bitter quarrel with Cardinal Wolsey:—it is said that at a great Court ceremonial, when the Duke was holding a bason to the King, no sooner had His Majesty washed than Wolsey dipped his own hands into the water, and Buckingham, stung at the indignity "flung the contents of the ewer into the churchman's shoes." Wolsey swore to be revenged; a retainer named Knevet was found to swear that the Duke had conspired against his sovereign; and he was tried and condemned as a traitor. On receiving sentence, he said to the Lord High Steward, "My Lord of Norfolk, you have said as a traitor should be said to; but I was never any. I nothing malign you, for what you have done to me; but the eternal God forgive you my death. I shall never sue to the King for life, though he be a gracious prince; and more grace may come from him than I desire; and so I desire you and all my fellows to pray for me." He was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1521. "A butcher's dog hath killed the noblest buck in England," said Charles V., on hearing of his fate.

With him the princely House of Stafford fell to rise no more. His only son, stripped alike of lands and dignities, received back a small fraction of its splendid possessions, with "a seat and voice in parliament as a baron:" and this title was borne by several generations. Edward, fourth Lord Stafford, "basely married to his mother's chambermaid," was succeeded by his grandson Henry, with whom the direct line terminated in 1637; and the claim of the last remaining heir, Roger, was rejected by the House of Lords on account of his poverty. This unfortunate man, the great-grandson of the last Duke, was then sixty-five, and had sunk into so abject a condition that he felt ashamed of bearing his own name, and long passed as Fludd, or Floyde, having, it is supposed, assumed the patronymic of one of his uncle's servants, who had reared and sheltered him in early life. He was compelled to surrender his barony to Charles I., and died unmarried in 1640; leaving an only sister, Jane, who in spite of her Plantagenet blood married a joiner, and had a son gaining a poor livelihood as a cobbler in 1637 at Newport in Shropshire. No downfall could well have been more complete.^[70]

All the kindred families of this name had then been extinct for a long time. The Staffords of Clifton (see p. 174) were barons by writ in 1371, and ended early in the following century. Another line (traced from Sir John Stafford, of Bromshull, co. Stafford) acquired Hooke in Dorsetshire during the reign of Henry IV. by the marriage of Sir Humphrey "with the silver hand"^[71] to the widow of Sir John Maltravers. One of their descendants was created Baron Stafford of Suthwyk in 1464; and after the execution and attainder of Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, in 1469, received his forfeited Earldom; but was himself beheaded at Bridgewater a few months afterwards. His two only daughters died unmarried.

One remaining branch of the royal Toenis still flourishes in the male line. Nigel de Toeni or De Stafford, a younger brother of the standard bearer's, held Drakelow, Gresley, and some other manors in Derbyshire and Staffordshire at the date of Domesday; the former "by the service of rendering a bow without a string; a quiver of Tutesbit (?) twelve fleched and one unfeathered arrow," sometimes called a buzon. Castle-Gresley took its name from his castle; and Church-Gresley marks the site of an Augustinian priory founded by his son William in the time of Henry I. Roger, the next heir, first bore the name of Gresley, that has been carried down to our own time by a long and honourable line of descent. His successors continued at Drakelow, and since the time of the first Edward have at various periods served as knights of the shire and High Sheriffs of their native county. Sir Geoffrey, in 1330, claimed the right of having a gallows at Drakelow and Gresley; Sir Nicholas, during the same reign, married a great heiress, Thomasin de Wasteneys; Sir William served Henry VIII. in his French wars, and dying issueless, was succeeded by his brother George, who was installed a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. Two others, Sir William and Sir Thomas, one Sheriff of Stafford, the other of Derby, were knighted by Queen Elizabeth; and the next in succession, George, received a baronetcy in 1611. "He was an active officer in the Parliamentary service during the Civil War, and was Lieut.-Colonel to Sir William Gell."—Lysons. In the beginning of the present century Sir Roger Gresley alienated much of the property; and, having no children, parcelled out the remainder in such a manner that, by annual sales, it should last him his life; but he died a comparatively young man, and Drakelow, "the only estate remaining in the county that has continued in the same family from the time of Domesday," is now held by his representative, Sir Robert Gresley.

Traies :

for Thays, according to Leland's version. He gives us "Thays et Tony": and again, further on, "Tay." This was a baronial name. "The family of Teutonicus, or Tyes, is frequently mentioned both in Normandy and England, and may possibly have descended from Baldric Teutonicus, ancestor of the Courcys and Nevills."—The Norman People. We find them early established in Yorkshire. "At a very small distance from the field of battle of Towton stands the antique and diminutive chapel of Leod, or Lede, which seems to have been domestic to the adjoining manor house. This was one of the seats of the ancient family of Tyas, styling themselves in Latin Teutonicus, five of whose tombs still remain in the chapel, which, as I recollect, is little more than eighteen feet long within. The inscriptions, in Longobardic characters, are partly visible, and four of the five bear the arms of Tyas, a fesse with three mallets in chief.

"This family De Tyas appear to have been magnificent persons. Sir Baldwin Teutonicus is styled nobilis miles, and a lady, probably his wife, nobilis
faemina. The following is a trait in their character of the same kind. Aº... (the year is omitted) Ed. I. In Rot. Cur. de Wakefield.

"Franco Tyas miles tulit actionem versus Germanum Mercer, qui arrestavit equum Wilmi Lepton armigeri sui ad dedecus & damnum praedit Franci, quia fuit sine armigero. Et praedictus Franco recuperavit centum solidos."

"The gravamen in this action was very singular. A poor mercer had arrested the horse of the plaintiffs esquire, in consequence of which the latter was unable to attend his knight to his great disgrace and loss. The plaintiff for this affront recovered one hundred shillings, equal, at least, to as many pounds at present.

"This Sir Franco, whom I trace pretty far into the reign of Henry III., must, I think, have been son of John Tyas, son of Sir Baldwin, and father of Henry, who seems to have been father of another Franco, the last of his name, who, when near the close of his life, made disposition of his estates. It seems evident that after his death they passed to the descendants of an heir female, several generations higher in the line."—Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete.

Dodsworth gives a more detailed and rather different pedigree commencing with Henricus Teutonicus, to whom, some time between 1195 and 1211, Roger de Laci granted the manor of Slaithwaithe, which passed to his brother Baldwin Teutonicus vel Ties, Lord of Lede, and in right of his wife Margery, also of Woodsome and Farnley, named from him Farnley-Tyas. He was the father of Sir Franco (the hero of Whitaker's story), who had a son variously named Henry and Richard, living 1279-1315, and married to a co-heiress of Neville of Mirfield. They had five sons: 1, Baldwin, s. p.; 2, Robert, a priest; 3, Franco II.; 4, Richard; and 5, John, Lord of Slaithwaite, whose heiress Margaret married Sir John Billingay. According to the same authority, Franco had an heir named Baldwin, and Richard two daughters only; whereas Hunter, the historian of South Yorkshire, asserts that Franco was a bachelor, and that from Richard "there seems to have descended a race of Tyas of Farnley who had property there, but not the manor."

The name was by no means confined to Yorkshire. There was a Waleran Teutonicus, who, in the time of Henry III., had the custody of the Isle of Wight during the minority of Earl Baldwin. Roger de Teie occurs in Oxfordshire 1194-98 (Rot. Curiae Regis). Sir Walter de Teys^[72] in 1316 held Bromham, &c, in Bedfordshire, and Nunnington, &c, in Yorkshire. He was summoned to parliament at Northampton in 1307, and again the following year for the King's coronation. He received numerous writs of military summons, and in 1315 was "stationed in the Marches for defence thereof against the Scots."—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Sir Henry Tyes, who held lands in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire, was a baron by writ in 1313. He served Edward II. in his Scottish wars; but, in 1322, taking part with the Earl of Lancaster, he was in arms against the King, attacked and burnt Bridgenorth, and "was one of the traitors that assisted in taking the town of Gloucester." He was made prisoner at the battle of Boroughbridge, and hanged for treason. Theodoric Teutonicus held of the King in Somersetshire, and Henry Teutonicus was a tenant of the new feoffment in Cornwall.—Testa de Nevill.

Tollemach :

"This must surely," says Sir Bernard Burke, "be a monkish interpolation. The inscription in the old manor house of Bentley, in Suffolk—

'Before the Normans into England came,
Bentley was my seat and Tollemache was my name,'

seems to set the matter at rest." Yet the name is found in Normandy. In the MS. Cartulary of Mont S. Michel (Public Library of Avranches) there are several writs regarding transactions between Thomas de St. John and the monks (fol. xxxv. verso) dated 1121, in which "Hugo Tallmascha" figures as a witness, showing a close connection with the St. Johns. Like Talbot, Giffard, Ridel, &c, Tollemache was a personal appellative, unconnected with land, and may possibly be derived from Tailler (to cut), and mache (corn salad). (See 'Notes and Queries,' 5th S. viii.) Sir Bernard Burke states it to be a corruption of the word "tollmack," tolling of the bell; but, as Mr. Freeman justly points out, "in what language 'tollmack' means tolling of the bell is not explained." Nor was there any Tollemache seated at Bentley at the date of Domesday; "Bentley in Suffolk is there mentioned three times; ii. 287, 287 b, 295 b. It passed through the hands of such well-known people as Earl Gyrth and Ralph the Staller: but, alas! there is no sign of Tollemache, of his bell, or of his verses." On the other hand, Hugo Talmasche—evidently the same Hugo who witnesses the Norman deeds of Mont St. Michel—subscribed the charter made by John de St. John in favour of Godstow, in Oxfordshire, in the reign of Stephen (Mon. iv. 363). There was evidently a near relationship between the Tollemaches and St. Johns, although its exact nature remains to be found out. "Hugo Talemasche appears again in company with John de St. John in the Pipe-roll of Henry I., p. 3: and in the Gloucester cartulary we find the gifts of Hugh Talamasche confirmed by Thomas de St. John. No one appears in Domesday by the name of Tollemache in any form; but there is a Hugh who holds lands at Stoke in Oxfordshire, partly of Walter Giffard, partly of Roger of Ivry. He may well be either the Hugh of the Pipe-roll and of the Godstow charter, or his father."—Freeman. Probably the next heir was another of the name, who, "when he took upon him the monk's habit at Gloster, gave to the Abbey one moiety of Hampton. His son Peter, and King Henry II., confirmed the gift."—Atkyn's Gloucestershire. Richard Talemasch, of Oxfordshire, is found in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194-98.

In the following reign occurs the first notice of the Bentley family; though, at the death of the last heir male in 1821, they claimed to have "continued in the county of Suffolk, in an uninterrupted male succession, from the arrival of the Saxons; a period of nearly thirteen centuries." William Talmash gave lands in Bentley and Dodness to Ipswich Priory in the time of King John: and Hugh Talmash paid a fine to Ipswich, under Henry III., for freedom of toll for him and his villeins in that parish. Either he, or his son of the same name, held the manor of the Crown by knight service in 1296, and was the tenant of the Countess of Gloucester at Talmash Hall, in Bricet Parva. He, with two of his kinsmen, William and John, was summoned to attend the King at Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1300 for his expedition into Scotland. This John, whose arms remain emblazoned in York Minster, took the Black Cross, and received a summons to attend the great Council at Westminster in 1324 (Palgrave's Parl. Writs). Another Sir William, of earlier date, had acquired Hawstead, probably through Cecily his wife, in the reign of Henry III.; but his grandson left only a daughter, married to Bokenham; whence their manor was called Talmage's, otherwise Bokenham's.

Sir Lionel Talmash, late in the fifteenth century, married the heiress of Helmingham, in another part of the county, where he took up his abode. He twice served as High Sheriff for Norfolk and Suffolk in the reign of Henry VIII.; and built Helmingham Hall on the site of an old moated manor house, named from its former owners, Creke's Hall. It is a red brick building in the picturesque Tudor style, surrounded, as of yore, by its moat of clear water, plentifully stocked with fish, and crossed by a drawbridge, still in use, that, according to a fond tradition, has been regularly drawn up every night for the last eight hundred years. There can, however, be no cavilling as to the antiquity of the oak-trees in the park, for they take rank among the finest in the kingdom. Sir Lionel's heir, another Sir Lionel, entertained Queen Elizabeth for five days at Helmingham in 1561, on which occasion she stood godmother to his eldest son, and left the lute on which she had played behind her as a keepsake. It was her parting gift to her host, and is preserved,^[73] with her spinet, the bed on which she slept, and her portrait, painted with bright auburn hair, in remembrance of this visit.

In the following century, a third Sir Lionel brought a Scottish Earldom into the family by his marriage with Lady Elizabeth Murray. Her father—a nephew of the Thomas Murray who had been first preceptor and then secretary to Charles I., was created Earl of Dysart and Lord Huntingtower in 1643, and is noted by Bishop Burnet for "one particular quality. When he was drunk, which was very often, he was on a most exact reserve, though at other times pretty open." Lady Elizabeth was, it is said, "a woman of great beauty and far greater parts," combining with the rather formidable reputation of being versed in divinity, history, mathematics, and philosophy, "a wonderful quickness of apprehension, and amazing vivacity in conversation." Not only did she inherit her father's honours, but in 1670—the year after Sir Lionel's death, she obtained a fresh patent, granting them "to such of her issue as she might nominate under her hand during her life." She was evidently a woman to whom nothing could be refused. "Cromwell himself, the stern Cromwell, was unable," we are told, "to resist her blandishments." She re-married the Duke of Lauderdale, and queened it to her heart's content, but left children only by her first husband. Her eldest son, Lionel, succeeded as third Earl of Dysart, and was followed by another Lionel, who had six sons and eight daughters; yet all this goodly progeny did not furnish a single heir-male in the next generation. The family was doomed to extinction. The first son died an infant: Lionel was the fifth, and Wilbraham the sixth Earl; George, a young midshipman, was killed by a fall from the masthead of H. M.'s ship Modeste; John, a captain in the navy, the only brother that was not childless, fell in a duel at New York, and his one son, a lad of nineteen, lost his life at the siege of Valenciennes; while William the youngest—again a sailor—perished in the Repulse frigate, during a hurricane in the Atlantic, with every soul on board. Of the eight sisters, four died very young: Lady Frances never married; Lady Louisa was the wife of John Manners; and Lady Jane, the youngest, had two husbands; first John Delap Halliday of Leasowes in Shropshire, and secondly John Ferry.

The two last named were the co-heirs of their brother Wilbraham, on whose death, in 1821, Lady Louisa succeeded as Countess of Dysart, and resumed her maiden name, still borne by her descendants. With the Earldom, they inherited Buckminster and the Lincolnshire property, and Ham House, near Richmond, that rare old relic of bygone days, which still lives and breathes in the past, unspoiled by the baneful touch of modern improvement.

The old house of Helmingham fell to the share of Lady Jane, with Peckforton in Cheshire, where a stately castle has since been built. Her eldest son by her first marriage, Admiral John Halliday, took the name of Tollemache, and was the father of the present Lord Tollemache, who received his title in 1874. Perhaps none in the whole peerage has a more amply secured succession; for the new peer boasts of eleven sons, four grandsons and several great-grandsons.

Tolous :

or De Toulouse, a princely name. "The Counts of Toulouse descended from Fulcoald, Count of Rodez 837, whose son Fridolind became Count of Toulouse 849 (L'Art de Verif. les Dates), and was ancestor of that Sovereign house, whose services in the Crusades, and whose ruin in the Albigensian wars, occupy so important a place in history. A branch of this illustrious house settled in England at the Conquest, and Hugh de Toulouse obtained grants from Richard FitzGilbert in Surrey. His grandson, Peter de Thalews (Tolouse), held more than two fees there in 1165 of the Honor of De Clare (Liber Nig.)."—The Norman People. The ingenious author of the above work has discovered that the existing family of Toler can be armorially identified with the Counts of Toulouse. "For a long time," he says, "I could not discover the origin of this family. I formed several theories, which I was eventually obliged to relinquish. At length no clue remained except the arms: a cross flory surmounted by another cross between four leaves erect. They were at first presumed to be of no great antiquity, as they do not present the simplicity characteristic of the ancient Armorial. It appeared, however, on further enquiry, that the leaves had not originally been included in the arms; for families of 'Tollers' and 'Towlers' were ascertained to have borne the same arms without any leaves, so that it was clear the leaves were merely the emblems of a particular branch. The inquiry was continued with the aid of this armorial, and the family traced in different parts of England in former ages, under a name continually varying in form—sometimes Towlers, then Tolers, then Towlowse, Towlous, Tolouse, until at length it clearly appeared that the latter, which was coeval with the Conquest, was the original form. This pointed to Toulouse in France as the place from which they had originally come; and, desirous to ascertain whether any trace could be found of a family named from a city so large as Toulouse (of which there seemed very little hope), I directed my attention to works containing information as to its early history. I turned to Anselme's great work on the peers and nobles of France, in hopes of finding, under his account of the Sovereign Counts of Toulouse, some reference to works which might enable me to pursue the inquiry. The volume was accordingly opened which contains the history of the Counts of Toulouse, when, to my extreme astonishment, I recognized the arms of the English Tolers or Towlers at the head of the history of that great house. Their arms were the hereditary emblems of that almost kingly race in all its branches—the well-known 'Cross of Toulouse' being a cross fleury voided (i.e. in skeleton), which English heralds had described as a cross fleury surmounted by another cross. Of course all these various families of Toler, Toller, and others, bearing the Cross of Toulouse, were identified as one in origin, and as, no doubt, descendants of the princely house whose name and arms they have borne from the eleventh century." This is the more curious, as the Tolers themselves have preserved no tradition of their splendid descent. The present Earl of Norbury only traces his pedigree from a successful soldier of Cromwell's, who migrated from Norfolk to Ireland during the time of the Commonwealth, and obtained a grant of land in Tipperary.

Tanny :

a baronial name derived from the Castle of Tani, in Normandy. Auvrai de Tanie is on the Dives Roll: and Robert de Tany witnesses William the Conqueror's charter to Selby Abbey, Yorkshire (Mon. Angl.). He held a barony in Essex, when the name was given to Stapleford-Tany, Chignall-Tany, and Latton-Tany. Hasculf, his son, who in 1140 had a great suit with Rualo de Abrincis, and also contested some property with William de Boville, was the father of Rainald and Gruel. Rainald, a benefactor of Bermondsey Abbey in Surrey, left no heirs, and Gruel, or Grailand, succeeded, and certified in 1165 that he held three knight's fees de veteri feoffamento. Then came another Hasculf; and lastly, Gilbert, whose next heirs were William de Fauburgh, Maud the wife of Adam de Legh, and Nicolas de Beauchamp. He died in 1220, seized of seven knight's fees in the counties of Essex, Cambridge, and Suffolk, the Lordships of Aungre (Ongar) and Auvilers forming part of his barony.

Some male descendants, however, there still were of this "very considerable Family," as Morant styles them; for in 1235, and the greater part of the three following years, Peter de Tani was Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire. Of his son John we are only told that he bestowed some land on Waltham Abbey, but his grandson, Sir Richard, was Sheriff of the two counties in 1260 and 1261, Conservator of the Peace in 1263, and matched with a great heiress, Margery, daughter of Richard FitzWilliam, who brought him Stapleford with eight knight's fees. He suffered seizure of his lands for taking part in the rebellion of 1264, but was restored to the King's good graces and his forfeited property through the mediation of Roger de Leybourne in 1267. Moreover, in the following year, he was appointed Constable of Hadley, and received a license to empark his wood of Stapleford within the Forest. He was succeeded by Richard and Roger (or Robert) his sons; and then by Laurence, the last male heir, who died in 1317, leaving his sister Margaret de Drokensford to inherit the estate.

"Of this family also was Lucas de Thani, who in 9 Edward III. was constituted Justice of all the King's Forests South of Trent; but the next ensuing year, being a valiant Souldier, and in that Expedition made into Wales; upon a skirmish with the Welch, who were too strong for him and his party, endeavouring to pass a Bridge (begun by the King, and not finished), he had the fate to be drowned, with many more in that Retreat. Others say, that it was by passing the River in Boats, which being overladen, sunk them."—Dugdale. The De Tanys bore Argent a Maunch Gules.

Touke :

from Touques, arrondissement of Pont L'Evesque, at the mouth of the river so called. "Le Seigneur de Touque" appears on the list of those who fought under William the Conqueror both in the Norman Chronicle and in the Roman de Rou. "Roger de Touques occurs in Hants 1130 (Rot. Pip.); Humphrey in Derby, William also in Derby, and Roger in Dorset in 1165 (Liber Niger). Sir Walter Touk was of Notts and Derby about 1300, and bore Sable billetee Or, a quarter Ermine. Sir Robert Touk at the same time was of Cambridge, and bore Barry of six. Reginald Thukes, in the time of Stephen, gave Hanworth to Gloucester Abbey."—The Norman People. Henry Touke served Edward I. in his Scottish wars, and obtained from him a grant of the lands of Maud de Carrick and Isabel, the mother of Eustace of Bothwell (Sir Francis Palgrave, History and Affairs of Scotland). Thomas Tuke was of Lincoln at the same date (Rotul. Hundred), and Ralph Toke of Hampshire, John and Thomas Toke of Oxfordshire, and Richard Toke of Wiltshire.

In Nottinghamshire the Toukes were to be found for about three hundred years. William de Tulc, or Tuke, during the reign of Stephen, held of Ralph Silvain in Kelham, part of the great Richmond Fee, and was a benefactor of Rufford Abbey. His son William confirmed and added to his gifts, and "7 Ric. I. gave account of two marks, for having his land again, whereof he was disseized for being in Nottingham Castle, as most of our Nottinghamshire gentry were at that time, with Earl John."—Thoroton's Notts. Henry, his heir, was living in 1218, and was followed by two Sir Walters, father and son, then by another Henry, and a Simon, mentioned in 1337. Here the pedigree breaks off: but in 1440 we find Thomas Touc, holding lands in North and South Clifton, Northwell-Woodhouse, Ossington, Holme, North Muskham, Sutton and Kelham, and Robert Touc occurs four years afterwards. Then "the principal manor that was Tuke's, from that family came to Foljambe," most likely through an heiress.

A branch was seated at Leke, in the same county, where Humphrey de Touke held of Robert de Ferrers, t. Henry II.; John, son of Sir William, and grandson of Sir Philip de Touc of Leke, was living 9 Ed. I.

Morant, in his History of Essex, tells us that "Sir Brian Tuke, Treasurer of the Chamber to Henry VIII., received from him the manor of South Weald. He was Sheriff of the county in 1553, and a man of learning. Leland highly commends him for his wonderful eloquence in the English language. He had been constituted in 1522 Secretary to the King for the French tongue; was Clerk of the Parliament, and in 1528, being one of the King's Secretaries, was sent Ambassador to France with Bishop Tunstall." He died 1545, leaving two sons: 1, Charles, s. p.; 2, George.

There is a Kentish family of this name, derived from Robert de Toke, who was present with Henry III. at the battle of Northampton in 1264. His great-grandson was seated at Westcliffe in Kent; and from him, in the fifth generation, descended John Toke of Bere, living in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI. He had three sons: 1, Thomas, of Bere: 2, Ralph, ancestor of the Tokes of Cambridgeshire, Dorsetshire, and Hertfordshire; and 3, John, s. p. Thomas married the heiress of Godinton, thenceforward the residence of the family, and was the father of John Toke, who received from Henry VII, as his reward for his expedition in a message on which he was employed to the French King, an augmentation of honour to his arms; viz. Argent, on a chevron between three greyhounds' heads erased Sable, collared Or, three plates. "Which coat," says Hasted, "the Tokes of Godinton have ever since borne, in the first quarter of their arms; placing the original arms of Toke, Parted per chevron, Sable and Argent, three griffins' heads erased and counterchanged, in the second place." Many of his descendants are buried in Great Chart Church; among them lies "Nicholas Toke of Godinton, usually called Captain Toke, sheriff in 1663, who, dying in 1680, was buried in the chancel, with his five wives. His portrait at full length is in the hall here, and that of Diana his fifth wife, daughter of the Earl of Winchilsea. There is an anecdote of him in the family, that at the age of ninety-three, being left a widower, he walked from hence to London, to pay his addresses to a sixth wife; but being taken ill, he presently died. His portrait well expresses the strength of his frame and constitution. Leaving no male issue by any of his wives, he devised this seat of Godinton, with the rest of his estate, to his nephew and heir-at-law, Nicholas Toke of Wye."—Ibid. Godinton Hall, still held by his representative, is a fine old Tudor house, containing some stained glass, good oak carving, and ancient andirons. "In the windows of the staircase are collected all the arms, quarterings, and matches of the family, in painted glass; they are numerous, very perfect, and well preserved. The drawing-room upstairs is curiously wainscoted with oak, and carved, particularly along the upper part of it; all round the room is a representation of the exercise and manoeuvres of the antient militia, with the men habited and accoutred with their arms, in every attitude of marching, exercise, &c, which makes a very droll exhibition of them. * * * * There was a vineyard at Godinton in Captain Nicholas Toke's time, from which was made wine of an extraordinary fine sort and flavour."—Ibid.

Tibtote :

from Thiboutot, in the Pays de Caux. John de Thiboutot is mentioned by Des Bois in 1107; and others appear in the Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95. They were Sieurs d'Alvemont, ennobled in 1667, and bore D'argent an sautoir denche de gueules—precisely the same arms as the English house. Three De Thiboutots are found in the Assembly of Norman nobles in 1789—Nobiliaire de Normandie. In England the name, which in after ages degenerated into Tiptoft, first occurs in the Liber Niger. Ralph de Toboltot or Toboutot held a fief in Suffolk from De Clare in 1165. He is not noticed by Dugdale, who begins his account of the family with Walter de Tibetot, who forfeited the lands he held of Earl Ferrers in Leicestershire in 1204 for "adhering to the King's Enemies." Next follows Henry de Tibetot—how related does not appear—in emphatic contrast to the last; for, being in arms for the Crown at the accession of Henry III., he, with Thomas Botterel, received a grant of the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire estates of Adam Painell, one of the revolted barons. His son Robert, again, was through life a "trusty servant" to Edward I.; attended him to the Holy Land; fought his battles in Scotland and Gascony; was Constable of his castles of Porchester and Nottingham: his Commissioner to treat for peace with Llewellyn in 1274, and his Lieutenant in Wales in 1289. On this occasion he gave battle to Rees-ap-Meredith, killed four thousand of his followers, and carried him captive to York, where the unhappy prince perished on the scaffold. "Some say," suggests Dugdale, "that Rees rebelled, by reason of Injuries done to him by this Robert:" whose rule, we may infer, was none of the mildest. He died in 1297, a man of extended possessions; for he had obtained a weekly market and yearly fair at his manor of Burwell in Cambridgeshire, free-warren at Bentley in Yorkshire and Braundeford in Suffolk, with a grant of Langar and Berneston in Nottinghamshire. His successor Pain (named after his grandfather Pain de Chaworth) was summoned to parliament by Edward II. in 1308, though he had been in dire disgrace during the preceding reign, and suffered sequestration for having returned from his second campaign in Scotland without leave. The King further appointed him Constable of Northampton and Justiciar of the Forests beyond Trent. He was three times again engaged in the Northern wars, and fell at the battle of Stirling in 1313. He left a young widow, Agnes de Ros, who had brought him the Yorkshire manor of Weighton-in-the-Wolds, and speedily re-married; and a son, then only fourteen months old, John, second Lord Tibetot.

No sooner had this baby-heir come to man's estate, than he in his turn took the field; and from that time forth, like most gentlemen of the period, spent the chief part of his time under arms. He could count up four campaigns in Scotland and two in Flanders, in addition to the "grand Expedition to France" undertaken in 1342, which he joined in the retinue of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Four years afterwards he was selected for the onerous post of Governor of Berwick upon Tweed. He died in 1367, having been twice married. By his first wife Margaret, the splendidly dowered co-heiress of Giles Lord Badlesmere, in whose right he held land in nine different counties, he had two sons; John, who died s. p. in his lifetime, and Robert, his heir. By the second, Elizabeth Aspall, the widow of Sir Thomas Wanton, he left one other son, Pain.

Robert, the last Lord Tibetot (for Pain never received a summons to parliament), was twenty-six years of age when he lost his father, and only survived him five years, leaving three little daughters in ward of Richard, Lord Scrope of Bolton, then Lord Treasurer of England. The two eldest of these great heiresses^[74] their sagacious guardian disposed of in marriage to his own sons; Margaret was given to Roger, second Lord Scrope of Bolton; and Milicent to Sir Stephen Le Scrope; while Elizabeth became the wife of Philip Le Despencer. All three left descendants, and brought their husbands one or more great estates. Margaret had Langar, with "the Castell of Langham in Nottinghamshire, where was a principall House of the Tipetots;" Milicent, Castle Combe in Wilts and Oxenden in Gloucestershire; and Elizabeth, Nettlested in Suffolk.

Some of the land, however, including Burwell (or Tiptot Manor) in Cambridgeshire, passed to their uncle Pain de Tibetot; and from him to his son Sir John, a baron of the realm in 1426. "The Lord Tipetot that was in Edwarde the 4. Dayes had such Landes as were left only to the Heire Mais of the auncienter Lorde Tipetote."—Leland. Yet this second family attained a pre-eminence that had never been accorded to the first. Sir John, an able statesman and successful soldier, filled some of the highest offices in the realm during three successive reigns, and was enriched by princely grants.^[75] He had been retained to serve Henry IV. in the field for the term of his life with a stipend of one hundred marks, and on Owen Glendower's attainder in 1406, he obtained all the lands in South Wales that had belonged to one of his followers, Rees-ap-Griffith. In the same year he was Chief Butler of England: the next, Treasurer of the King's Household, with two important commands in Acquitaine: and the accession of Henry V. only brought him a fresh instalment of honours and dignities. One preferment trod closely on the heels of the other. In 1415 he was Seneschal of Acquitaine: in 1416 Ambassador to the King of the Romans: in 1417 President of the King's Exchequer in Normandy and Treasurer of the Duchy. Henry VI. appointed him Chief Steward of the Royal castles and manors throughout all Wales and the Marches, then vested in the Crown during the minority of the Duke of York, and summoned him to parliament as Lord Tibetot and Powys. He was twice again in the French wars with a great following; and in the interval named Castellan of Merc in the Marches of Picardy. He died in 1440, leaving by his wife Joyce, sister and co-heir of Sir Edward Charlton, Lord Powys (a descendant of the ancient Princes of Powys), an only son, to whom accrued a magnificent inheritance.

This son, John, then a lad of fourteen, was created Earl of Worcester on attaining his majority, and proved one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was educated at Baliol College, Oxford; but "wandered in search of learning to Italy, studied in her universities, and became a teacher at Padua, where the elegance of his Latinity drew tears from the most learned of the Popes, Pius the Second, better known as AEneas Sylvius. Caxton can find no words warm enough to express his admiration of one 'which in his time flowered in virtue and cunning, to whom I know none like among the lords of the temporality in science and moral virtue.'"—Green's History of the English People. He was not only facile princeps among the unlettered nobles of his own day, with whom learning was of little account, but would have ranked high amid the scholars of any other age. He translated into English the Orations of Publius Cornelius and Caius Flaminius, and was the author of several learned tracts, enumerated by Bale. Above all, he was the munificent patron and protector of men of letters, and the staunch supporter of Caxton. If, however, his position was unsurpassed in science and literature, there was little to admire in his political career. In 1449 he received, as I have already stated, an Earldom from Henry VI. in memory of his father's services; and eight years later—while still under thirty—had been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. Yet, no sooner was Ed. IV. seated on the throne, than he veered round to the rising Sun of York; and accepted the offices of Justiciar of North Wales and Constable of the Tower under the new dynasty. He was welcomed with enthusiasm to the Yorkist camp. No rewards were thought too great for this important and recently converted ally; and each coming year was marked by some fresh proof of the Royal favour. In 1461 he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; in 1462 Lord Chancellor of Ireland for life: in 1463 Steward of the Household: then again Deputy of Ireland, where he took up his abode in 1446; Constable of England and a Knight of the Garter. He is said to have been so cruel, that he "earned the epithet of the Butcher even amid the horrors of the civil wars." Once, when the King had caused him to sit in judgment at Southampton on some Lancastrian gentlemen that had been taken in a skirmish, he had them all, to the number of twenty, without exception, drawn, hanged, and beheaded. Amid all the various duties of his official life, he found leisure to journey to Jerusalem; and on his way home visited Venice and Padua, from whence he went to Rome, "out of a great affection he had to see the famous Vatican Library." There he delivered the eloquent Latin oration that moved the Pope to tears. But his return to England was unfortunately timed. He arrived at the very moment when the Earl of Warwick had achieved the short-lived restoration of Henry VI., and found himself face to face with the exasperated Lancastrians whom he had deserted in their hour of need. He well knew that a short shrift awaited him at their hands, and strove to escape his doom by hiding himself in the forest of Weybridge in Huntingdonshire. But his pursuers found him out: he was captured "on the top of a high Tree," carried to London, and lost his head as a traitor on Tower Hill. "He returned," remarks Fuller, "from Christ's sepulchre to his own grave in England, coming home in a most unhappy juncture of time, when Henry VI. was restored to the throne, and whose restitution was only remarkable for the death of this noble lord. The axe then did at one blow cut off more learning
in England than was left in the heads of all the surviving nobility." He was buried in the church of the Dominican friars in London; but there is a monument in Ely Cathedral either to him or his father. The figure wears a coronet, and is in full plate armour, covered with a close-fitting tabard emblazoned with the engrailed saltire of the Tibetots; the loins girt with a horizontal hawbrick, and the arms protected by rere-braces, vambraces, and coudes.

He had two wives. The first, Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Robert Greyndour, and widow of Lord De La Warr, died in child-birth, her infant son dying the same day; by the second, Elizabeth Hopton, widow of Roger Corbet of Moreton-Corbet, he left a son named Edward, then two years old, who was restored in blood on the return of Edward IV., but died unmarried in his minority.

With him the Earldom expired, and the barony fell into abeyance between the three aunts who became co-heiresses; Philippa, married to Thomas Lord Ros; Joan, married to Sir Edmund Ingelthorpe: and Joyce, married to John Sutton, son and heir of Lord Dudley.

Turbeuile :

or Troubleville. William de Troublevilla occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95. "Payne de Turbeville witnessed the foundation charter of Neath Abbey, temp. Henry I. Hence the Turbevilles of Glamorgan and Brecon. William de Turbeville was of Dorset 1130; and in 1165 there were branches in York, Norfolk, Dorset, and Wilts."—The Norman People. Near the small town of Bere in Dorsetshire, "for a long time the ancient and famous family of De Turbida Villa, commonly call'd Turbervill, had their seat."—Camden. Of "this worshipful family, who have long lived of great account in this County," says Fuller, "was James Turbevil, who was consecrated Bishop of Exeter in 1556, and 'deserved right well of that See. When he entered thereon, it was most true what his successor therein since said "that the Bishop of Exeter was a Baron, but a bare one;' so miserably had that Cathedral been pilled and polled. But Bishop Turbevil recovered some lost lands, which Bishop Voysey had vezed" (driven away, in the dialect of the West): "and particularly obtained of Queen Mary the restitution of the fair manor of Crediton. But who can stay what will away? It was afterwards alienated again in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

"This Bishop Turbevil carried something of trouble in his name, though nothing but mildness and meekness in his nature. Hence it was, that he staved off persecution from those in his jurisdiction, so that not so many as properly may be called some suffered in his diocese." Edward Turbervil was Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset 2 Hen. VII.; and in the following reign Robert Turbevill shared in "the golden shower of Abbey lands," and received some of the temporalities of Tarrant Abbey at its dissolution. His descendants remained at Bere Regis till the last male heir died in 1714. Their old house is still in existence.

"The Turbervilles were sub-feudatories of the Earls Ferrers, t. King John, in Oxon; and were soon after deprived of their possessions."—Lipscomb's Bucks. Hemingford-Turberville in Huntingdonshire, and Acton-Turville in Gloucestershire (held, according to Sir Richard Atkyns, by Richard Turbervill 12 and 15 Ed. I.) keep the name.

In Wales the descendants of Sir Pain de Turberville, one of the twelve knights of Robert Fitz Hamon, continued till the last century. Sir Edward Mansel relates, that when Fitz Hamon had succeeded in wresting Glamorgan from Rhys, Prince of South Wales, and "after eleven of the knights had been endowed with land for their services, Pain Turbervill asked Sir Robert what was his share? to which Sir Robert answered 'Here are men and here are arms; go get it where you can.' So Pain Turbervill with the men went to Coity, and sent to Morgan the Welsh lord to ask whether he would yield up the castle: whereupon Morgan brought out his daughter Sara (Sar, or Assar) by the hand, and passing through the army with his sword in his right hand, came to Pain Turberville, and told him if he would marry his daughter, and so come like an honest man into his castle, that he would yield it to him quietly; and 'if not,' said he, 'let not the blood of any of our men be lost, but let this sword and arm of mine, and those of yours, decide which shall call the castle his own.' Upon this, Pain Turbervill drew his sword, and took it by the blade in his left hand, and gave it to Morgan, and with his right hand embraced his daughter; and after settling every matter to the liking of both sides, he went with her to church and married her, and so came to the lordship by true right of possession, and, being so counselled by Morgan, kept two thousand of the best of his Welsh soldiers in his castle." Coity (Anglice, wood-house) near Bridgend, was held by eleven generations of his descendants, ending with Sir Richard Turbevill, who leaving no legitimate son to succeed him, settled his property on the son of his sister Catherine, Sir Laurence Berkerolles, Lord of St. Athan's. But this nephew likewise had no heir, and died a horrible death in 1412. His wife Maud, the daughter of Sir Thomas Despencer of Caerphilly, was found guilty of having "poisoned him so that he died," and expiated her crime by a frightful penalty. She "was buried alive, agreeably to the sentence pronounced upon her by the country and the lord, Sir Richard Begam, Lord of Glamorgan." Coity passed to the Gamages (See Gamage).

One of this Welsh house, Thomas de Turberville (discreetly ignored in the pedigree) disgraced his name in the wars of Edward I. "He had been taken prisoner by the French, and released on the promise to betray one of the Cinque Ports, but was detected and hanged."—Blaauw's Barons' War.

The Turbervilles bore Checquy Or and Gules a chief Ermine. They were, we are told, "a numerous family at one time in Glamorganshire, with several branches, as at Tygethston, Penlline, Llanilltyd or Lantwit, but were in all cases sprung from the Turbervilles of Coity Castle."—Nichol's Counties and County Families of Wales. Leland mentions Penlline Castle, near Cowbridge, that "longith to Turberville;" and adds "There were a while ago 2. Brethren of the Turbervilles, whereof the Elder left a Doughter and Heyr: the younnger left a Sunne. The Doughter was married to Loughor. After great strife the 2. Turberville's Children partid the Landes."

One of this name, George Turbervile, was "a sonnetteer of considerable note in his time." He was the younger son of Nicholas Turbervile, belonging to a good Dorsetshire family. He was born about 1530; and we have no account of his death; but he was still living "in great esteem" in 1594.

Turuile :

from Turville (one of nine Seigneuries that bear the name in Normandy) near Pont-Audemer, "derived from Torf de Torfville (La Roque, Maison d'Harcourt, ii. 1927), from whom descended Geoffrey de Turville 1124 (Ord. Vitalis, 880; Mon. i. 519, ii. 309), who had grants from the Earl of Leicester and Mellent in England."—The Norman People. Raoul de Tourneville is on the Dives Roll; and Roger de Turville held Weston-Turville, Bucks, of Bishop Odo (Domesday). Another manor in the county is called from him Turville. In Leicestershire they are "one of the ancientest families in the shire"; seated at Normanton-Turville from the time of Henry II., and still flourishing in a junior branch at Husbands Bosworth in the same county. Ralph de Turville, in 1297, held four and a-half knights' fees in Normanton, Brokenhall Park, Thurleston (where several monuments to the family yet remain), Croft, Walton, Over-leigh, Sywddeby, Seithby, and Saxilby, and granted the church of Croft (or Craft) to St. Mary's Abbey, Leicester. His grandson Richard, about the year 1400, married the heiress of Sir William Flamville, and thus obtained Aston-Flamville, which was granted by Richard's descendant in the fourth generation, Sir William Turvile, to his second son George, the ancestor of the existing family. This Sir William was one of Henry VIII.'s Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Leicestershire. John, his eldest son, carried on the line of Normanton-Turvile, afterwards transplanted to Thurleston, which ended in the last century with Edward Turvile, Rector of Thurleston, whose only child, Elizabeth, died unmarried in 1776, and lies buried in the vault at Thurleston.

Aston-Flamville, the seat of the younger branch, was alienated in 1746 by Carrington Turvile, who had lost his only son some years before, and desired to be buried by his side in the old church of the English nuns at Brussels when he himself died in 1749. His nephew William inherited their present home, Husbands Bosworth, with other manors in Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, as heir-at-law to Mary Alathea Fortescue, in 1763.

Some of the name were seated in the former county as early as the reign of Henry II., when Geoffrey Turville is styled of Adston, and William Turville held Helmdon of the Fee of Leicester. Of this latter line the last male heir was Sir Nicholas Turville of Helmsdon, living 1296-1315, whose heiress, Sarah, married Sir Thomas Lovett of Liscombe, Bucks.

Tomy :

for Tony or Toesni: a duplicate.

Tauerner :

a tavernkeeper.

"Ryght as of a taverner
The grene busche that hangeth out
Is a sygne, it is, no dowte,
Outward folkys for to tell
That within is wyne to sell."

A family of this name was long seated at Elmham in Norfolk, where Ralph Le Taverner is mentioned in 1272, and only died out in 1682, leaving younger branches to flourish in Essex, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire^[76] &c. John Taverner, we are told, distinguished himself at Agincourt. But it is simply impossible to believe that so thoroughly plebeian a name was not surreptitiously introduced into the Roll.

Trencheuile :

This, and the following name, Trenchelion, appear at first sight to be twin brothers, and both of them nicknames; though, unless it commemorates some successful assault or surprise, I am wholly unable to interpret the first. But in the Norman Exchequer Rolls it is given as Truncheviller (Robertus de Truncheviller 1198-1203): and, as one of the numerous forms of the Norman Villers or Weiler, it must be considered territorial. In England it occasionally became Frencheville.

It had crossed the Channel at a very remote date. Goscelin Trencefoil was of Essex in the time of Henry I. (Rot. Magn. Pip,). John Trenchfuill, in 1165, held Chigenhale-Trenchfoille, in that county, as two knights' fees of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex (Liber Niger), and in 1182 dedit monachus de Bermondsey part of his domain of De la Stane in the parish of Godchester. (Mon. Angl.) William de Franchevilla witnessed a confirmation deed of Henry de Essex to Monk's Horton Priory in 1163, and as "Willielmo Trenchfuil" a grant of William de Mandeville to Waltham Abbey. "In the thirteenth of King Henry III. we find mention of a gift of some land at Chigenhale-Trenchfoille to Richard Fitz Hugh which William Trenchfoyle held."—Morant's Essex. The "Roll of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Essex and Hereford, containing the proffers of service made at the muster at Carlisle on the Eve of St. John Baptist, 28 Ed. I," includes Philip Trenchefil, then holding of John de Mules in Somersetshire. "Henry de Mailler or Maleche held four knight's fees at Tittle Totham under Henry de Essex, Baron of Rayleigh, with Isabel Franchevill, an heiress to whom he was guardian."—Ibid.

The family was amply represented elsewhere. "Robert de Tranchefoil, 55 Hen. III., held in Brockhampton, Dorset, of Roger de Quincy, Earl of Win ton. 32 Ed. I. proof was made of the age of William, brother and heir of Peter Trenchfoyl, deceased, who held these lands of the King in capite, in right of the custody of the lands and tenements of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, of late taken into the King's hands for certain causes." (The Scots, it should be noted, had just chosen John Comyn of Badenoch as Regent of that kingdom.) Some of the witnesses affirmed that they recollected the date of his birth, twenty-two years before, "by a forcible entry into the house of Peter Trenchfoyl, father of the said William."—Hutchins' Dorset.

Three of the name, Roger, Nicholas, and Thomas Trencheffoyl occur in Wiltshire about 1272; and Walter Trencheffoil, at the same date in Worcestershire.—Rotuli Hundredorum. John Trenchfoyle, clerk, again in Worcestershire, appears as witness to one of John de Tony's charters, 17 Ed. III. In Buckinghamshire, Alice and Joan Frenchfoyle, in 1461, confirmed the manor of Tattonhoe to John Barton and others. Alice, then the widow of John Ickford, was one of the daughters and co-heirs of Maud Tranchefoil.—Lipscomb's Bucks. To this family we may probably assign Humfrid Franchevalier, who in 1165 held one fee of William FitzAlan in Shropshire, and another of Pagan de Mundubel in Gloucestershire.—Liber Niger.

Trenchelion :

Two very similar names are quoted by Sir Francis Palgrave as instances of significant Norman sobriquets. "Trenchevent was evidently a messenger distinguished by his swiftness of foot. And the name of Alan de Trenchemer,^[77] Richard Coeur de Lion's Sea Admiral, indicates his profession and his skill." Trenchelion should, by analogy, describe a champion who had overcome and slaughtered a lion; even as Trencheloup designates a wolf-slayer. This seemed so improbable an etymology that I was inclined to believe it stood for Trenquelleon, a French barony that belonged to the family of De Broquas, extinct in the male line in 1703.—Laine, Noblesse de France. But I found that there was beyond all doubt a family of this name, several times mentioned in Anselme's Histoire de la Noblesse. Two De Trenchelions, Gilles and Charles, were Seigneurs de Palluau in the sixteenth century; the former married Blanche, daughter of Eustace de Montberon, Vicomte d'Aunay. Again, Charles Tranchelyon, Seigneur de Boisward, was the son-in-law of Jean de Culant, Seigneur de Brecy, who died in 1605. The earliest in date is an heiress, Anne de Tranchelion, who carried the Seigneurie de la Motte d'Usseau in marriage to Pierre de Brissac; their daughter again inherited, and was the wife of Guillaume de Bec, who died in 1449.

Unlike its predecessor, this name is scarcely noticed in the English records. Robert Traceleu held the fourth part of a knight's fee in Suffolk of the Honour of Clare in 1165.—Liber Niger. Nearly two hundred years afterwards, Roger Trenchebien of Framlingham attended the array and muster of the Hundred of Loose, in the same county.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs.

Tankeruile :

from Tancarville, in the arrondissement of Havre. "This family probably derived from Tancred, c. 912, whose fief on the settlement of Normandy was surnamed Tancardivilla. Rabel, his son, left his name to Rabel's Isle and Rabelsfoss, mentioned in early records. Gerald, Baron of Tancarville, towards the end of the tenth century (D'Anisy et Ste. Marie, sur le Domesday), was father of Rabel II., temp. Duke Robert, who had two sons, 1. Ralph, 2. Almeric D'Abetot, ancestor of the Viscounts of Worcester" (see Dabitof). "Ralph was guardian to Duke William, hereditary Chamberlain of Normandy, and founder of Bocherville Abbey."—The Norman People. Wace says he was present at the battle of Hastings. "M. le Prevost," adds his commentator, "rather inconclusively observes that Ralph, having been William's guardian, was too old, and his children too young, to be so engaged. Three sons" (named in the Peerages Osbert, Renebald, and William) "have, however, been commonly reputed to have been at Hastings, from one of whom the Clintons have claimed descent, but probably without sufficient evidence." This was Geoffrey de Clinton, who, says Dugdale, assumed his surname from Clinton in Oxfordshire, "his first abode in England. This Geoffrey (if we may credit our Countryman Rous) was grandson of William de Tankerville, Chamberlain of Normandy, and Maud his wife, daughter of Richard de Arches; but of the certainty thereof I much doubt, considering that an authentique Historian his Contemporary (Ordericus Vitalis xi. 805 b) renders him to have been of very mean parentage, and meerly raised from the dust by the favour of King Henry I., from whose hands he received large possessions and no small honour, being made both Lord Chamberlain and Treasurer to the said King, and afterwards Justice of England; which great advancements do argue, that he was a man of extraordinary parts. He seems he took much delight in this place" (Kenilworth, where he fixed his residence), "in respect of the spacious woods and that large and pleasant Lake lying amongst them; for it was he who built the great and strong Castle here, which was the glory of these parts; and, for many respects, may be ranked in a third place, at the least, with the most stately Castles of England."

Without impugning the truth of Orderic's assertion, we may well apply the words old Westcote uses on a similar occasion to this great house of Clinton, whose ancestor, albeit of humble extraction, made himself a name in the 12th century: "It is no doubt a very ancyent family of itself, and needs no other Father than such as begate them, and no other Mother than such as bare them."

The descent from Ralph the Chamberlain may be dismissed as illusory. Mr. Stapleton's 'Observations on the Norman Exchequer Rolls,' contain a pedigree of his family, which—however different from that given above—yet rests on the unimpeachable authority of the chartulary of their Norman Abbey, St. Georges de Boscherville. A church, dedicated to St. George, and endowed by "William, Duke of the Normans," which already existed on its site, "was subsequently rebuilt by Ralph, whom Duke William styles in his charter, meus magister auleque et camere mee princeps, and the necessary buildings for offices added, which were required by the religious there established. He caused the same church to be newly dedicated, on which occasion he ratified by his signature to the church and canons for their support in the presence of his wife and sons, Ralph and Rabel, six acres of meadow in Quevillon, over and besides the allodium of St. Georges, and some land in Boscherville which his father Giraldus and his brother had given to St. Georges. A brother of Ralph, named Giraldus, was also an officer of the household," and is styled by Duke William Geraldo dapifero meo. This collegiate church was converted into a monastery in 1114 by his grandson William, Chamberlain of Henry I. It may be presumed that the second Ralph left no posterity, as William, who then held the office that was hereditary in the family, was the son of the younger brother, Rabel. "Rabel de Tancarville held lands in Lincolnshire, and the Priory of Ste. Barbe-en-Auge had then of his gift ten librates of land in the soke of Grantham; his son had name William de Tancarville, and to him, it is presumed Coleby, in the same county, was given in frank marriage with his daughter Theophania, by Stephen of Brittany, Earl of the shire of Richmond. Of the issue of this marriage will have been Ralph, his successor, who died childless, William the Chamberlain de Tancarville, Lucia, wife of William de Vernon, and Oliva, who had Coleby in frank marriage. The name of her husband has not been ascertained, but she was doubtless the mother of William Malet de Graville." Two other sons, Rabel and Robert, are mentioned in 1157 with their sister Lucia in a charter of Montebourg Abbey, of which her husband William de Vernon was a benefactor. "Ralph, Chamberlain of Tankerville, was one of the witnesses to the charter for the exchange of Andillyin 1197, but was deceased without issue before the close of the year 1204, in which Philip, King of the French, first had the rule of Normandy."

I am unable to trace the pedigree further; but it is undoubted that there were descendants, most of whom bore the name of Chamberlain. The author of 'The Norman People' even conjectures that one of the greatest houses in Scotland may be included among them. "Graham, in all the early records of England means Grantham in Lincoln; and William de Graham, who settled in Scotland, t. David I. c. 1128, and obtained Abercorne and Dalkeith (Douglas), came from Grantham. He must have been of an important family there, and the only family of the kind was that of De Tancarville, which held the Barony of Grantham in farm from the Crown after the Conquest for above a century. The English branches of the De Tancarvilles were generally named Chamberlain, and the Chamberlains of Lincoln, probably one of their branches, bore three escallops, which three escallops appear in the De Grahams or Granthams, originally from Lincoln also. It may therefore be inferred that William de Grantham was a younger son of the Baron of Tancarville, who had held the office of Seneschal of Grantham under his father."

Possibly one of the Chamberlains of Lincoln here mentioned was the Robert who instigated the riots at Boston in the time of Edward I.: "whereby," says Camden, "the town was miserably ruined. For it happened that certain Warriors, whilst a tournament was proclaiming at Fair time, coming hither under the disguise of Monks and Canons, set the Town on fire in many places, broke in upon the Merchants with sudden violence, and carry'd away great quantities of goods, but burnt more: insomuch that veins of gold and silver ran mix'd together in one common current. Their Ringleader Robert Chamberlain, after he had confess'd the fact, and express'd his detestation of the crime, was hang'd; but could not by any means be brought to discover his accomplices."

Unfortunately Lincoln has no county history from which to glean some account of this family; but in another of the Eastern counties we find "Sir William Chamberlain of Gedding, K.G., a warrior of great renown, an able governor and expert soldier. While governor of Craill-upon-Oise in France, which in 1436 was besieged by the French immediately after they had taken Paris, he behaved himself so bravely that, with five hundred Englishmen only, he issued out of the town, routed his enemies, slew two hundred of them, and took a great number of prisoners."—Suckling's Suffolk.

The Chamberlains of Stowe in Gloucestershire, now extinct in the male line, claimed as their ancestor a younger brother of this house, whose grandson, himself Chamberlain to Henry II., had taken prisoner Richard Blanchemains, Earl of Leicester, in 1174, for which service the King granted him permission to quarter the Earl's arms with his own. One of his descendants, Sir John Chamberlain, "was a great Soldier, and eminent in the court of Edward III. It appears by a Record in the Tower, that the King did grant to him by the title of Count Chamberlain Earl of Tankerville, Viscount of Millaine and High Constable of Normandy, a warrant to receive 1000 marks, which he had lent to the King's Son in the Wars with France. He married the daughter and heir of the Lord Harling, Governor of Paris, who was seized of the manor and castle of East Harling in Norfolk, and of many other considerable estates in that and other counties. She was reputed the greatest Heiress in England, and refused many Suitors of the chiefest Nobility, and with leave of the King married this Sir John Chamberlain, in the church of East Harling. She afterwards married the Lord Scroop, and had for her third husband Benefield of Norfolk, but she chose to be bury'd near her Husband Sir John Chamberlaine in the church of East Harling. All which is inscribed in the Window of the great Chamber at East Harling Castle."—Atkyn's Gloucestershire. This lady's name was Joan Morteine, the last of an ancient family, and an heiress both on her father's and mother's side. The titles given to her husband are, I need scarcely add, the creation of the pedigree-maker. Their grandson, Sir Richard, was seated at Shirburn in Oxfordshire, "heretofore," says Camden, "a small Castle of the Quatremans:" and his posterity continued there till the male line ended in the time of James I. with John Chamberlain, who left two daughters and co-heirs, one married first to Sir Thomas Gage, and then to Sir William Goring; the other to Lord Abergavenny.

Some descendants, however, of a younger brother of Sir, Richard's, John Chamberlain of Hopton in Derbyshire, still remained to represent the family. Fifth in descent from this John was Sir Thomas Chamberlain of Prestbury in Gloucestershire, who was Ambassador to Spain in three different reigns;—under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth. He was also three times married. His first wife, a Dutchwoman said to be of kin to the House of Nassau, was childless; but by the second he was ancestor of the Chamberlains of Maugersbury, and by the third (Anne Monck, a great-aunt of the Duke of Albemarle's), of the Chamberlains of Oddington. The Maugersbury branch ended in 1831, when the estates devolved on the twin sister of the last heir, Mrs. Ackerley, whose children adopted their uncle's name.

Tirell :

a name adopted in the eleventh century by the son of a priest. "Fulk, Seigneur of Guernaville, and Dean of Evreux, affords a conspicuous example of a married dignitary, for he espoused the noble Lady Orielda, and had ten children, of whom the youngest, Walter, assumed the name of Tyrrel, and transmitted it to William Rufus' favourite and boon-companion."—Sir Francis Palgrave. This was the "Walterus Tirelde" of Domesday, Castellan of Pontoise and Lord of Poix, who was living in the Vexin in 1091, and is popularly credited with having caused the death of the Red King. "It will be well to repeat the story, as told by the two Chroniclers who give the fullest account, with all its omens and apparitions. The King had gone to bed on the evening of the 1 st of August, and was suddenly awoke by a fearful vision. He dreamt that he was bled, and the stream of blood, pouring up to heaven, clouded the very day. His attendants, hearing his cries to the Virgin, rushed in with lights, and stayed with him all that night. Morning dawned; and Robert FitzHamon, his special friend, came to him with another dream, dreamt also that very night by a foreign monk then staying at the court, who had seen the King enter a church, and there seize the Rood, tearing apart its legs and arms. For a time the image bore the insult, then suddenly struck the King. He fell, and flames and smoke issued from his mouth, putting out the light of the stars. The Red King's courage had, however, by this time returned. With a laugh, he cried, 'He is a monk, and dreams for money like a monk: give him this:' handing FitzHamon a hundred shillings. Still the two dreams had their effect, and William hesitated to test their truth. At dinner that day he drank more than usual. His spirits once more returned. He defied the dreams. In spite of their warnings, he determined to hunt. As he was preparing, his armourer approached with six brand-new arrows. Choosing out two, he cried, as he gave them to Walter Tiril, Lord of Poix and Pontoise, who had lately come from Normandy, 'The best arrows to the best marksman.' The small hunting party, consisting of his brother Henry, William de Breteuil, Walter Tiril, and FitzHamon, and a few more, then set out. As they are leaving the court-yard, a monk from St. Peter's Abbey at Gloucester arrives. He gives the King a letter from Serlo, the Abbot. It told how a monk of that abbey had dreamt that he had seen the Saviour and all the host of heaven standing round the great white throne. Then, too, came the Virgin robed in light, and flung herself at the feet of her Son, and prayed Him, by his precious Blood and Agony on the Cross, to take pity on the English: prayed, too, as He was judge of all men, and avenger of all wickedness, to punish the King. The Saviour answered her, 'You must be patient and wait: due retribution will in time befall the wicked.' The King read it and laughed. 'Does Serlo,' he asked, 'think that I believe the visions of every snoring monk? Does he take me for an Englishman, who puts faith in the dreams of every old woman?' With this the party once more sets out into the Forest, the woods still green with their deep summer foliage.

"So they hunted all that noon and afternoon. The sun was now setting. Tiril and the King were alone.^[78] A stag bounded by: the King shot and slightly wounded the quarry. On, though, it still bounded in the full light of the setting sun. The King stood watching it, shading his eyes with his hand. At that moment another deer broke cover. Tiril this time shot, and the shaft lodged itself in the King's breast.^[79] He fell without a word or groan, vainly trying to pull out the arrow, which broke short in his hand.

"So perished William the Red."—Wises New Forest.

Tiril leapt on his horse, spurred away in hot haste, and never drew bridle till he had reached the Avon, which then formed the S.W. boundary of the forest. Here he was compelled to halt, for his hardly-pressed horse had cast a shoe; and, before taking the water at the ford that has ever since borne his name, he turned into a smithy to have it re-shod. At this same place, now known as Avon-Tyrrel, there is still a smithy, on the old site by the river side, that to this day pays a yearly fine of £3 10s. to the Crown for furnishing this horse-shoe to aid his escape. It is about twelve miles distant from "the lonely glen of Canterton, where the King is said to have fallen. The oak from which, as the legend runs, the arrow glanced, is long since dead, but a stone marks its site, now capped over with a hideous cast-iron case."—Ibid. Leland gives a different name to the locality. "The Place wher it is saide that Tyrelle kyllyd King William Rufus ys caullid Thorougham, and there standith yet a Chapelle." He evidently means Fritham, called Truham in Domesday. But it is round "Rufus' Stone" that, as the common people firmly believe, the bloody spectre of the King wanders and moans at night. His body was found by a poor charcoal-burner called Purkis, who conveyed it in his cart to Winchester, the blood from the gaping wound "reddening the road and clotting the dust" as he went. "His descendants have ever since lived in the same cottage, and maintained their ancient rank. Until lately, the Purkis for the time being always kept as a sacred relic the wheel of the cart in which his ancestor had carried the dead King!"—Woodward's Hampshire. Some of them are still to be found "in the woods and in the village of Minestead."—Wise's New Forest.

Tirill was never called to account for the King's death. He was a friend of the banished Archbishop Anselm, and it has been suggested that he purposed to avenge the wrongs of the Church while ridding the world of a tyrant; but the general opinion has always acquitted him of any murderous intent. It is even uncertain whether it was from his bow that the fateful arrow came.^[80] His headlong flight was shared by the rest of the hunting party, who all rode for their lives in different directions, and cannot therefore lead us to infer his guilt. Above all, he himself maintained his innocence with his last breath. When he was lying on his death-bed, he declared "that he was not so much as on the field when the King was slain."—Ordericus Vitalis. "Much weight is doubtless due to this solemn denial."—Freeman.

He appears in Domesday as the tenant of Richard FitzGilbert, Lord of Clare, of whom he held Langdon in Essex; and his descendants still continue in the county, "one of the ancientest Families," says Morant, "that hath subsisted till our days. Thomas Tyrell was one of the Knights of the Shire in Parliaments 28, 31, 34, 38, 39, 43, 46, 47 of King Edward III.; and how often his successors were, the List of these Knights will show. And the List of Sheriffs will also show how frequently they served that office for this County: the first was John Tyrell of Herongate 2 Hen. V." As considerable landowners, they were early of note in Essex, and boasted that for six hundred years each successive head of their house had enjoyed the honour of knighthood. One of them, Sir Hugh, gallantly defended Carisbrook Castle against the French in 1377. Another, Sir John, served Henry V. in his wars, and was Treasurer of his Household. A third descendant, whose name is carefully expunged from this honourable pedigree, by a grim fatality, justly incurred the obloquy that had undeservedly rested on his ancestor. He was the Sir James Tyrrel, "infamous in our English Histories," that was employed by Richard III. to murder the young princes that barred his right to the throne. When Sir Richard Brackenbury, the Constable of the Tower, refused this hateful office, the King lamented to "a secret page of his" that even those he had himself brought up failed him in his need, and would do nothing for him. "'Ah!' cried he, 'whom shall a man trust?' 'Sir,' quoth the page, 'there lieth one in the palet chamber without, that I dare well say, to do your grace pleasure, the thing were right hard that he would refuse:' meaning by this James Tyrrel."—More. Tyrrel raised no objections, and selected "his own horse-keeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave," and another fellow, "flesh bred in murther aforetime," as the executioners. On the appearance of Perkin Warbeck, these two men were committed to the Tower, and examined as to the manner in which the Duke of York and his brother had been put to death. According to Lord Bacon's narrative, they deposed: "That the King directed his Warrant to Sir James Tirrel, to receive the keyes of the Tower from the Lieutenant (for the space of one night) for the King's speciall service. That Sir James Tirrel accordingly repaired to the Tower by night, attended by his two servants whom he had chosen for the purpose. That himself stood at the stair-foot, and sent these two Villaines to execute the murther. That they smothered them in their bed; and that done, called up their Master to see their naked dead bodies, which they had laid forth. That they were buried under the Staires, and some stones cast upon them." The King knighted Tyrrel for his pains, and appointed him Sheriff of Cornwall. "I behold," writes Fuller, "this Sir James as an Essex man, though now the prime Officer of this County: for King Richard accounted Cornwall the Back-door of rebellion, and therefore made this Knight the Porter thereof. Indeed it is remote from London, and the long sides of the County afford many Landing-places, objected to Britain in France, whence the Usurper feared (and at last felt) an Invasion; and therefore he appointed him Sheriff to secure the County, as obliged unto him by Gratitude for Favours received, and guilt for Faults committed. This Tirrell was afterwards executed for Treason in the Tower-yard, in the beginning of Henry VII."

The family was conspicuously loyal during the Great Rebellion, and Sir John Tyrrel, who was then its representative, was "once decimated, twice imprisoned, thrice sequestered and forced to compound for,£600, and many times plundered," under the Commonwealth. "I have," he states in an address to Charles II., "lost more than I have left (being no small matter) for my Loyalty and Love to His Majesty... I have lived in Purgatory near twenty years, to the Honour of my exhausted Family." His son, who died before him, was created a baronet at the Restoration, and this title continued for exactly one hundred years, expiring with Sir Charles Tyrrel, the last heir of the elder line, in 1766.

Two other baronetcies, granted to the family, had previously become extinct. In the first years of the sixteenth century, Humphrey Tyrrel had acquired Thornton, about four miles from Buckingham, through the heiress of the Ingeltons. "He seated himself at Thornton, and was ancestor of the Tyrrels of this place, the Tyrrels of Castlethorpe, and the Tyrrels of Oakley in this county. Sir Edward Tyrrel^[81] of Thornton was created a baronet in 1627: the title became extinct by the death of Sir Thomas Tyrrel in 1755."—Lyons's Bucks. His daughter Christabella, Viscountess Saye and Sele, "the last of the ancient family of Tyrrels of Buckinghamshire, survived till 1789, reaching the great age of ninety four. She retained her youthful vivacity, and joined in the amusements of the young people about her till almost the last period of her life."—Ibid.

The first Baronet had two half-brothers that took opposite sides in the Civil War. One of them, Sir Timothy of Oakley, was Master of the Buckhounds to Charles I., and both his sons served in the Royal army; the elder, another Sir Timothy, Governor of Cardiff, and General of the Ordnance under Lord Gerard, was heavily mulcted by the sequestrators; the second, William, was killed at Chester in 1644. His line ended with his great-grandson, Lieut.-Gen. James Tyrrel.

The other brother, Sir Thomas, of Hanslape, the only Roundhead of the family, threw in his lot with Cromwell, was a colonel in the Parliamentary army, a Judge of Common Pleas, and one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal to the Protector. His son Peter was created a baronet in 1665, and married a granddaughter of Sir Walter Raleigh's, but the next in succession left no male heir.

The existing family derives from a younger brother of the loyal Cavalier who "lived in Purgatory for twenty years," under the Commonwealth. They received a baronetcy in 1809. It is curious that Fuller, in his 'Worthies,' entirely overlooks this principal house of Springfield; for, in speaking of the family as "rich and numerous in Essex, of exemplary note and principal regard," he adds: "This name (if still alive) is gasping in this county, but continues healthful in Buckinghamshire."

It is, or was, also found in Ireland. "Hugh Tirell" was one of Strongbow's knights; and "Castle Knoc," says Camden, "was heretofore the barony of the Tirels, whose Estate by females was transferr'd to other Families about the year 1370."

Triuet :

For many successive descents the manor of Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, was held by the Trivets; and their arms (a trivet) appear on the coping of the ancient bridge which was completed by Sir Thomas Trivet in the time of Edward I. He was one of the Justices of the King, and Sir William Trivet was "a person of some account in the court of Edward II." Chilton-Trivet a mile westwards from Bridgewater, belonged to them, but their principal seat was at Durborough, where they remained till 25 Henry VI. It then passed through an heiress to the Verneys: Bridgewater went to the Pyms, and Chilton-Trivet to the Comptons (see Collinson's Somerset), Leland mentions Sir Thomas Trivet, in his account of Bridgewater, as "One Triveth, a Gentilman, as I there lernid, of Devonshir or Cornewall:" and elsewhere says, "Treveth himself ys buried yn Cornwalle." Another Sir Thomas Trivet was one of Richard II.'s unworthy favourites, against whom the confederate lords rose in insurrection in 1387. "They were a formidable body: and at Westminster, on his throne, the King awaited their approach." There they appeared in arms before their sovereign, and throwing themselves on their knees, professed their determination to root out the traitors of their country, and clear the throne and its avenues from favourites that too justly incurred their indignation. Such was the Lady Mohun, Sir Thomas Trivet, and Sir John Tresilian. The Lady, whose manners were uncommonly licentious, was immediately banished, and Sir Thomas taken into custody."—Polwhele's Cornwall, He died by a fall from his horse in October 1388:^[82] and two years afterwards, his widow, Lady Trivet "received Robes" as one of the "Ladies of the Society of the Garter;" a great and unusual distinction. She was Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Philip Tymbury, and widow of Thomas Swynford when she became the wife of Sir Thomas, who through "a Banneret, and an eminent soldier, does not appear to have been himself a K.G."—Sir Harris Nicholas. Lysons tells us the Trivets were seated at Stone, in Devonshire, where they continued for three descents after the time of Edward III. Their heiresses married Pym and Tremail.

Tolet :

Osbert de Toleta occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls about 1180: Henry Tullet and Gilian his wife in Kent, and Robert Tulleyt in Wiltshire, c, 1272 (Rot. Hundred.). John Tolet is mentioned about 1380 in the county of Durham.—Bishop Hatfield's Survey. Bernard Tulet held of Sir John de Baliol at Bywell in Northumberland 1268. (Inq. p. m. 53 Hen. III.) A family of the name exists in Staffordshire, derived from George Toilet, a Commissioner of the Navy in the times of William III. and Queen Anne, who purchased Betley of the Egertons in 1720. Charles Toilet of Betley was High Sheriff of the county 23 Geo. III.: and in 1814 assumed the name of Wickstead on inheriting the property of his great uncle, Thomas Wickstead of Nantwich.

Trauers :

from Trevieres, between Bayeux and Caen. "The name continued in Normandy, where Ranulph de Clinchamp, after 1138, assumed the name of Travers."—The Norman People. In the time of the Conqueror, Robert de Travers or d'Estrivers, Baron of Burgh-upon-Sands, married the daughter of Ranulph de Meschines, Lord of Cumberland, and the sister of Ranulph Bricasard, who succeeded his cousin Richard d'Abrincis as Earl of Chester in 1119. He received from his father-in-law the office of Hereditary Forester of Inglewood in fee, which passed through his only child, Ibria, to Ralph de Engayne: and from the Engaynes to the Morvilles, who transmitted it to the Multons and Dacres. "The badge of this office, the jagged branch, is over and over introduced in the chapel of Naworth Castle, which is so rich with arms and cognizances; and where this jagged branch is, in some places, even thrown across the Dacre's arms fess-wise. This forestership of Inglewood was so honourable, and gave so great command, that there is no wonder the family should wish by every means to set forth their claim to it; especially as the Crown, about this time, seems to have interfered with them in regard to this right."—Hutchinson's Cumberland. Robert d'Estrivers bore Argent, three bears Sable, and it is believed first used the jagged branch as his badge. There remain in Dacre churchyard the figures of four bears, about five feet high; "sitting on their haunches, and clasping a rude pillar or ragged staff, on which two of the animals rest their heads. The other two carry on their backs the figure of a lynx, one in the attitude of attempting to rid himself of the animal on his shoulder, with his head twisted, and paw cast behind him."—Ibid.

At the time of the Conquest, Inglewood was "a goodlie great forest" sixteen miles in length and ten in breadth, to which Henry II. subsequently added the barony of Dalton and some other lands. It was a forest only in the Scottish sense of the word; a wild open chace, "full of woods, red and fallow deer, wild swine, and all manner of wild beasts." The wild beasts included many wolves. There is a sad tradition respecting a lady of the Lucy family, who, walking one evening near her father's castle of Egremont, was attacked and torn to pieces by a famished wolf. The place where her mangled body was found is still marked by a cairn of stones, and known as Woeful Bank. Another harrowing story is told in the neighbouring parish of Hales. The wife of the Lord of Beckermount had gone out hunting with her husband and his train; but after a while was missed from the chase, and sought for far and near. The huntsmen scoured the country long and anxiously in vain; till at length they perceived a pack of wolves, on a far hill-side, busy over some fallen quarry. So eagerly were the snarling brutes rending and disputing their prey, that they had difficulty in scaring them away, and when the ravenous jaws were forced to unlock, it was found that they had been feasting on the torn limbs of the Lady of Beckermount.

The name of Travers only appears in Domesday as borne by a sub-tenant in Hants; but it is several times repeated in the Liber Niger. Ralph de Travers, 1165, held of the See of Worcester; Bertram and Pagan de Travers, of Evesham Abbey; and Robert de Travers, of Henry Lupel in Somersetshire. Hugh de Travers was of Lincoln, and Warin de Travers of York, in 1189-90 (Rot. Pip.). Walter de Travers paid a fine in Buckinghamshire in 1197 (Hunter's Fines): and Roger de Travers occurs there and in Bedfordshire in 1202 (Rot. Cancellarii). In Yorkshire they were clearly of considerable importance. When Robert de Lacy was expelled the realm, the Honour of Pontefract was bestowed by Henry I. on "Henry Traverse, who being shortly after mortally wounded by one Pain, a Servant of his own, caused himself to be shorn a Monk, and so died within three days."—Dugdale. Two of the name, John and Laurence, were pardoned as adherents of the Earl of Lancaster in 1318. John was twice Commissioner of Array of the Honour of Pontefract, and superintended the equipment of the levies in 1316 and 1323. Laurence, in the latter year, was one of the Sub-Custodes of the peace in the Wapentake of Aimunderness; and a burgess returned for Preston in 1327.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Dalton-Travers, about half a mile south of Newsham, in the North Riding, "traxit appellationem suam a familia de Travers, ejus olim per plure annos dominis, licet eorum jam memoria diu obsoleverit."—Gale's Richmondshire. Robert, son of Robert, son of Warin de Travers (no doubt the Warin of the Pipe Roll of 1189), gave some land in Dalton to Marrick Priory (Mon. Ebor. 270). Another of the family, Thomas Travers, was one of the Conservators of the peace for Lancashire in 1320.

This name was borne by a famous Puritan preacher in the time of Elizabeth, and is far from uncommon at the present day. Sir William Clarke-Travers, who received a baronetcy in 1804, and is still represented, assumed it in consequence of his marriage with the daughter and heiress of John Moore Travers, of Clifton, co. Cork. He was himself an Irishman, seated at Rossmore, in the same county.

Tardeuille :

Guillotus Tardivel more than once appears in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the end of the twelfth century. But I can find none of the name in England. Perhaps Tardeville and Tineville (next but one to it on the Roll) are the "Tinel et Traville" of Leland's copy; and that here, as in most other instances, he has furnished us with the correct spelling. See Traville.

Turburuile :

or Turbeville: a duplicate.

Tineuile :

see Tinel, or Tivile, for which it probably stands. There are, however, four De Tinervals mentioned in Normandy 1180-98 (Magn. Rot. Scaccariae Normanniae): and a Richard de Tinewel was Chaplain of Barnack in 1289.—Bridge's Northants.

Torell :

The Torrels were seated at Torrel's-Preston, in Somersetshire, from the time of Henry II. "William Torel was lord of the whole town of Isle-Brewers in this county, and was then fined in the sum of one mark for neglecting to make hue and cry after the death of Alured de Aneville."—Collinson's Somerset. There are "monuments and other memorials" of the Torrells in the church of Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire.—Tysons. Thomas Torel was High Sheriff of the county 49 Edward III. William Torel, in 1260, had been a benefactor to Burton Lager Chapel, Leicestershire.—Nichols. William Torel was Sheriff of Herefordshire 29, 30 Hen. HI. He was probably the descendant of another William Torel, who in the reign of Hen. I., held Pencumbia of the barony of Robert D'Ewyas.—Duncomb's Herefordshire. A William Torel witnesses several of the charters to Brecknock Priory (Mon. Angl.).

The first connected notice that I could find of this ubiquitous family was in Morant's History of Essex. In Henry II.'s reign, William Torrell held Torrell's Hall in that county "by the Grand Serjeancy of being Napperer to the King, or having the care of the King's Nappery, or Table-Linen, on the day of his Coronation." They also left their name to Shellow-Torrell's, and Torrell's Thurrock, where they continued Lords of the manor for at least two hundred years. Amauri de Torrell was one of the great men that accompanied Coeur de Lion to the Holy Land. The last heir, Humphrey, who succeeded to the estate while still in his nurse's arms, served as Sheriff of Essex 18 Hen. VIII., and died in 1544, leaving an only child, Anne, who afterwards married a younger son of Sir Thomas Jocelyn of Hyde Hall. These Torrells bore Gules three bulls' heads couped Or; whence Morant derives their name from taureau.

Several other branches are mentioned in the Rotuli Hundredorum. About 1272, Alan and John Thorel were of Kent, Richard Torel of Oxfordshire, and William Thorel of the city of London.

Tortechappell :

Tort Chapel, as it is given in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1198-1203. Like Chaperon, Blanche Cape, &c, it alludes to the cap or hood then worn, and in this case worn awry. The fief of Torcapel is several times mentioned in Norman chartularies; and Richard Torcapel, a priest, also occurs in 1434. (Memoires des Antiquaires de la Normandie.) But here, again I must confess myself utterly at fault. I have never met with the name in England.

Trusbote :

a duplicate.

Treuerell :

for Treveler. Richard Trevelor occurs in Normandy 1180-95 (Magn. Rotul. Scaccarii Normanniae). This is, alas! the only information I can furnish; the name seems to be unknown in this country.

Tenwis :

This bears some resemblance to the "Tingez" of Leland's list, and is possibly the same name, which, as I have elsewhere suggested, may stand for Tingrie. See Tingez.

Totelles :

Totel in Duchesne's copy. This may be a Norman name, but it is suspiciously like Tothill in England: and is certainly not entered in the Nobiliaire. In the Testa de Nevill (the earliest mention of it that I have found), Robert de Totehal holds one fee of the old feoffment of the Honour of Hanslap, and Walter de Totehale part of another of the new. "Ric° Totella" witnesses a deed of Reginald de Courtenay, Baron of Okehampton in Devonshire: and some Tothills subsequently appear in the county history. Peamore, near Exeter, one of the Bonville estates that fell to the crown on the attainder of the Duke of Suffolk, was bought by Jeffrey Tothill, and afterwards shared by two co-heiresses. Constance Totel was of. Kent, and Roger Tothull of Oxon, c. 1272.—Rotul. Hundredorum. Roger de Totil (can this have been the same?) was one of the burgesses for Lincoln in the parliament of 1311. The seal of "S' Rogeri Totel junioris" is preserved in the muniment room at Stow-Bardolph, Norfolk; and bears either a bend or two bendlets—a coat entirely dissimilar to that of the Devonshire family. In Yorkshire nearly the whole town of Fixby (Morley Wapentake) was acquired either by grant or purchase by Thomas de Tothill. "He enfeoffed William his son during his lifetime of all his lands, which William left at his death to his daughter Margaret, who in 1343 was 'in the custody of Earl Warren by reason nonage.'" of her She married William de Thornhill.—Yorkshire Archaeologia, vol. 7.

Vere :

No prouder name than De Vere has graced the annals of our English baronage; none has been borne by a longer succession of Earls; none has been more magnificently extolled, or more eloquently lamented. Its very sound is aristocratic, and carries with it the memory of its 567 years of nobility. Yet all its romance and illusion is lost in its original form; for in French it is simply ver (worm), derived from Ver, between Bayeux and Caen, which, as part of the Ducal demesne, was included in the dowry of the Duchess Judith in 1026. It must, however, have been granted to this family within the next thirty years, for Aubri de Ver occurs in 1058 (Gall. Christ, xi. 108). He was the father of Aubri or Alberic de Vere, one of the great landowners of Domesday, who had his castle and caput baroniae at Hedingham in Essex, and founded Colne Priory in that county, as a cell of Abingdon. He was there "shorn a monk" in his latter years, and ended his days in the cloister, having had five sons by his wife Beatrice,^[83] of whom the first-born, Geoffrey, died before him. His successor and namesake—generally styled Albericus Junior—rose to eminence as the favoured minister of Henry Beauclerk, and was Viscount of no less than eleven different counties. The King, as a signal proof of his esteem, granted him one of the high offices of State in fee; and he was made Lord Great Chamberlain of England, "with all dignities thereto belonging, to be held by him and his heirs as honourably as Robert Malet (then under banishment and forfeiture) or any other, before or after him, held the same; and with such liveries and lodgings at Court, as belonged to that Office." He was afterwards employed by King Stephen, and was killed in a street riot in London in 1140.

His son and heir, Alberic III., bore the title of Earl of Guisnes, having some years before married Beatrice de Bourbourg, the granddaughter and heiress of Manasses, Count of Guisnes—a match said to have been hastened on account of the precarious health of the bride. On her grandfather's death in 1137, he hurried over to take possession of his fief, and was duly installed by his suzerain the Count of Flanders. But he quickly wearied of his sickly wife and foreign domain, and, deserting both, chose to take up his abode at the English court. Beatrice, outraged by his neglect, sought and obtained a divorce, and re-married Baldwin de Ardres, but died not long after; and as she left no posterity by either of her husbands, the county of Guisnes passed to Arnold de Gand, as next heir.

Alberic was, however, about to receive another title—the honoured and historic Earldom that, through storm and sunshine, fair breezes and foul weather, sailed triumphantly down the stream of Time for nearly six hundred years. Having become one of the most active partisans of the Empress Maud, he had a grant from her in 1141 of all the lands of William d'Avranches, together with the inheritance he claimed on the part of his wife as the heiress of William of Arques (her English grandmother was Emma de Arques), and the promise of the town and castle of Colchester, as soon as they should be in her power; also the reversion of the Earldom of Cambridgeshire and the third penny thereof, as an Earl ought to have, provided the King of Scots had it not: but in that case Alberic was to have the choice of four Earldoms—Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire—according to the decision of her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, Earl Geoffrey (of Essex), and Earl Gilbert (of Pembroke). His brothers, Geoffrey and Robert, were also made barons, and his brother William was promised the Chancellorship of England.

"King Henry II., on his accession to the throne, made the famous Thomas a Becket Chancellor, but performed that part of his mother's promise which related to an Earldom for Alberic, and gave him that of Oxford."—Planche.

It was this Alberic who first bore on his shield the mystic star that was ever after the badge of the De Veres, and which, according to tradition, he brought home from the Holy Land. "This Albery the third, his Father yet living, was at the Conquest of the Cittes of Nicque (Nice), of Antioche, and of Hierusalem, in the Company of Sir Robert Courtois Duke of Normandy. In the yeare of our Lord 1098, Corborant, Admiral to the Soudan of Persia, was fought with at Antioch, and discomfited by the Christianes. The Night coming on in the Chace of this Bataile, and waxing dark, the Christianes being four Miles from Antioche, God, willing the saufte of the Christianes, shewed a white Starre or Molette of fyve Pointes, which to every Manne's Sighte did lighte and arrest upon the Standard of Albrey, then shining excessively.^[84] This Albrey, for his greatnesse of Stature, and sterne Looke, was named Albry the Grymme."—Leland. He founded three religious houses, Hatfield-Broad-Oak Priory in Essex, a nunnery at Icklington, and another at Heningham, "Lucia his Wife being the first prioress there," and died in 1194.

From this first Earl, who bore the title forty years, descended nineteen others, all more or less bound up with the history of their time, and eulogistically described by Macaulay "as the longest and most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen."^[85] Though this assertion must be discarded as extravagant and overstrained, enough of sober truth remains to account for the glamour that surrounds the memory of "Oxford's famed De Vere." The third Earl, whose predecessor had been one of King John's evil counsellors, chose a nobler part, and was one of the illustrious conservators of Magna Charta, excommunicated by Innocent III.: the fifth Earl was knighted in the field by the hand of Simon de Montfort; and the seventh Earl—a soldier from his seventeenth birthday—led forty spears under the Black Prince at Poitiers, where "Oxford charged the van." The ninth Earl was Richard II.'s arrogant favourite, on whom every distinction that it was in his power to confer was lavished by the infatuated King, and who was hated and envied in proportion to the honours he received. Among various other grants, he obtained in 1386 "the Land and Dominion of Ireland" to hold by homage and allegiance "as the King himself ought to have the same," with the Marquessate of Dublin; a title till then unknown in England, and bitterly offensive to the other peers, who thus beheld him raised above their heads. Not content with this, the King, a few months afterwards, created him Duke of Ireland—the first Dukedom ever granted to a subject not of Royal blood; and in order that he might "by force obtain the dominion" over the barbarous kingdom assigned to him, further gave him a sum of 30,000 marks, that had been the ransom of Charles de Blois. "Whereunto," says Dugdale, "the Lords and Commons readily assented, being rather content to want the money then, than be troubled any longer with his Company." But they were disappointed in their hope that he would go to Ireland; for he went no farther than Wales, in the King's company; and thence presently returned to carry out a scheme they had concerted together for getting rid of the Duke of Gloucester and his principal enemies. But the Lords had been beforehand with him, for they had gathered in great force at Highgate, demanding, sword in hand, the dismissal of "those Traytors the King had then about him," and first and foremost, of the Duke of Ireland. The weak King wavered and temporized, and the favourite, finding himself unsupported, had to fly the country in the disguise of a serving man, with a bow and quiver of arrows on his back. Before long, he reappeared in England with a following of four or five thousand men, and made his way into Oxfordshire, but was encountered and surrounded at Radcote Bridge by the forces of the Earl of Derby and Duke of Gloucester. The bridge over the Isis had been broken, and finding no other retreat open, "he threw away his Sword, Gantlets, and Armour, and leaping into the River, escaped them," and again fled beyond sea. He was outlawed: and his titles and estates (except the entailed lands) being forfeited, he died in great penury and distress in 1392 at Louvain, of a hurt he had received in boar-hunting. The King ordered his body to be brought home, and had his coffin opened, that he might see the face of his friend once more. He then followed it in great state to its resting-place in the chapel of Our Lady at Colne Priory, where thirteen representatives of the De Veres are buried. Though twice married, the Duke left no children. His first wife, Philippa, daughter and co-heiress of Ingelram de Coucy, Earl of Bedford, and granddaughter of Edward III. through her mother, Isabel Plantagenet, was one of the greatest ladies in the realm; yet, in the height of his insolent prosperity, "pufft up with Wealth and Honour," he wantonly repudiated her to marry a lowborn foreigner, the joiner's daughter Lancerona, who had come over in the train of Anne of Bohemia. Lancerona faithfully followed his fallen fortunes, and lies by his side at Earl's Colne, where her effigy may still be seen, wearing the piked-horn head-dress, first introduced into England by her mistress, that Horace Walpole declares is "exactly like the description of Mount Parnassus."

The twelfth Earl, a devoted Lancastrian, was beheaded on Tower Hill with his eldest son Aubrey at the accession of Edward IV. His second son, John, restored as thirteenth Earl, was, "through many vicissitudes of fortune, the chief of the party of the Red Rose, and led the van on the decisive day of Bosworth."—Macaulay. This is Shakespeare's Oxford, who when urged by Warwick to "Leave Henry and call Edward King," replies—

"Call him my king, by whose injurious doom
My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere,
Was done to death? and more so, my father,
Even in the downfall of his mellow years,
When Nature brought him to the door of death?
No, Warwick, no: while life upholds this arm,
This arm upholds the house of Lancaster."
—Henry, VI, Part III., Act 3, Sc. 3.

Henry VII. visited him at Hedingham, and was entertained with the most profuse splendour. As he was taking his departure, the King noticed the long line of attendants ranged on either side to form his guard of honour, and called out to the Earl, "My lord, I have heard much of your hospitality, but I see it is greater than the speech. These handsome gentlemen and yeomen which I see on both sides of me, are surely your menial servants?" The Earl smiled, and said, "It may please your Grace, they are not for mine ease; they are most of them my retainers, that are come to do me service at such a time as this; and chiefly to see your Grace." The King started a little, and rejoined, "By my faith, my lord, I thank you for my good cheer, but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight; my attorney must speak with you." The attorney spoke, and to some purpose; for the graceless guest positively caused his hospitable entertainer to be mulcted of £10,000, for having, in his desire to do honour to his Sovereign, ventured to exceed the number of retainers prescribed to him.

The seventeenth Earl was an unthrift, who dissipated the great inheritance that had descended to him. He pulled down the buildings erected by his predecessors, wasted the parks, and sold most of the lands,^[86] including Kensington (the Chenisiton of Domesday) that had been one of the Conqueror's grants. He was a wit, a poet, and a courtier, very favourably regarded by Queen Elizabeth, conspicuous in her tournaments, and one of the commanders of her fleet at the time of the Armada. She gave him the motto since borne by the De Veres, Vero nil verius, in honour of his loyalty. "He was," says Stowe, "the first who brought perfumed gloves and such like fineries out of Italy into this kingdom." His son Henry recouped his fortunes by marrying Lord Exeter's second daughter, Lady Diana Cecil, one of the greatest beauties and heiresses of her day, and repurchased some of the estates, but she brought him no children, and when, in 1625, he was killed at the siege of Breda, the direct line of descent terminated. His widow sold Hedingham, that had remained in the family for 550 years, and of which the grand Norman keep—all that is now left of the castle—still lords it proudly over North Essex. The titles and the office of Great Chamberlain were hotly contested in the House of Lords by two claimants, Robert de Vere, in right of his descent from the second son of the fifteenth Earl, and Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, in right of his mother, Mary de Vere, sister and heiress of the seventeenth Earl. Chief Justice Crewe summed up for the heir male in a speech often quoted as a rare specimen of old English eloquence. "I have laboured," he said, "to make a covenant with myself that affection may not press upon judgment; for I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness but his affection stands to the continuance of so noble a name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine thread to uphold it. And yet Time hath his revolutions; there must be a period and an end to all temporal things, finis rerum, an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere?—for where is Bohun? where is Mowbray? where is Mortimer? nay, what is more, and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality. And yet let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God." The Earldom only, however, was adjudged to De Vere; the three baronies in fee, Bulbec, Sandford, and Badlesmere, were declared in abeyance; and the staff of Lord Great Chamberlain of England was committed to Lord Willoughby,^[87] who was created Earl of Lindsey in the following year.

Robert de Vere, who thus succeeded as nineteenth Earl, was comparatively a poor man; and his son Aubrey, the last of this time-honoured line, "the noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say, the noblest subject in Europe," with whom ended the lofty name of De Vere, died in a miserable cottage in 1702. He had been Lord Lieutenant of Essex and Colonel of the Blues, but was deprived both of his regiment and his office by James II. When, in 1687, the King determined to pack a parliament, and retain in office only those who would support him, De Vere declared that he would stand by the King to the last drop of his blood, "but," added he, "this is a matter of conscience, and I cannot comply." He left three daughters, of whom the eldest only was married, Lady Diana, the wife of Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans, the son of Charles II. by Nell Gwynn.

Two other baronies had belonged to the De Veres, but each of brief continuance. The first was granted to Hugh, a soldier of merit in the wars of Edward I., who married the heiress of Montchensy, but died s. p. in 1313. The second was the reward of another gallant soldier, Sir Horatio Vere, a grandson of the fifteenth Earl, who was created Lord Vere of Tilbury in 1625, but also left no heir. He and his brother Sir Francis are buried side by side in Westminster Abbey, and "were amongst the boldest and best generals that upheld the renown of the English name under Elizabeth in the wars of the Netherlands." Fuller graphically describes them both:

"Sir Francis was of a fiery Spirit and rigid nature, undaunted in all dangers, not over-valuing the price of men's lives, to purchase victory therewith. He served on the Scene of all Christendom where war was acted. One master-piece of his valour was at the battle of Newport, where his Ragged Regiment (so were the English then call'd for their ragged Clothes) helped to make all whole, or else all had been lost. Another was, when for three years he defended Ostend against a strong and numerous Army, surrendering it at last a bare Skeleton to the King of Spain, who paid more years Purchase for it than probably the world will endure.

"Sir Horace had more meekness, and as much valour as his Brother; so pious, that he first made his peace with God before he went out to war with man. One of an excellent Temper, it being true of him that is said of the Caspian Sea, 'that it doth never ebb nor flow'; observing a constant tenor, neither elated nor depressed with Success. Had one seen him returning from a Victory, he would, by his silence, have suspected that he had lost the day; and had he beheld him in a Retreat, he would have collected him a Conqueror, by the cheerfulness of his Spirit. He was the first Baron of King Charles's creation." He died in 1635. His widow, "the truly honourable and religious Lady Vere," still survived in 1657, "kept alive thus long," writes Dillingham, "by special providence, that the present age might more than read and remember what was true godliness in 88" (the year of the Armada).

Vernoun :

from the castle and chatellenie of Vernon, now a commune in the arrondissement of Evreux, which gives its name to the surrounding canton, "one of the most picturesque and luxuriant of the vine districts." The castle must have been strong; for Orderic tells us that in 1152 it was besieged by Louis King of France with a large army, and he, after a long leaguer, was fain to enter into a secret negotiation with Richard de Vernon to raise the Royal banner on his tower.

The Lords of Vernon were of the house of Reviers. "Roger was Baron of Vernon c. 1030, about which time his daughter Blithildis was married. She granted to Trinity, Caen, in 1082, the lands at Vernon given to her by her father Roger. The grant was made with consent of William, her nephew, then Lord of Vernon (Gall. Christ, xi. 70, Instr.). This William recovered Vernon (which had been granted to Count Guy of Burgundy); and from him descended the Barons of Vernon, who held sixty-one knights' fees in barony."—The Norman People.

Two of his sons, Richard and Walter, appear in Domesday, both holding in Cheshire: Walter being at the same time a tenant-in-chief in Buckinghamshire: and a third of the name, Huard de Vernon, occurs as a mesne-lord in Suffolk. Of the latter I have no more to tell: and Walter is supposed to have left no heirs, as his Cheshire estates appear to have reverted to the Earl.

The elder brother,. Richard, was one of the Barons of Hugh Lupus' Palatinate, and "had a castle at Shipbrook on the Wever, to command the passes of the Wever, and the approach to Chester from the North, by the ancient line of the Watling Street. The site of his fortress is still indicated by the name of Castle Hill; and some remains are said to have actually existed on this spot thirty years ago."—Ormerod's Cheshire.

The first few descents of the Barons of Shipbrook are obscure and variously given; but either in the fourth or fifth generation the first Richard was succeeded by a second Richard de Vernon, from whose third son, William, Judge of Chester 1230-32, "all the acknowledged legitimate lines of this family and name now existing derive their descent."—Ibid. His eldest son, Warin, married Auda de Malbank, one of the co-heirs of the Baron of Wich Malbank, and was the grandfather of the last Baron of Shipbrook, who died childless about the middle of the thirteenth century. Three sisters remained as his co-heiresses; but their uncle Ralph entered into possession of the barony, and resolutely retained it till, after some years, they were brought to terms, and constrained to cede to him one moiety, with the capital manor of Shipbrook. Ralph was in holy orders—an ordained priest of the Church of Rome: yet he had a daughter born in wedlock as well as an illegitimate son, Sir Ralph, on whom he settled the portions of the barony that he had wrested from his nieces. On his death, Eustatia, his legitimate daughter and heiress, confirmed the grant to her base brother. This Sir Ralph, called in Cheshire evidences "the long liver," is said to have been one hundred and fifty years old when he died, and by a comparison of the dates cannot have been less than one hundred and twenty. He survived three generations of his descendants,^[88] for his successor was his great-great-grandson, "young Sir Ralph," who d. s. p. The last representatives of this bastard line were the Vernons of Haslington, extinct in the seventeenth century. Minshull-Vernon retains the name in Cheshire.

Of the old blood, in true right of descent, there remained the posterity of Sir William de Vernon, Chief Justice of Chester, who held Marple in right of his wife Marjory, daughter of the Baron of Stockport, and was seated at Harlaston in Staffordshire. His son Sir Richard married two great heiresses; first, Alice de Avenel, dowered with Haddon and a broad domain in Derbyshire, and secondly, Maud, daughter and co-heir of the last Lord Camville, whose second husband was Sir Richard Stafford of Pipe-Rideware. But by neither of his wives had he children; and "in Henry III.'s time, and perhaps pretty early, he preferred his brother Robert's daughter and his own heir-presumptive, Hawyse, in marriage with Gilbert le Francais. In virtue of that marriage, Gilbert was Lord of Harlaston, and died 6 Ed. I. His son Richard resumed the Vernon name, and died 30 Ed. I."—Erdeswick's Staffordshire.

The succession in the male line, thus early interrupted, has never failed again, and continues unbroken after the lapse of six hundred years. The family seated at Haddon Hall grew and prospered, and held their place among the foremost in the county. A Sir Richard Vernon, afterwards Treasurer of Calais, was Speaker of the House of Commons that met at Leicester in 1402; his son Sir William, again Treasurer of Calais, was constituted Constable of England for life; and the next heir, Sir Henry, was Governor and Treasurer to Henry VII.'s eldest son. It was he that built the splendid pile of Haddon, where Prince Arthur, it is said, was a frequent guest, and a room in which the Royal arms are carved in stone long bore the name of the Prince's Chamber.

Sir Henry's grandson, Sir George, was the well-known "King of the Peak"; so named not only "for his magnificent port and hospitality," but from the arbitrary power that he exercised in his domain. Once, we are told, a poor pedlar who had been hawking his wares in the neighbourhood, and was last seen alive entering a cottage, the evening before, was found murdered in a lonely place. Sir George at once ordered the dead body to be brought to Haddon, and laid out in the hall, covered with a sheet; then, summoning the cottager to his presence, he asked him what had become of the pedlar that had been in his cottage the previous night? The man denied all knowledge of him. On this, Sir George, throwing back the sheet, called upon all present to lay their hands on the murdered man, and declare themselves innocent of the foul deed. The old superstition that the death-wound would bleed afresh at the murderer's touch, still held good; for the suspected culprit shuddered back from the ordeal when his turn came, and rushing out of the hall, made his way, as fast as his legs would carry him, through Bakewell towards Ashford. Sir George instantly despatched his men in hot pursuit, with orders to hang the fugitive wherever they might find him. The wretched man was overtaken in a field opposite the present toll-bar at Ashford, still called Gallows Acre, and here he was strung up to the nearest tree without further ado.

"Sir George is said to have been cited to London for this extraordinary piece of Lynch law; and when he appeared in Court, was twice summoned to surrender as the 'King of the Peak.' To this he made no reply; but the third time, when called on as Sir George Vernon, he stepped forward and acknowledged himself—'Here am I!' Having been summoned as King of the Peak, the indictment fell through, and Sir George was admonished and discharged."—Guide to Haddon Hall.

This autocratic King of the Peak had only two daughters, whose husbands shared his ample possessions. Margaret, the youngest, inherited Tonge and the Shropshire estates, and married Sir Thomas Stanley of Winwick. It was during one of the "merry meetings" that celebrated her wedding, when the great gallery was ablaze with lights and astir with dancers, that her beautiful sister Dorothy stole out through an adjoining postern, crossed the garden terrace, and ran down the steep stair leading to the foot-bridge over the river Wye below, where her lover Sir John Manners was waiting for her. He had horses in readiness; Dorothy was quickly lifted into her saddle; and speeding away unperceived in the darkness, they rode hard all night, and were married in his own county of Leicester on the following morning.

"It is a night with never a star,
And the Hall with revelry throbs and gleams,
There grates a hinge—the door is ajar—
And a shaft of light in the darkness streams:

"A faint sweet face, a glimmering gem—
And then two figures steal into light;
A flash—and darkness has swallowed them,
So sudden is Dorothy Vernon's flight!"

Sir John's suit had been bitterly opposed by all her family, her sister included, and Dorothy had been closely guarded and kept almost a prisoner, while he had roamed for weeks about the woods of Haddon, in the disguise of a forester, watching for the chance of exchanging a word or glance with her. Who that has visited the beautiful deserted mansion that was once her home, has not felt a thrill of romance on being shown Dorothy Vernon's door, and Dorothy Vernon's Walk—the lime tree avenue on the upper terrace of which she is said to have been fond; nor envied the lucky knight to whom the lovely Lady of Haddon came out on that summer's night, bearing in her hand such an inheritance?

"Haddon, by the river Wye in Derbyshire, was," writes Camden, "the seat for many years of the Vernons, who, as they were ancient, so they were no less renowned in those parts. * * * Sir George Vernon of Haddon was the last male of that branch; he died seized of thirty manors, and left two daughters, one married to Maners, of the Duke of Rutland's family, by which Haddon came to them; in honourable remembrance of which, there is wrote over the entrance to the house, God save the Vernons. And the Vernon's crest, being a boar's head, used to be served up with a song every Christmas." Haddon Hall is now held by Dorothy Vernon's lineal descendant, the Duke of Rutland.

"The other daughter," he continues, "was married to Stanley, second son of the Earl of Derby, by which he had Tonge in Shropshire, where he lieth interred, and where there are many fine monuments of the Vernons and Stanleys, and a chapel founded by Sir Henry Vernon, who married Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, curiously painted, gilt, and adorned with the matches of the Vernons." This Sir Henry (the builder of Haddon) "gave the great bell to Tonge, of forty-eight hundredweight, and a rent out of his manor of Norton, for the tolling of it, when any Vernon comes to town."

Though the King of the Peak is here spoken of as the last heir male of his house, he had in reality four younger brothers: i, Thomas, of Stokesay; 2, Humphrey, of Hodnet; 3, Sir John, of Sudbury; and 4, Arthur, Rector of Whitchurch. Sir John, who acquired Sudbury through a Derbyshire heiress, Helen, daughter of Sir John Montgomery of Cubley, was the progenitor of the Lords Vernon, still seated there. One of his descendants married the representative of. the last Vernon of Haslington; another the heiress of the Cheshire Barons of Kinderton, Mary Venables, whose son added her name to his own, and was created Lord Vernon, Baron of Kinderton, in 1762.

There are several junior branches; the Vernon-Harcourts of Nuneham in Oxfordshire; the Vernons of Hilton in Staffordshire, and the Vernon-Wentworths of Wentworth Castle in Yorkshire. Their old punning motto, Ver non semper viret, is bountifully illustrated; yet the highest title they have yet received perished with its first possessor. This was Francis Vernon of Norton in Suffolk, created Earl of Shipbrook in 1777, who died s. p. He derived from a cadet of the house of Haslington, who had settled in London as a merchant. His grandfather was one of William III.'s principal Secretaries of State; his father Ambassador to the Court of Denmark; and his father's brother the gallant Admiral—the "brave and happy Vernon"—who, with only six ships of the line, captured Porto Bello in 1739.

Vescy :

the English rendering of Vassy, a Norman fief in the Val de Vire, of which the caput baroniae was in the bailiwick of Conde. The family, with the cognomen "Noble Vassy," survived in the Duchy till the close of the last century, for Louis Marie, Comte de Vassy and Marquis de Brece, Alexandre, Comte de Vassy, and Louis, Vicomte de Vassy, are all named in the Assembly of the Nobles in 1789. They did not bear the cross of the English De Vescis, but D'argent a trois tourteaux de sable.

The "Sires de Waacie,"^[89] spoken of by Wace at the battle of Hastings, were Robert, who in 1086 held a great barony in Northants, Warwick, Lincoln, and Leicester; and Ivo, who does not appear even as a mesne-lord in Domesday. Yet we hear nothing more either of Robert or his possessions, and the whole history of the family centres on Ivo, and Ivo's posterity. Apparently he received no favours from the Conqueror: but William Rufus granted him half the escheated barony of Gilbert Tyson, whose son-in-law or brother-in-law he probably was (see p. 163). Dugdale makes him the brother-in-law, as the husband of Alda, daughter of William Tyson. Be this as it may, he held the castle and honour of Alnwick in Northumberland, among the most famous of the Border strongholds, and transmitted them to his only child, Beatrix. She was the wife of one of the greatest nobles of the realm, Eustace Fitz John, the son of John Monoculus (the one-eyed): and heir to his uncle Serlo, Baron of Burgh and Knaresborough in Yorkshire, and founder of Knaresborough Castle. In addition to these accumulated possessions, Eustace received constant grants of land from Henry I., with whom "he was of intimate Familiarity, and withall a Person of great Wisdom and singular Judgement in Council." It is admitted that this sagacious prince chose his favourites well; and Eustace's star never waned as long as he was on the throne; but on his death, "when Stephen began to reign, the Scene was altered." The new King, remembering the affection he had borne to his old master, suspected him of favouring the cause of the Empress Maud, and as a measure of precaution, deprived him of the custody of Bamborough and other Northern castles. This indignity drove Eustace into open rebellion: he delivered up Alnwick to David of Scotland, then invading England; joined him on his march South, and accepted several manors as his reward from David's son, Henry Earl of Huntingdon. Yet within two years his peace had been made with Stephen, and he reappears as Lord of Burgh and Knaresborough, and acting as Justice Itinerant in Yorkshire with Walter Espec. He was slain on the expedition into Wales in 1157; "a great and aged Man, and of the cheifest English Peers, most eminent for his wealth and wisdom." He had founded three monasteries; Malton and Walton in Yorkshire, and Alnwick in Northumberland, besides splendid gifts to other religious houses. He was twice married, each time to a great heiress; and by each left a son from whom sprung an illustrious baronial house. His second wife, Agnes, was the daughter of the Constable of Chester, William Fitz Nigel, Baron of Halton, and by her he was ancestor of the De Lacies, Earls of Lincoln and Constables of Chester, the Claverings, Constables, &c.

Beatrix de Vescy is said by Dugdale to have had two sons, William and Geoffrey, but, according to another account, died before giving birth to William, who, like Macduff,

"Was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd."

At all events we hear no more of Geoffrey. William de Vesci, who took her name on succeeding to her barony, was for twelve years Viscount of Northumberland, and in 1174 among the chief commanders at the victory of Alnwick, when the Scottish King was taken prisoner. He married Burga de Estouteville, dowered with the town of Langton, and was the father of Eustace de Vesci, one of the twenty-five celebrated Conservators of Magna Charta, and foremost from the first in the ranks of the revolted barons. He had, in very truth, as strong a personal ground of quarrel with the King as a man could possibly have. "King John, continuing his wonted licentiousness, thereby provoked many of his Nobles to wrath * * * Hearing that this Eustace de Vesci had a very beautiful Lady, but far distant from Court; earnestly studying how to accomplish his desires towards her, sitting at Table with her Husband, and seeing a Ring on his Finger, he laid hold of it, and told him, That he had such another Stone, which he resolved to set in Gold, in that very form: And, having thus got the Ring, presently sent it to her, in her Husband's name; by that Token conjuring her, if ever she expected to see him alive, to come speedily unto him.

"She therefore, upon sight of the Ring, gave credit to the Messenger, and came with all expedition. But so it hapned, That her Husband casually riding out, met her on the Road, and marvelling much to see her there, asked, What the matter was; And when he understood how they were both deluded, resolved to find out a Courtezan, and put her in apparel to personate his Lady. All which was accordingly done." The King was delighted with his easy conquest, and according to his usual villainous practice, took an early opportunity of expatiating upon her charms to her supposed husband; whereupon Eustace had the satisfaction of informing him that the Lady was none of his, but a Courtezan dressed in her clothes. The King was so enraged that he threatened to take his life; and Eustace had to fly in hot haste to the North, where he put his retainers under arms, and being joined by other indignant and derided husbands with their following, was soon strong enough to declare open war. He was slain the very year after the sealing of the Great Charter at Runnymede, by an accidental arrow shot from the ramparts of Barnard Castle, as he was surveying its defences by the side of Alexander King of Scotland, his wife's brother. She was Margaret, daughter of William the Lion, who, according to the Melrose Chronicle, had given her in marriage to Eustace in 1193.^[90] Neither she nor her sister Isabel de Ros were born in wedlock; but Fordun states that her father called upon the nobles assembled at Clackmannan to swear fealty to her as his true heir, unless he should have a son by his Queen Ermengard. The claim her grandson put forward to the crown of Scotland was, however, summarily dismissed.

The two grandsons of this beautiful Margaret were the last of their race. The elder, John, first Lord Vesci, was deeply engaged in the baronial war under Simon de Montfort, summoned to his parliament after the battle of Lewes, and taken prisoner at the rout of Evesham. When he was reinstated in his honours and possessions by the Dictum de Kenilworth, he assumed the cross, and joined the Christian army in the Holy Land. While there, he and another crusader, Sir Richard Grey, went to visit the monks of Mount Carmel, and among them found a countryman of their own, Ralph Fresborn of Northumberland, who after doing good service in the Crusade, had entered the monastery in pursuance of a vow. They persuaded him to return home with them, and establish a house of his Order in his native county, for which De Vesci offered him any site he might select. For some time he wandered about in search of one, till, struck by a chance likeness to Mount Carmel in the adjoining hill,^[91] he built his monastery—some say with his own hands—in De Vesci's park at Hulne, near Alnwick. It was the first Carmelite convent ever founded in this country.

Lord Vesci died in 1288, childless, though he had been twice married. His first wife, Mary, sister of the Earl of Marche and Angouleme, was a daughter of the haughty house that boasted

"Lusignan
Vaut autant
Sur le reste du monde que l'or sur l'argent:"

the second, Isabel de Beaumont, a kinswoman of Queen Eleanor's. His brother William, who succeeded, was Justice of all the Royal forests beyond Trent; a man of about forty, "of great esteem with Edward I.;" who, in the following year, named him Justiciary of Ireland, where he held some lands of his mother's inheritance. Here, in 1292, he was solemnly accused, "in open Court, in the City of Dublin, in the presence of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, of conspiring against the King's authority, and challenged to single combat by John Fitz Thomas. The matter was brought before the King's court, where De Vesci returned the challenge; and the King decreed that the combat should take place before him at Westminster, "on the morrow after the Feast of the Holy Trinity. At which time, this our William de Vesci came thither accordingly, mounted upon his great Horse covered; as also compleatly armed with Lance, Dagger, Coat of Mail, and other Military Accoutrements, and proffered himself to the fight: But Fitz Thomas, though called, appeared not."

This last De Vesci died five years afterwards, without an heir. He had lost his one son, John, early in life, before the marriage arranged for him could take place:—a marriage that was to connect him with the Queen through her kinswoman Clementia, whom the prospective father-in-law had covenanted to endow at the church-door with lands of the value of £200 a year. But Lord Vesci left behind him a bastarison, born in Ireland, and styled William of Kildare, and had designated him lis his successor. The boy being then a mere child, he enfeoffed the Prince-Bishop of Durham, Anthony Beke, of his castle and barony of Alnwick, and all his other lands—Hoton Buscel in Yorkshire alone excepted—"with trust and special confidence that he should retain them for the behoof of William de Vesci his Bastard son, at that time young, until he came of full age, and then pass them to him." But Anthony Beke, "irritated by some slanderous words that he heard the Bastard spoke of him," avenged himself by selling Alnwick to Henry de Percy in 1309; and the defrauded bastard obtained nothing but Hoton-Buscel. He was summoned to parliament in 1312, but fell two years afterwards at Bannockburn, leaving no posterity.

Failing heirs of his body, the Yorkshire estate reverted, under his father's will, to those to whom it belonged in right of blood; and came to Gilbert de Aton, descended from Margerie, daughter of Warine de Vesci, the younger brother of Eustace. He had summons as Lord Vesci 18 Ed. II.; but his line, again, failed in an heiress, and the title passed through the Bromfletes to the Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland.

The Irish Viscounts de Vesci descend from a branch of the house seated at Newlands, co. Durham, of which the connection with the parent stock is variously given, and very uncertain. One of the family, having killed his adversary in a duel, is said to have fled across the Border, and taken to wife a daughter of Kerr of Cessford. From Scotland he removed to the North of Ireland, about the time of Elizabeth, and, settling there, was succeeded by three generations of churchmen. His son held an Irish living; his grandson was Archbishop of Tuam; and his great-grandson first Bishop of Killaloe, and then of Ossory. Before taking orders, the latter had received a baronetcy in 1698. Sir John, second baronet, who was seated in the Queen's County, further obtained an Irish peerage as Baron of Knapton in 1750; and his son Thomas was created Viscount de Vesci of Abbey-Leix, Queen's Co., in 1776.

Another line of Vescys existed at High Coniscliffe, co. Durham, where John Veyse, in 1436, held lands under a free rent of Lord Greystoke. The last of his descendants, John Vescy, died 1723, leaving two daughters, neither of whom were married. They bore the coat of the De Vescis differenced in tincture. The name, as Vasey, is still pretty common in the neighbourhood of their old home.

Verdoune :

an illustrious name still represented in Normandy. La Roque and La Chesnaye-du-Bois both maintain that it had its origin in the county of Mortaine, where one of its branches was of long continuance; yet it is incontestable that in the twelfth century there was a fief of Verdun in the arrondissement of Avranches; and, according to M. de Gerville, the cradle of the family was Barenton, in that neighbourhood.

Bertram de Verdon, the founder of the great English house, in 1086 held Farnham Royal, in Buckinghamshire, by the grand serjeantry of providing a glove for the King's right hand on the day of his coronation, and supporting his right arm during the said service, so long as he bore the royal sceptre. In 1095, he attests a charter of William Rufus to St. Mary's Abbey, York, and served as Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1100. His son Norman followed him about 1130, and married Lescelina, the daughter of the famous Justiciar, Geoffrey de Clinton, who had great possessions in Leicestershire, and brought him Brandon in Warwickshire, where he built a castle. Alton, in North Staffordshire, was, however, his principal seat and the head of his barony. The next in succession, Bertram II., played a considerable part in the history of his time. "His political career I date," says Eyton, "from the year 1166, when he appears in King Henry's court at Caen. On 3rd February, 1170, the King being over sea, the Constable of Normandy, Richard de Humez, and Bertram de Verdon were at Stamford (Lincolnshire). Bertram, be it known, held estates in Lincolnshire, both under the Crown and under the aforesaid Constable. What is more remarkable is that at this very juncture De Humez was Sheriff of Rutland, while at the ensuing Easter (April 5, 1170) the King, in Council at Windsor, instituted that enquiry into the conduct of the English Sheriffs which resulted in the ejectment of William Basset from the Shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, and the substitution of Bertram de Verdon.

"Meanwhile in the rebellion of 1173, Bertram de Verdon was one of those Barons whom Benedictus signalizes as having stood by the elder King. For twelve succeeding years he variously occurs as a Sheriff, as an assessor in the Curiae Regis, as a witness of royal charters in England and Normandy; and on one occasion as King Henry's ambassador to Spain. His relinquishment of the Shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, in 1185, was not for any cause of disgrace. At this very juncture he was attending Prince John in his notable mission to Ireland; and while Hugh de Lacy figures as Constable (of Ireland) during John's vice-royalty, so has Bertram de Verdon the title of Seneschal when attesting one of the Prince's charters.

"On June 14, 1188, William de Humez, then Constable of Normandy, and Bertram de Verdon, were assessors of the King in a Curiae sitting at Geddington. Bertram de Verdon, accompanying King Richard in the crusade of 1190, died at Jaffa in 1192, and was buried at Acre." This city had been, after its capture, committed to his charge by Coeur de Lion.

His two sons were the last heirs-male of his house. The elder, Thomas, married to Eustachia Basset, had no children; and the second, Nicholas, left only one daughter, Roese, who in 1223, at the urgent recommendation of J Henry III., married Theobald Le Botiller of Ireland. "Being so great an Heir, tho' she matched with a Husband of a very Honourable Family, she did not bear his sirname, but retained her own, and so did her Posterity."—Dugdale. She was early left a widow, for in 1231 she paid the customary heavy fine not to be compelled to marry again, and later in life founded the Cistercian Abbey of Grace-Dieu on one of her Leicestershire manors.

John, the eldest of her four sons, in whom the name of Verdon was resuscitated with added splendour, married another great heiress, Margery de Lacy, the last-born of the two sisters that shared the princely possessions of their grandfather, Walter, Lord Palatine of Meath. She brought him the castle and honour of Weobley in Herefordshire, as well as a moiety of Ewyas-Lacy; and with them, the harassing duties and responsibilities of a Lord-Marcher. Accordingly, in 1249, he was ordered by the King to take up his residence on the borders, and check the inroads of the Welsh. He was slain in Ireland in 1278, and was succeeded by Theobald, the first Baron Verdon, who was summoned to parliament in 1295. He had been Constable of Ireland in 1274, and in 1290 was arraigned for high treason, and sentenced to be imprisoned, and to forfeit all his royalties at Ewyas-Lacy; but the King, taking into consideration the good service done by his ancestors, "freed him of his imprisonment for five hundred marks fine." After this, he was again in favour at Court, received several writs of summons to the Northern wars, and sat in the Parliament at Lincoln that asserted Edward's supremacy as "Lord of the whole Realm of Scotland."

Theobald II., his only surviving son—John, the eldest, had died in Ireland during his lifetime—was the second and last Lord Verdon, and Justiciar of Ireland in 1312. He was twice married; first, to Maud, daughter of Edmund Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, by whom he had two sons that died young, and three daughters; and secondly, to one of the co-heirs of the great Honour of Clare, Elizabeth, third daughter of Gilbert Earl of Gloucester by Joan of Acres, daughter of Edward I., and widow of John de Burgh, Earl of Ulster. This last marriage took place in 1315, and he died the year following at Alton Castle, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, leaving his wife, in Scriptural language, "great with child." The child proved a fourth daughter, and thus, for the second time, the name perished in the elder line, and the great fief of Verdon was split up among co-heiresses. Joan, who, as the eldest of these richly-dowered sisters, had the ancestral seat, Alton Castle, and the Staffordshire honour, married Lord Furnival, and died in childbed in 1334. Elizabeth, the second, had the castle and fief of Ewyas-Lacy in Herefordshire, with Stoke-upon-Terne in Shropshire, and married Bartholomew de Burghersh. Margery, the third, had another great Herefordshire estate, the honour and castle of Weobley, with Heath in Oxfordshire, and was three times married: first to William le Blund; secondly to Marcus Husee; and thirdly to John Crophull. The posthumous Isabel—to all appearance the most slenderly portioned of the four—had certain manors in Shropshire and Staffordshire, and was the wife of Lord Ferrers of Groby.

Besides this principal line, and several minor ones alluded to by Burke—the Verdons of Draycot, Warwickshire, and Ibstock, Leicestershire; the Verdons of Darlaston and Biddulph, in Staffordshire; and the Verdons of Denston, in the same county—one, if not two more baronial houses sprung from the original stock. The first of these—wholly unnoticed by Dugdale—was seated at Brisingham in Norfolk, where William de Verdon, about the year 1100, was enfeoffed of six knight's fees by Roger, the father of Hugh Bigod. His descendant John, in 1285, claimed view of frank-pledge, assize of bread, and ale, infangthef gallows, and free-warren in all his lands and manors in Norfolk, which had been granted to his father by Henry III.: and another Sir John was a baron of the realm in 1332. "He seems to have been a person of great hospitality, from the inventory of the establishment he left at Brisingham, to treat his tenants &c. whenever he should go there to reside."—Banks. This Sir John, with his brother Sir Thomas, figured as tilters at the great tournament held in 1308 at Stepney, and again five years later at Dunstable. Instead of the Verdon fret, they bore Sable ove un Lyon Rampant Argent, the younger brother adding a chess-rook for a difference. Each of Sir John's two sons had a son who left no issue: and the inheritance fell between two granddaughters, one of whom was Lady of Shelfanger in right of her mother, Isabel Vis di Leu.

The other house always hitherto assigned to the stock of Verdon is one of the most famous of our baronage—that of Audley. "That the first," says Dugdale, "who assumed this surname was a branch of that ancient and noble family of Verdon, whose chief seat was at Alton Castle, in the northern part of Staffordshire, I am very inclined to believe; partly by reason that Henry had the inheritance of Aldithley given him by Nicholas de Verdon, who died in the sixteenth of Henry III., or near that time; and partly for that he bore for his arms the same ordinary that Verdon did, viz. frette; but distinguished with a large canton in the dexter part of the shield, and thereon a cross pate." This origin is now denied,^[92] notwithstanding the similarity of the coats of arms, thus left unexplained; and it is at least clear, that Aldithley was not the grant of Nicholas de Verdon. "Aldidelege (Audley) Baltredelez (half Balterby) and Talc (Talke in Audley) all held in 1086 by the Thane, Gamel, seem to have come, early in the reign of Henry I., into the hands of the first Adam de Audley, who divided them between his sons, Lydulph and Adam. In 1130, 'Liulf de Audley' lay under a heavy penalty for the murder of Gamel."—Eyton. Adam II. was apparently the father of Henry de Audley, "the great territorial acquisitionist of the district," who built the castle of Heighley, and is represented by Dugdale as the first who assumed the name.

I do not therefore feel justified in including the Audleys in this notice, and must reluctantly forbear to give an account of one of my favourite heroes, the Sir James Audley who fought "as long as his breath served him, in the chief of the battle" at Poictiers. He had vowed that whenever the King or one of his sons should be present on the field, he "would be one of the first setters-on, or else die in the pain," and so well did he keep his word, that he was praised and rewarded by the Black Prince, as the "best doer in arms" that day. The names of his four squires, to whom he instantly transferred the Prince's bounty, declaring "That honour I have, is by their valiantness," though not given by Froissart, have been preserved in Cheshire tradition. They were Sir Robert Fouleshurst, Sir Thomas Dutton (Sheriff of the county), Sir John Delves, and Sir John Hawkestone. All of them bore the Audley fret on some part of their coat of arms.

Valence :

"from Valence, Normandy. William and Richard de Valence, and the fief of Valence, occur in 1180-95 (Magn. Rotul. Scaccariae Normanniae). Alan de Valence was a Baron in Bucks 1165 (Rot. Pip.). This was a Norman family, different from that of Valence Earl of Pembroke; and appears in Battle Abbey Roll. Its insertion there has been supposed to determine the interpolated character of that document, but the name does not there bear any relation to the Valences Earls of Pembroke, who came to England in the thirteenth century."—The Norman People.

Verdeire :

probably for Verdier, a forester. "The names of Verdier and Verderie signify the same functionaries as Vaultrier and Forestier, but perhaps of inferior rank. The names of Lavarde and La Verderie mark the space assigned to each watcher's beat. The Verdier was a judge of petty offences against the forest laws."—M. de Gerville (Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Normandie). In England a Verderer is an officer appointed to take care of the vert: a word applied "to every thing that grows and bears a green leaf within the forest that may cover and hide a deer."—Cowell.

It should, however, be borne in mind that the titles of Seigneurs de la Verdiere and de Fos were borne by one of the oldest of the great Provencal houses. "All the branches of the Seigneurs of the name of Vintimille established in Provence came," says Anselme, "from the Seigneurs de la Verdiere of the same country." They bore Gules an ear of millet Or; on a chief of the second three ears of millet of the first. Raffortiat de Castellane became their representative; and his descendant Boniface was Seigneur de la Verdiere in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Robson gives the arms of the English Verdiers as Azure a horse salient in bend Or. But I have only met with the name twice, once in Oxfordshire, where Walter de Verder occurs in the Hundred Rolls of 1272; and again, at about the same date in Yorkshire. "In 1261, Sir Galfrid Gumbald attests a grant from William Verder, of Out Newton, to Sir Simon le Constable."—Poulson's Holderness.

Vauasour :

Ducange spells it Valvasour (door-keeper), and Sir Henry Spelman and others believe this to be the correct interpretation; but the generally received reading is Vasvasour, the vassal of a vassal, or the holder under a mesne-lord. Thus Wace, in describing the second charge of the Conqueror at Hastings, tells us it was led by the Duke himself, at the head of "a great company, vavassors of Normandy, who to save their lord would have put their own bodies between him and the enemie's blows."

In the case of the baronial Vavasours we must, however, adopt the former signification, as they claimed to derive their name from Sir Mauger le Valvasour, door-keeper to William the Conqueror. He is not to be found in Domesday; but his grandson Sir William, who witnessed Matilda de Percy's charter of Salley Abbey, appears in the Liber Niger as a considerable land-owner in Yorkshire, and was seated at Hazelwood, near Tadcaster, still the home of his representatives. "Haselwood hath beene the chief Seat, and antient Inheritance of the Family, which Towne has a pleasant Prospect, wherein may be discovered the two Cathedrals of York and Lincoln, tho' sixty Miles asunder; and where is a remarkable Quarry of Stone; Of the Stones taken out here was the stately Church at York, built by the Bounty of Vavassours. Their being Benefactors to that Church is also evident from their Arms therein, and the Portraictures of them and the Percies in the Gate, the latter with a Peice of Timber; and of the Vavassors with a Stone in their Hands, showing the Materials each Family contributed to that stately structure."—Leland. Sir William's son Robert was for eight successive years Sheriff of Notts and Derby: and in 1208 paid a fine of 1200 marks and two palfreys to marry his daughter Maud to Fulke Fitz Warine, "an eminent baron in those days." His son John, by his wife Alice, daughter of Sir Robert Cockfield,^[93] was the father of Sir William le Vavasour, who had summons to parliament as a baron 28 Ed. I. He was a good soldier; "in arms neither deaf nor dumb;" who followed the King to the wars of Scotland and Gascony, and is spoken of in the first division at Carlaverock:—

"E de cele meis part
Fu Guillames li Vavasours,
Ky de amies ne est muet ne sours;
Baner avoit ben conoissable,
De or fyn o la dance de sable."

"He was evidently," adds Wright, "a man of esteem, as he was appointed one of the judges of the Trailbaston": and in 1290 obtained license to castellate his manor house at Hazelwood. His eldest son Walter was also summoned to parliament in 1313, but died s. p., and his barony ended with him. Henry, the younger brother, carried on the male line, and one of his descendants, Thomas Vavasour, was made a baronet by Charles I. in 1628. The great-grandson of this latter, Sir Peter, who died in 1740, was "the twenty-first Generation in a direct Line from Sir Mauger le Vavasour; Of which Family is this Observation, That they never married an Heir or buried their Wives." It continued for three more generations, ending with Sir Thomas Vavasour in 1826: but during these last descents the ancient tradition concerning the wedded life of the Vavasours was twice broken through. Sir Walter, the fifth baronet, had two wives; and his son, another Sir Walter, married an heiress. The last baronet died a bachelor, and devised his estates to his cousin Edward Marmaduke Stourton, son of Charles Philip, sixteenth Lord Stourton, who took the name of Vavasour, and was created a baronet two years afterwards.

Wotton enumerates many offsets from the parent stock of Hazelwood, seated at Weston, Acaster, Coppinthorp (Copmanthorp), Spaldington, Newton, and Danby, in Yorkshire, and Killingworth in Lincolnshire; three of whom received baronetcies. These were Sir Charles Vavasour of Killingworth, created 1611; Sir William Vavasour of Copmanthorpe, Major-General to the King of Sweden, created 1643; and Sir Henry Vavasour of Spaldington, created 1801; but the two former died s. p., and the latter alone is represented.

The Vavasour with whom the house of Weston ended in 1833, by a most unusual provision, forbade his elected heir to take his name, declaring that the place had been held by his ancestors from the time of Henry II., and that he would be the last Vavasour of Weston. One of them, in the beginning of James I.'s reign, was the unhappy cause of the famous Yorkshire Tragedy. Walter Calveley, of Calveley, madly jealous of the then Vavasour of Weston, stabbed his two eldest children and attempted to stab his wife; but the dagger glanced aside from her steel stomacher; and the youngest child, caught up by its terrified nurse, was carried to a place of safety. The murderer mounted his horse and rode away, but was overtaken and lodged in York Castle; where, having by some means ascertained his wife's innocence and the legitimacy of his children, he refused to plead, hoping to save his estate for them. He was accordingly condemned by the old cruel law to be pressed till he yielded or died; and while undergoing the agonies of this torture, implored an old servant, who had come to see him, to sit on his breast and put him out of pain. The man complied; and for this act of mercy was tried for murder, sentenced to death, and executed! The ghost of Walter Calveley is popularly believed to haunt the woods of Calveley at dead of night, galloping with his men on headless horses, and trying their speed, with the cry, "A pund of more weight—lig on, lig on!"

Vendore :

"Bochardus de Vendroure" is mentioned by Duchesne among the Milites Wlcassin. (Feoda Normanniae). In England I first met with the name in the Monasticon Anglicanum. Richard de Vendure witnesses Hugh de Coluncis' grant to Motesfont Priory, Hampshire; Oliver de Vendoure and "Willielmus frater ejus" that of Simon de Crevecoeur to Bullington Priory, Lincolnshire. Gunilda de Wendoure paid a fine in Buckinghamshire in 1202.—Hunter. Richard de Wendour was Archdeacon of Axfordby in 1230 (Nichol's Leicestershire): and two of the name, Hugo de Wendor, of Lincolnshire, and Alan de Vendur of Yorkshire, occur about 1272 in the Rotuli Hundredorum. Sir John de Wendour was Chamberlain of Chester 9 and 15 Ed. III.—Ormerod's Cheshire. In the Issue Roll, under date 50 Ed. III., we find the following entry: "20th November.—To John Vendour of Newark, coming by command of the Council from Lincoln, to bring Sir William de Cantelupe, knight, to the Tower of London, upon suspicion had against him for the death of Nicholas de Cantelupe, his brother, slain: and there safely and securely to keep him in the King's prison until otherwise respecting the same William it should be ordered by the King and his Council. In money paid, &c, in discharge of one hundred shillings, which the Lord the King commanded to be paid him for the wages and expenses of himself and his men going with him and his retinue, for the safe custody of the aforesaid William."

In some cases Vendoure appears to have been synonymous with the English local name of Wendover. Oliver de Vendoure of Lincolnshire, for instance, is, as often as not, styled in the Monasticon, Oliver de Wendover.

Verlay :

from Verlai in Normandy. "In 1086 Turold de Verlai held thirteen lordships in Salop from Earl Roger, of which Chetwynd appears to have been the chief (Eyton, Salop). Robert his son was a baron in the time of Henry I., and before 1121 witnessed a charter in favour of Salop Abbey (Ibid.). He was living 1141, and was father of Robert de Verlai, who, with his father, gave Verlai Church, Normandy, to Essex Abbey, which grant was confirmed by Henry II,"—The Norman People. One of these two Roberts was probably the founder of Swine Priory in Yorkshire. "This Priory (according to Tanner) was founded before the reign of Stephen by Robert de Verli, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the reign of Henry I. there was a Hugo de Verli who gave to John Lascels half a carucate at Swine; and in 1184 one of the same name gave 40s. to the King that he might be quit of his oath in a plea of land against

William de Ottringham. Robert de Verli, 5 Hen. III., grants to Henry de Pocklington and Margaret his wife the homage of John de Wilton. Another—Henry de Verli—is mentioned in a subsequent page of the Chartulary. From these several circumstances it may be inferred that the De Verlis were residents in Holderness."—Poulson's Holderness. Richard and Alan de Verlin witness Alan de Monceaux's grant to Nuncote (Mon. Angl.). Hugh de Verli held four knights' fees of the Honour of Richmond.—Gale's Richmondshire.

In Essex, the family held Salcot-Verli (now Salcote Virle) under Robert Gernon at the date of Domesday, and from being sub-tenants, at length came to be sole proprietors. Robert de Verli, in 1275, held four knights' fees of the Barony of Stanstead. His grandson Sir Philip, who was knight of the shire in 1319, received a writ of military summons in 1322, and another to attend the great Council at Westminster in 1324. Robert, the next heir, married a daughter of Sir Ralph Gernon, by Lady Alianor de Vere, and was the father of Philip, with whose two sons, John, and Roger, Morant closes the genealogy. John, as he tells us, died childless; and of Roger's posterity he does not speak.

Verli's Manor keeps their name in Norfolk. Ralph de Verli, 8 Ric. I., is the first mentioned there. "Hugh de Verli, in 1243, held two knights' fees, part of the dower of the Lady Isabel, widow of Hugh, Earl of Sussex."—Bloomfield's Norfolk. The first "Sir Philip," he further tells us, "writes himself in some of his deeds, De Tolleshunt, a town in Essex, where he seems to have had his residence. One of his daughters and co-heirs, Isabel, married Ralph de Bagthorp; another.... Prick."

Valenger :

or Valancre. "Warin de Valle-Ancre was of Normandy, 1195 (Magn. Rotul. Scaccariae Normanniae). The name appears in England about 1272 as Varencher, then as Wallanger, then as Fullanger, or Furlonger."—The Norman People. The arms of the Wallengers or Wellengers, of Whitchurch in Bedfordshire, and Chelmsford in Essex, are preserved by Robson. They bore Gules a fesse vair between three falcons Or. But in neither county can I find any account of the family.

Venables :

from Venables, "about thirty miles beyond Rouen, on the road to Paris, between St. Pierre and Vernon, standing in the centre of the neck of a peninsula formed by a bend of the Seine. The high road runs straight through this tract to the centre of the arc of the Seine, which it intersects at a point where the river bends past Pont Andeli, near the famous Chateau Gaillard."—Ormerod's Cheshire. Venables was the barony and ancient seat of the Le Veneurs, so named from their hereditary office of Veneur or Venator (Huntsman) to the Dukes of Normandy. They occur as far back as the tenth century in the charters of the Gallia Christiana; and Walter Le Veneur is a conspicuous figure in the Battle ot the Fords, fought in 960 between Lothaire King of France, and Richard Sans Peur of Normandy. "Desperate was the battle waged in the Dieppe water;—knights struck down, and struggling in the stream—sinking into the pits of the river-bed—mixing their blood with the waves. Thrice did Richard raise the Norman war-cry, Dex aie! his own folks joining him, whilst (as the excited Trouveur tells) all the slogans attributed to the various provincial nationalities were resounding. Mont Joie! cried the Frenchman; Arras! the Fleming; Valie! the Angevin; and Thibaut himself shouting out Passe avant et Chartres! Face to face, the two Sovereigns observed each other; and whenever Lothaire saw Richard lift up the sword, did not his heart, as the Normans tell us, die within him? Lothaire was actually thrown off his horse, though not by Richard; but, unhurt, he speedily regained his seat and resumed the contest. Richard fought desperately, and Thibaut could distinguish the young Duke's clear voice rising amidst the turmoil, vituperating him as a miscreant and a traitor.

"But who so prominent in the group as Gaultier-le-Veneur? All the interest of the battle seemed at one juncture to be concentrated upon the Huntsman, as though he had been the sole object of the conflict. Dragged off his horse—seized by the enemy—rescued and remounted by the ready Duke on the best he had—perhaps his own charger: and now, again, for the battle!"—Sir Francis Palgrave.

Gilbert de Venables or Gislebertus Venator, as he is entered in Domesday, was one of the Palatinate barons of Hugh Lupus, in Cheshire, and has been called his nephew, although his name does not appear in the pedigree of the son of the Earl's only sister, Ralph de Meschines, and Dugdale makes no mention of it.^[94] But his kinsman at least he must have been; for he and several others of the family had come over to England in the Earl's train, and were richly provided for in his county of Chester. Gilbert, who bore the name of his fief, always accorded by the usage of Normandy to the head of the house, received the principal share of the lands,^[95] and made Kinderton his caput baroniae. "The site of his castle," says Ormerod, "is another proof of the lines of the antient roads continuing in his time the accustomed avenues to Chester, and the points which the Norman conquerors were anxious to secure, the hall at Kinderton being only a few hundred yards distant from the station at Condate."

According to the same authority, the name of Gilbert's descendants was Legion. He was "the progenitor of numerous lines of the Venables family, of the Leghs of Booth, with their collateral branches, and the Meres of Mere; to which must be added with probability only not amounting to positive proof, the Leighs of West Hall, and with weaker, but still very strong probability, the Dones, Leghs of East Hall, and Breretons." The representative of one of these houses, Charles Legh of Adlington, Sheriff of Cheshire in 1747, claimed to be heir-male of the Barons of Kinderton, but lived to see the extinction of his own house, surviving both his son and his grandsons.

It is only with the principal house that I can even attempt to deal; and here the task is made easy; for few families can show so complete a record of a long line of ancestry. There were in all twenty-two Barons of Kinderton—the last surviving of Hugh Lupus' Palatine Baronies—who filled a great position in the county, and constantly served as Sheriffs. Till the fifteenth century we do not hear of their intermeddling even in the local wars so frequently waged on the Welsh frontier; but from that period a series of vicissitudes "attest the qualities of the family." Sir Richard, the eleventh Baron, fought and died in the cause of Richard II. He had joined the Percies at the battle of Shrewsbury, was there taken prisoner, and beheaded as a traitor at York. His brother Sir William, who, on the other hand, had early taken part with Henry IV., and been appointed Constable of Chester on his accession to the throne, then received a grant of the forfeited Barony of Kinderton. But he refused to benefit his children at the expense of his brother's orphans. He used his influence with the new King to obtain the restoration of their birth-right, and voluntarily surrendered all claim to the barony for himself and his heirs. Kinderton was accordingly settled on his nephew Hugh; but in process of time his posterity succeeded to the inheritance he had so generously relinquished. Hugh's grandson, the fourteenth Baron, a zealous Lancastrian, fell at Bloreheath fighting for the Red Rose under the banner of Lord Audley, with the Chamberlain of Chester, and many other gallant Cheshire gentlemen. He was then only twenty-two, and left no children; the great-uncle who followed him likewise d. s. p.: and thus the line of the Constable, who had been the saviour of the family, became, "in great justice," the rightful heirs of its patrimony. Another Baron of Kinderton was slain at Flodden. Fourth in descent from him was the young heir mentioned by Sir Peter Leycester in 1624. He speaks with affectionate pride of "that ancient barony, which only of all the rest of the Barons of Chester since the Norman Conquest has continued in a successive line of the heirs-male, and even lately, when it was at the point of failing, and even likely in all men's account to have been transplanted, it pleased God in his providence to raise a successor of the same stem, who at this present time is a towardly young gentleman, Peter Venables, Baron of Kinderton, who, though scarce out of his minority is likely to replenish the same (if God will) with a fruitful increase of his race, having an heir-male by a daughter of Sir Richard Wilbraham of Woodhay, Knt., and baronet. To speak of the large extent of this fee and barony, and how many knights, esquires, and gentlemen hold lands and do service to the court there holden, were now beside my purpose, though it would tend much to the dignity of that great lordship."

All the hopes founded on the birth of this promising "heir-male," Thomas Venables, were doomed to disappointment. His mother had no other child: and though his father married a second wife who brought him four additional sons, they were all childless. Thomas himself died in his father's life-time, and his son Peter was the last Baron of Kinderton.

There had been no reason for apprehending this sudden collapse of a line that had held its own through the changes and troubles of six hundred years. Peter was one of a family of eight; besides four sisters, he had three brothers to represent his name. Yet, by a strange fatality, none of these brothers survived him, and none ever married. His sisters, too, remained single, with the exception of one who was the wife of Thomas Pigot of Chetwynd in Shropshire. His own marriage with Catherine Shirley had given him only two daughters, Katherine Countess Ferrers, and Anne Countess of Abingdon; and his death in 1679—ten years only after his grandfather's—closed a succession that had been uninterrupted since the days of the Conqueror. No name had been more esteemed and venerated in the county of Chester than the name that expired with him.

Neither of his daughters had children. Countess Ferrers died shortly after him, while still under age; and her sister, who was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne, followed in 1715; the death of "that best of Queens," says her courtly epitaph, "having preceded and perhaps hastened" her own.

Kinderton then passed to her aunt Mrs. Pigot's only child Anne, then the wife of Henry Vernon of Sudbury, who inherited under her great-uncle's will. Her son, George Vernon, was created in 1762 Lord Vernon, Baron of Kinderton, and was the direct ancestor of the present Lord.

The house of Venables bore Azure two bars Argent (distinguished only by a difference in the tinctures from the coat of Main waring), and first adopted by the fifth Baron about 1253. Gilbert, grandson of the Gislebertus Venator of Domesday, sealed with a falcon sinister regardant; and his son William (living in 1183) with a lion rampant sinister.

Venoure :

Seven tenants in capite—some of them obviously of Saxon origin—appear under this name in Domesday: Croch Venator in Hampshire: Godric Venator in Wiltshire: Godvinus Venator in Dorsetshire: Ricardus Venator in Warwickshire: Siward Venator in Oxfordshire: Walerannus Venator in Hampshire and Wiltshire: and Wlwi Venator in Surrey. Siward and Waleran are also found among the under-tenants (in Hampshire). These latter add five additional names to this already long list: Gislebertus (also entered as De Venables) Ralph, and Warmund Venator in Cheshire: Robertus Venator in Warwickshire; and Rogerus Venator in Worcestershire and Shropshire. They are all unmistakeably Norman.

Of Gilbert Le Veneur and his representatives, the Barons of Kinderton, I have already given some account (see p. 230). For the rest, it would be a formidable task—approaching indeed to temerity—to grapple with such a succession of genealogies: I will therefore content myself with tracing the fortunes of the Cheshire Le Veneurs, of whom sprung the wealthy and powerful house of Grosvenor.

Ralph Venator, supposed to be Gilbert's younger brother, was one of Hugh Lupus' "Barones et Homines," and a benefactor to his Abbey of Chester. He held Stapleford, "on the banks of the Lowy, adjacent to the ford which gives name to it," of the Earl in capite. His descendants bore the name of this manor, and retained it till the time of Richard II., when it was sold by William de Stapleford to the Orrebys.

This Ralph was in all probability the progenitor of the Grosvenors. It is true that in the famous Scrope and Grosvenor suit of the fourteenth century they are derived from Gilbert Le Veneur, dubbed for the nonce Le Grosvenor; and a man endowed with such a prodigality of descendants may well afford to be credited with a few more. Yet the evidence adduced is inconclusive and questionable; resting on the oral testimony of the Abbot of St. Albans, and some other witnesses, which amounted—at least, as regards the first three descents—to nothing more than a bare statement. "Allowing for a strength of memory which is unusual at the present day, a knowledge of the Grosvenor descents two or three hundred years back, acquired, it must be assumed, by a casual reading of charters and examinations of alledged chronicles, is remarkable."—Helsby's Ormerod. I should prefer to adopt the subjoined pedigree. "Ralph Venator's son Robert received from Earl Hugh, t. William Rufus, Over-Lostock, Cheshire (Ormerod, hi. 82). His son Robert had, c. 1153, a grant of Budworth, with the office of forester or grand-huntsman of Delamere Forest (Ibid. ii. 115) from Earl Hugh Kevelioc. Robert Grosvenor 1178 witnessed a charter of John, Constable of Chester, to Stanlaw Abbey (Mon. Angl. i. 897). Ralph, his son, t. John (Ormerod, iii. 87), was ancestor of the Grosvenors of Cheshire."—The Norman People.

I must, however, be permitted to observe that, according to the county historian, the name did not become Grosvenor till long after 1178. He tells us that, in the latter form, "it never occurs earlier than the reign of Henry III:" and the origin of the praefix is very doubtful. The office of Grand Huntsman of Delamere Forest would be rendered in the Norman tongue Grand Veneur^[96] as it is to this day in France; and could never be translated Gros Veneur, or Grosso-venatori "One of the family," it is suggested, "may, in those days of nicknames, have acquired that of the 'Fat Hunter,'" (it should rather be the Fat Huntsman), "from his personal bulk." In later times it was corrupted to Gravenor.

About 1234, Richard le Grosvenor acquired Holme, a moated house "in an extremely flat and secluded situation," where the family continued seated for more than two hundred years: and in the following century Sir Robert le Grosvenor gained a great addition to his estate by marrying the heiress of Pulford of Pulford.

It was this Sir Robert who in 1386 had the celebrated suit with Richard Lord Scrope, who challenged his right to his coat of arms, Azure a bend Or; avouching that it had been "continually borne by his own ancestors since the Conquest." It lasted no less than three years, and was tried before a Commission specially appointed for the purpose, over which the Lord High Constable and Earl Marshal of England presided. On the part of Sir Robert, "nearly all the knights and gentlemen both of Cheshire and Lancashire were examined, with several of the Abbots and other clergy, all of whom deposed to the usage of the contested coat by the Grosvenors, and to having seen it painted on windows, standards, and monuments, in twenty-four churches, chapels, and monasteries in Cheshire; and family charters and deeds with seals appendant, exhibiting the same bearing, were brought into Court."—Ormerod, They were confronted by a splendid array of witnesses on the side of Lord Scrope, comprising such names as "John Duke of Lancaster, King of Castile and Leon," the Duke of Warwick, the Earls of Arundel, Northumberland and Derby, Sir Owen Glendower, and the poet Chaucer, then an esquire at arms.^[97] "From the evidence they gave," says the Herald and Genealogist, "it may be inferred that the Grosvenors of Holme occupied no very brilliant position in the fourteenth century; for the very existence of Sir Robert was ignored by some of the witnesses, and if one may judge from the evidence of Sir Matthew Redman, their importance in the county was acquired through Sir Robert's marriage with Pulford's heiress." But, several generations before this,—from 1283 to 1287—a Grosvenor had been appointed Sheriff of Cheshire. I think we may fairly assume that there was a good deal of "hard swearing" on both sides. At a time when the feudal system was in full vigour, and the ties of feudal allegiance unbroken, "when lord defended tenant, and tenant defended lord in every affair of life," it is more than doubtful whether either churchman or layman was overscrupulous in regard to truth. It came out in evidence that there was another claimant to the disputed coat. "An esquire of Cornwall of the name of Carminow" also bore Azure a bend Or, which he had the audacity to assert had belonged to his ancestors from the time of King Arthur of the Round Table; and had in consequence been brought into collision with Lord Scrope, and fought a duel with Sir John Daniel, who maintained the right of his ward and son-in-law Le Grosvenor, at that time a minor.

In these utilitarian days, when anyone may assume whatever coat of arms he pleases (the Heralds' College being powerless to interfere in the matter), the question would have been of no importance; and men may wonder at the infatuation of their forefathers, who shed their blood and spent their substance in such a quarrel. But the ancient "cotte d'armes" was very differently regarded. It was the pride and badge of the race; the symbol of the much-prized droit de banniere et de cry de guerre that was the distinctive privilege of a gentleman; and as highly honoured and jealously guarded as the name itself.^[98] Its colours were worn by the retainers that gathered round their lord's banner in time of war, and followed it through many a hard-fought field; as in this very case, in which it was recited how Sir Robert le Grosvenor "armed with these arms," accompanied Edward the Black Prince for seventeen years, and had borne them in "Berry, Algayne, del Tour de Brose, et a Issendon, et a la siege de Rochsirion, en Peyto, en Gyan, et a Viers en Normande, et en battaile de Poictiers."

Nevertheless, he was "out-weighed with powerful words," and the sentence of the court was against him. The famous golden bend was adjudged to the Scropes, and it was decreed that Sir Robert should only bear it within a bordure "as a difference," denoting a junior or inferior house. Sir Robert, in great indignation, appealed to the King himself, before whom, by his commissioners, the whole pleadings were reviewed, and a compromise at length effected. Sir Robert, "scorning to bear the other coat with a difference," accepted instead one of the wheat-sheaves of Chester; Azure a garb Or, being part of the ancient arms of Earl Ranulph de Meschines, since borne by the city; and granted as "a proof of his consanguinity to the Earls of Chester, so fully proved in the said trial."^[99]

After this, little more is heard of the Grosvenors for the next three hundred years. The elder line ended with Sir Robert's grandson in 1464, through one of whose six co-heiresses Holme passed to the Shakerleys; but a younger brother, Raulyn or Ralph, who about twenty years before had married the heiress of Eaton, took his place as heir-male. Ralph's descendants were plain country gentlemen, content to live quietly and unobtrusively at home, who did their duty when called upon as sheriffs or knights of the shire, received a baronetcy from James I., and were impoverished by their loyalty to his successor. But in 1676 Sir Thomas, the third baronet, made the marriage that was to work a momentous change in the future, and build up one of the greatest fortunes in the kingdom. His wife Mary, the heiress of Alexander Davies of Ebury in Middlesex, brought him the freehold of a few grass fields, then only used for pasturing cows, which in process of time became of immense value as building land, and the site of Grosvenor Square and the surrounding streets. One of these, Davies Street, commemorates her name. It was not, however, till nearly fifty years afterwards, in the time of her son Sir Richard, that the buildings were commenced and the golden tide of wealth set in, bringing with it a rapid accumulation of honours. In 1761 this Sir Richard's nephew and namesake was raised to the peerage as Baron Grosvenor, and further created Viscount Belgrave and Earl Grosvenor in 1784. His son became Marquess of Westminster in 1831, and the third Marquess received a Dukedom in 1874.

The good fortune of the Grosvenors had not culminated even in the match with the Ebury heiress; for, about 1761, the first Lord made another extraordinary acquisition. Soon after George III.'s marriage, the ground on which Grosvenor Place now stands, with the adjacent estate, then the property of the Duke of Atholl, was offered for sale for £20,000: and as it adjoined the grounds of Buckingham House, the King wished that it should be bought by the Crown. But Mr. Grenville, who was then Minister, refused to sanction the expenditure. It was finally sold by auction, and Lord Grosvenor became the purchaser, paying for it a price considered rather above its value. Another noble Lord had sent to bid for it, and was disappointed when his agent returned unsuccessful. "How was it," asked Lord * * * (whose descendants recall the transaction with unavailing regret), "that you did not buy it?" "My lord," replied the agent, "I could not conscientiously have offered what Lord Grosvenor did. He gave at the very least £200 more than it was worth!"

To all outward appearance he had made but a poor bargain. The site of the future Belgravia was, up to the year 1826, a clayey swamp called the Five Fields, intersected by mud banks, and occupied only by a few sheds. The soil "retained so much water, that no one would build there, and the 'Fields' were the terror of foot-passengers proceeding from London to Chelsea after nightfall."—Curiosities of London. Many people believed them to have been one of the burial places in use during the Great Plague of London. Nobody, in their wildest dreams, would have thought of inhabiting them.^[100]

But a grand transformation scene was at hand. There had been, even in the last century, a solitary house that stood on the outskirts of the Five Fields (on the site afterwards occupied by Lord Carlisle's): and some years after Lord Grosvenor became the owner of the property, a row of houses had been built there, and called Grosvenor Place. Apparently this speculation had not prospered; for half a century elapsed before any further building was attempted. At length, in 1826, Thomas Cubitt, an eminent London builder, conceived the idea of erecting a new quarter in this unpopular and unwholesome waste; and at once, it is said, offered the Earl—much to his own surprise—a ground rent of £40,000. It was a bold conception; but proved when carried out to have been a true inspiration of genius; for the success of the venture surprised the most sanguine anticipations. The new suburb became the fashionable part of London, and the price of the houses rose year by year, till the estimated future value of the estate defied all calculation. From the first it enjoyed the advantage of being skilfully planned as well as handsomely constructed: and latterly it has been greatly improved by the good taste and liberality of the present Duke.

Three other titles are now held by this family. The second Earl Grosvenor had married Lady Eleanor Egerton, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Earl of Wilton, and by a special limitation in the Egerton patent, his second son Thomas succeeded to the Earldom on the death of his maternal grandfather, and assumed the name and arms of Egerton in 1821. Another younger brother, Lord Robert, Earl Grosvenor's third son, was created in 1857 Baron Ebury of Ebury in Middlesex. Lastly, the only surviving brother of the Duke, Lord Richard Grosvenor, who had held office under Mr. Gladstone, received the title of Lord Stalbridge in 1885.

Vilan :

The French family of this name bore the proud motto "Vilain sans reproche." In England it is found in Domesday. Hugo de Villana, in 1086, held land at Taunton in Somerset of the Bishop of Winchester. Richard Villanus was of Gloucestershire 1189-90 (Rot. Pip.): and in the following century the name occurs in several other counties. William, John, and Hugh le Vileyn, in Shropshire, Richard le Vileyn, in Oxfordshire, and Robert Vilein, in Yorkshire, all appear in the Rotuli Hundredorum of 1272. Was the latter the Robert, son of Ralph Villayn de Binglay, who gave lands at Helwick to Rievaulx Abbey, and was likewise a benefactor of Drax Priory, where he lies buried? Simon his son confirmed his grants. Burton's Mon. Ebor.

In Lincolnshire, Sir William Vileyn, jointly with Swene le Rich, founded a Preceptory for Templars at Mere in the time of Henry II. He gave them three carucates of land at Mere, "six miles So. of Lincoln, on what was formerly the commencement of a region of open country called Lincoln Heath. In the time of Henry III., Mere was held by William Albini of Beauvoir."—Allen's Lincolnshire. Of this family were probably William and John Villan, mentioned in Suffolk in 1199.—Rotuli Curiae Regis. A Richard Vilain witnesses a grant to Belvoir Priory in 1223.—Nichol's Leicestershire. Geoffrey de Vileyn de Sumton occurs in the Testa de Nevill. Villane, Vellane, or Velayne of Cheshire bore Argent a chief Sable; sometimes a cross was substituted for a chief.—Robson. Another coat attributed to them was Argent, three in-escutcheons Gules, two and one.

Verland :

for Veylaund, as it stands in Leland's list. The Weylands of Norfolk and Suffolk bore Argent on a cross Gules five escalops Or; arms absolutely identical with those of Villiers, though I can trace no connection between the two families. They held Oxburgh (now the seat of the Bedingfelds) of "Odingsells, the superior Lord, in the time of Edward I., and ended in the fourth generation. Elizabeth Weyland, their heiress married John Harewell of Warwickshire. Thomas Weyland, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was convicted of bribery and corruption in 1290, when the great Earl of Lincoln was appointed a Commissioner for investigating the administration of justice by Edward I. He was banished the kingdom, and his whole estate and goods confiscated. "Being convicted, and fearing to yield himself to the King's mercy, he went to a monastery of Grey Friars in Suffolk, and took on him the habit of that Order; but being discovered by some of his servants, he was watched and guarded, and after two months' siege went out, forsaking his friar's cowl, and was taken and sent to the Tower."—Suckling's Suffolk.

This name is probably an interpolation. I cannot find that it is anything else but a purely English one, taken from Wayland Hundred in Norfolk, and only interesting as being derived from the scene of "The Norfolk Tragedy," where the forlorn babes perished in the wood,

"And Robin Redbreast piously
Did cover them with leaves."

"Between Watton and Merton," says Blomfield, "on the left hand, lies Wayland Wood, commonly called Wailing Wood, from a Tradition of two Infants murdered by their Uncle in this place, of which the old Ballad or Song 'Of the two Children in the Wood' is said to be made; the Original of which Tradition I don't find; the Name is a plain corruption of Wayland, and is the very Demean of and gives name to the Hundred, as is plain from the Sheriff's Turn which was always kept at a certain place in this Wood."

Valers :

or Vilers. Atkyns, in his History of Gloucestershire, always adopts the former spelling. He tells us that Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, granted Down-Amney, in that county, to Nicholas de Valers in 1271. Michael de Valers was summoned from Gloucester in 1300, for military service in Scotland (Palgrave's Parl. Writs), and Ralph Walers is mentioned in 1375. See Mesni-le-Villiers.

Veirny :

from Vernai, near Bayeux, Normandy. Walter de Vernai occurs in Cambridge 1158, and Richard de Vernai in Stafford in the time of Richard I. The Lords Willoughby de Broke descend from William de Vernai, living 1119-1148. They were first seated at Bromshulfe in Staffordshire, and in the beginning of the fourteenth century at Madeley in Herefordshire, but as early as the reign of Henry VI. we find them settled in their present home in Warwickshire. In 1442 Richard de Vernay built a stately manor house at Compton-Murdack, which as Compton-Vernay, still continues to be the family seat. His grandson, another Richard, was "in such esteem with Henry VIII., that, being informed of some infirmity in his head, he granted him a special license, dated Greenwich, January 15th, 1517, to wear his bonnet at all times and in all places, as well in the King's presence as elsewhere, according to his own pleasure, without the interruption of any man whatsoever." But it is not mentioned whether this privilege was, as in the case of Lord Kingsale in Ireland,^[101] extended to his posterity.

A third Sir Richard, born in 1563, married Margaret Greville, granddaughter and heiress of Elizabeth Willoughby, the wife of Sir Fulk Greville, and the elder daughter of Edward, last heir-male of the Lords Willoughby de Broke: and their grandson Richard laid claim to the barony in 1695. He was a younger son, seated at Belton in Lincolnshire, but the posterity of his elder brother had died out, and he accordingly became Lord Willoughby, and "took his place in the House of Peers as the ancient Barons of Broke had it." He is now represented by the seventeenth Lord.

The Earls Verney descended from Sir Ralph Verney, whose son John married a Hertfordshire heiress, the daughter of Sir Robert Whittington of Penley, Sheriff of London in 1419. They were afterwards seated at Middle Claydon, Bucks (bought by Sir Ralph in 1458), and "either he, or his son Sir John, built a capital mansion there in the reign of Henry VIII., which has ever since been the chief seat of the family, but having undergone many alterations, retains no vestige of its ancient form. The more modern part was fitted up in a very magnificent manner, and furnished, with great expense, by the late Earl Verney."—Lysons. Sir Edmund Verney, standard bearer to King Charles I., who fell at the battle of Edgehill in 1642, was the father of Sir Ralph, the first baronet, and the grandfather of Sir John, created in 1703 Baron Verney of Belturbet and Viscount of Fermanagh in Ireland. An Earldom followed in the succeeding generation; but the second Earl died childless in 1791: and his niece Mary Verney, who was created Baroness Fermanagh the year after his death, never married. She bequeathed her estates to her half-sister on the mother's side, Mrs. Wright, from whom they passed to Sir Henry Calvert, who took the name of Verney.

Vauuruile :

or Vauville: Leland gives the name twice as Waville. This family was a branch of the Barons of Briquebec (Wiffen, Histoire Russell, i. 6), and took its name from Vauville, near Valognes, where they had a castle. "Richard de Vauville appears in the ancient list of knights, who crossed over with the Conqueror.^[102] The Vauville family had also possessions in Septvents, or Septvaus. The name of this place affords a curious example of the fact, that in the black-letter days, the old scribes could not always be certain of their own writing. One branch of the family read it as Sept vans, and gave seven vans, or winnowing vans, as their bearing: while another branch read the word as Sept vaus or de septem vallibus, and bore seven hieroglyphics which stood for valleys according to the conventionalism of the Heralds' College."—Sir Francis Palgrave. M. de Gerville, in his Anciens Chateaux de la Manche, states that they were Lords of Septvaus (near Caumont), and as we have already heard, they constantly bore the name—a name roughly handled by copyists, for "the corruptions of it exceed in number those of any other patronymic that we remember. In Latin, it is generally rendered Septemvannis, and sometimes Septemvallibus; but in Norman-French or English we find it written Setuans, Septvans, Septvaus, Seavaus, Sevanz, Sephans, Sevance, Sevaunces, Senantz, Cennants, and even Setwentz and Setwetz!"—J. R. Planche. He gives a detailed account of one branch of this house in "A Corner of Kent," which I have here abbreviated.

They were first seated at Aldington in Kent, where Robert de Septvans, the husband of Emma, co-heir of William FitzHelte, was living before 1180. His son and namesake was twelve years old in 1185, and possessed some property in Essex, where we find an Isilia de Septvans—possibly the wife of Robert II.—a benefactress of St. John's Abbey, Colchester, in the twelfth century. Three more Roberts succeeded him; the last, a knight of whom there are many notices in the parliamentary records, died in 1306, and lies buried at Chartham. "His often engraved sepulchral brass affords a fine specimen of the ailettes in fashion at that period, and displays on them, as well as on the surcoat, the winnowing fans, which were most probably at first seven in number for Sept-vans, but reduced, in compliance with a later practice, to three."—Ibid. Then followed five Sir Williams; two of them Sheriffs of Kent. One of these, in 1366, petitioned for an inquisition probatio aetatis, having been "led away and counselled by Sir Nicholas de Loveyne of Penshurst and others to alienate his lands and tenements to them, he not being at that time of full age, as had been falsely represented." It was in fact proved that the deluded lad was not even then more than nineteen. The elder line terminated in 1448 with his son, whose heiress married Sir William Fogg of Repton.

There were several other branches, variously derived from the parent stock. One ended with John Septvans of Ash, Esquire of the Body to Henry VI., in 1453; another, first called At Cheker from one of their manors, adopted the name of Harfleet, either again from a manor, or, as the story runs, for brave deeds done under Henry V. at the siege of Harfleur, called Harfleet by the English. The representatives of this name were numerous; but they have all died out or merged into obscurity; the estates at Ash passed away in the seventeenth century through Aphra Harfleet to the St. Legers of Doneraile; and their monuments in the church alone are left.

Aldington-Septvans and Milton-Septvans retain the name in Kent; the latter having been, according to Hasted, their principal seat in the county.

Veniels :

perhaps Venile. "And here must not be forgotten," writes Sir Richard Baker in his Chronicle (3 Ed. III.) "Robert Venile, knight, a Norfolk man, who, when the Scots and English were ready to give battle, a certain stout champion of great stature, commonly called Tournboll, coming out of the Scots army, and challenging any Englishman to meet him in a single combate; this Robert Venile accepted the challenge, and marching towards the champion, and meeting by the way a certain black mastife dog, which waited on the champion, he suddenly, with his sword, cut him off at the loyns, and afterwards did more to the champion himself, cutting his head from off his shoulders."

Fuller, quoting this passage, adds: "This put me with blushing enough (that one so eminent himself should be altogether to me obscure) upon the inquiry after this valiant Knight: but all my industry could not retrieve him in any Author, so that he seems to me akin to those Spirits who appear but once, and finally vanish away." I have looked for him in vain in Blomfield's list of Lords of manors in Norfolk.

An Alan de Wanile, of Huntingdonshire, and Gilbert de la Venele, of Oxfordshire, are found in the Rotuli Hundredorum of the reign of Edward I. If, as I imagine, the name is identical with Venell, Venella, and Venello, it is very numerously represented in the former county, where we find Hugh en la Venele, Ralph en le Venele, Walter ad Venelf, Alexander in Venella, Gilbert, Eusebius, Galfrid, and Thomasin entered in the above record; besides John, Peter, and Nicholas de Venele in Kent.

Verrere :

a Norman family that still existed in the last century: for "De Verrieres d'Haudienville, Bailliage de Bayeux;" and "De Verriere de Remilly, Balliage d'Orbec," were among the nobles assembled in Caen Cathedral for the election of the States-General in 1789. "Osberno Verrer" witnesses a grant of the younger William de Albini, Earl of Arundel, of some land at Quiddenham in Norfolk to Reading Abbey; and about 1272 Robert and Roger le Verer, of Essex, occur in the Rotuli Hundredorum. Walkeline le Werreer gave the advowson of the church of Winfrith (afterwards Winfrith-Newburgh) to Glastonbury Abbey, between 1102 and 1120; which grant was confirmed by his nephew, William de Glastonia, and afterwards by Robert de Newburgh, who describes the two preceding benefactors as his "ancestors." This Walkeline had received from Henry I. the manor of Winfrith and West Lulworth, and apparently left no posterity; William de Glastonia, his heir, being probably his sister's child.'—Hutchins' Dorset. "Hamonis Verrarii" was one of the benefactors of St. Alban's Abbey that are alluded to in King John's confirmation charter.—Mon. Angl. A family of the name long existed at Sandwich in Kent, where, within the altar rails of St. Mary's Church, and at the west end of the nave, "are memorials of many of the family of Verrier, of this town."—Hasted's Kent. William Verrier was Mayor of Sandwich in 1664; and John Verrier one of the Cinque Port Barons elected to support the Royal Canopy at James II.'s coronation in 1685. The dress of the canopy-bearers, as settled by the Brotherhood in 1603, was "a scarlet gowne downe to the ancle, cyttizen's fashion, faced with crymson satten: Gascoine hose: crymson silk stockinges, crymson velvett shoes, and black velvett caps."

They received a payment of sixty-three shillings and four pence, paid by the Port and retained as their perquisite the Royal canopy with its silver staves and bells.

Vschere :

or Le Huissier.^[103] This name, as Hostiarius, is three times found in Domesday. "Johannes Hostiarius" was a tenant in capite in Somerset; "Robertus Hostiarius" held a barony in Leicestershire; and "Willelmus Hostiarius," another in Devon and Notts. I can find no subsequent mention of the first of these barons; and of the second, Nichols only tells us, that "he was the son of William the Usher, and his lordships devolved to Roger de Busli." The third, William Ostiarius, "was seated at Bramcote and Trowell; his interest at the latter place came to Mortimer."—Thoroton's Notts. The first mention of the name as Usher is in the reign of King John, and belongs to an entirely different family. "James Ussher, the celebrated Archbishop of Armagh, was a son of A. Ussher, one of the six clerks in Chancery, descended from a branch of the Norman family of De Neville, which assumed the name of Le Uschere or Le Huissier, from the office of Ostiarius granted to them by King John. Of this family was the gallant Admiral Sir Thomas Ussher."—The Norman People.

Veffay :

for Vessay; one of the spellings of Vassy, Vescy, or Vesci. Margaret Brounflet, on her brass in Wilmington Church, Bedfordshire (date 1407), is styled the heiress of Lord Vessy. (See Vescy.)

Vanay :

evidently intended for Vancy; the second a should by rights be a c. This name, twice written in Domesday, is supposed to have been derived from Vanci, or Wanchy, near Neufchatel, in Normandy. Hugh and Osbern "de Wanceio" each held fiefs in Suffolk in 1086: and Hugh was likewise the mesne-tenant of Earl Warrenne at West Barsham in Norfolk. Either by accident or design, his name is joined to his suzerain's in Leland's Roll, which gives

"Warenne et Wauncy
Chauvent et Chauncy."

In 1085 he appears as a witness to one of the Earl's charters to Castle Acre Priory, of which both he and his descendants were munificent benefactors. They continued in Norfolk about three hundred years. A Dominus de Wanci, whose Christian name is not given, is said by Roger Hoveden to have fallen at the siege of Acre in 1191. One Sir William de Waunci received a writ of military summons in 1292: and two others were successively knights of the shire in 1332 and 1341. The last was the father of Sir Edmund, who served in the retinue of the Black Prince in Gascony, and had the good-fortune to take prisoner Philip of France, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, at Poitiers. He died in 1372, leaving an only son of his own name, then seven years old, who did not long survive him. The succession then passed to Sir Edmund's two sisters, Joan, wife of Sir Nicholas Damory, and Katherine, wife of Edmund de Gournay; but, as Joan was childless, West Barsham devolved on the Gournays. They quarter Gules a falcon displayed Argent as the coat of the Wancys; and it is certainly so given on the seal affixed by the last Sir William to one of his deeds, while a Roll of Arms of the time of Edward III. transforms the falcon into an eagle, and changes the tinctures:—

"Monsire de Wancy port d'argent a une egle espanie d'asur, beke et peds gueules."

Yet it seems incontestable that they usually bore the three gaunts, or gloves, that appear in the chancel window of West Barsham Church, and which Blomfield mistakes for "dexter hands couped at the wrist;" though hands are always erect in armory, and these are pendant. In another and earlier Roll of Arms (temp. Ed. II.), their number is increased to six:

"Sire William de Wauncy de goules a vj. gauns de argent."

The Northamptonshire branch bore tasselled falconer's gloves, as shown on the shield of their successor and representative, Sir Arthur Brooke of Oakley.^[104]

Of this latter family the first on record is Robert de Wancy of Astwell, who appears among the feudatories of Robert de Pinkeny in the certificates of baronies 14 Hen. II. "He occurs with Walter de Ely as conducting the daughter of the Count of Bretagne and the daughter of the Emperor of Cyprus, from Rouen to Chinon, temp. Richard I. In 1198 he witnessed two charters of King Richard, dated at Chateau Gaillard, to the abbey of Stratford Langthorne in Essex, and he subsequently witnessed the charter of King John for the exchange of the Andelys."—Herald and Genealogist, vol. 4. p. 332. In 1314 "another Robert died seized of the manor of Astwell, held of the King as of the barony of Pinkeny by service of one fee, and 20s. yearly to the castle-guard of Windsor, leaving Robert de Wauncy his son and heir."—Baker's Northamptonshire. The son of the latter (again Robert), who was living in 1371, is the last of the name found at Astwell; and the estate passed, "either by direct or mesne inheritance" to the Brookes.

The Wancys, from early times, had spread into other counties. Nicholas de Wancy was Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1249. In Wiltshire, Ralph de Wancy witnesses King John's charter to Ambresbury, and a second Ralph, in 1246, that of Henry III. to Ivychurch Priory. Clyve-Wauncy (now Clevancy) in the parish of Kilmerton and hundred of Kingsbridge, North Wilts, owes its name to Sir William and Sir Geoffrey de Wancy, who were lords of the manor in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. under the fee of the Earl Marshal. Sir Geoffrey appears in St. George's Roil of Arms as "Gefrai de Vaunci," with the old coat of Gules three gaunts Argent, and, besides his Wiltshire estate, held land in Oxfordshire and other places.

"There is still a family of Wansey, which has been settled at Warminster in Wiltshire from the reign of Henry VIII. Henry Wansey, F.S.A., was a well-known antiquary of the last generation, author of a work on Stonehenge, and a coadjutor of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who placed his name on that portion of the History of Modern Wiltshire which contains the hundred of Warminster, folio, 1831."—Herald and Genealogist, vol. 4. p. 333.

Vian :

a name that is found in Normandy in the twelfth century. "The Umfravilles were Lords of Tour and Vian, in Normandy, of whom this was probably a branch."—The Norman People. Walter de Vienna witnesses an old Malvern charter; and "Hugone de Vienna" (elsewhere styled Hugone de Vivian) a release from Nicholas de Aungerville to Roger le Brabazon in 1279.—Nichol's Leicestershire. This may, however, not be intended for the same name. Turburt de Vien, and Basilia his wife, are mentioned in Northamptonshire in 1194. (Rotuli Curiae Regis.) William de Wiun, in Lincoln, a few years later. (Rotulis Cancellerii.) "The antient seat" of Provenders in the parish of Norton, was, before the reign of Edward III., in the possession of Lucas de Vienna or Vienne. "His descendant Edward de Vienna paid aid for it, together with lands in this parish, called Viend-garden. From this name this seat passed into that of Quadring."—Hasted's Kent. Another Kentish manor—Putwood, in the parish of Aspringe—had been held by a William de Vienne (Vyane in the Testa de Nevill) during the reign of Edward I. Hasted suggests that this family "assumed their name from Vienne, in Dauphine, in the kingdom of France." Peter de Vienna was Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex 7 Ed. II.—Fuller. The fee of Hugh de Vium in Oxon and Berks is mentioned in the Testa.

Vernoys :

"De Venois" is on the Dives Roll: the name was taken from Venoix, near Caen, held by the hereditary Marshals of the Stable of the Dukes of Normandy. Four brothers of this house are entered in Domesday: Robert de Hastings (see Hastings), Roger, Gerold, and Gosfrid. The latter was the father of Gilbert, who, with his son John, was impleaded by Robert de Venoix and William de Hastings for the Office of Mareschal to the King, which, although it could not have been theirs by right of birth, they then held, and successfully maintained. John espoused the cause of the Empress Maud, and was rewarded on her son's accession with lands of great value in Wiltshire. Henry II. further confirmed the office of Lord Mareschal to the next heir, his son John, who accordingly bore the great gilt Spurs at the coronation of Coeur de Lion, and was succeeded by his brother William—at that time one of the great potentates of the land—in 1199. We first hear of this William at the death-bed of young Prince Henry, when the rebellious son, in deep penitence, had made confession and received absolution; and committed to him, as "his most familiar Friend," his cross to carry to Jerusalem. He must also have been in favour with Richard I., for, shortly after his accession, the new King bestowed upon him the hand and the two Earldoms of the great heiress of the Clares, who had been in ward to Henry II. for fourteen years. Isabel de Clare's father was the renowned Earl Strongbow who invaded and conquered Ireland, and roused the jealous fears of the King lest he should rule his new realm as an independent sovereign. He never threw off his allegiance, but bore the titles of Earl of Pembroke in England and Earl of Striguil in Ireland, with the office of Justiciary. He married a Celtic princess with a royal dowry, by whom he had one son and one daughter. But the son, when about seventeen, was taken by his father to one of his many great battles; and the wretched boy, panic-struck by the howls and gestures of the hordes of wild Irishry, fled in terror from the field. He never showed himself again till the fighting was at an end, when he came to wish his father joy of his, victory. The Earl received him with a lowering brow: sternly rebuked him for his cowardice, and, declaring that such a dastard was not fit to live, turned to one of his followers, and bade him take his sword and cleave asunder the body of his disgraced and craven son. Thus, when he himself "died untimely" in 1174, a little orphan girl alone was left to bear his honours and enjoy his lands.

The new Earl of Pembroke (often styled Earl Mareschal in virtue of his office^[105]) carried the golden sceptre and cross at Coeur de Lion's coronation as the representative of the De Clares; and was appointed one of the assistants to the two Justiciaries deputed to govern England during the King's absence on his crusade. At the same time he received the moiety of Walter Gifford's Earldom, which was divided between him and Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, the lands in Normandy being allotted to his share. King John further granted him Goderich Castle, and the whole province of Leinster, to be held by the service of one hundred knight's fees; and he became (according to Matthew Paris) "a severe Tamer of the Irish," carrying fire and sword among them as his father-in-law had done. When the barons rose in revolt, he was sent by the King to treat with them at Brackley; and when their terms were rejected and war declared, he had the title of Mareschallus Excercitus Dei et Ecclesiae in the King's army.

"Moreover," continues Dugdale, "being a Person of great Power and Prudence, upon the death of King John, he convened many of the Earls and Barons, and setting young Henry in the midst of them, said, Behold your King! Whereupon they appointed a day for his Coronation." He was constituted guardian to the young King whom he had helped to place on the throne, and approved himself as good and true a servant to him as he had been to his father. When the barons took up arms, he raised a powerful army, besieged Mountsorel Castle, one of their principal strongholds; encountered and routed them with great slaughter at Lincoln; and beleaguered London by sea and land; thus, "Peace was forthwith wrought with the adverse Party." He died at a good old age in 1219, leaving five sons, who all in turns inherited the Earldom, and five daughters.

William, second Earl, the eldest son, had been in arms against King John, and was one of the twenty-five illustrious "conservators" of Magna Charta. He made his peace with Henry III., whose sister Eleanor (afterwards married to Simon de Montfort) became his second wife; and obtained some of the lands forfeited by his former companions in arms, Saher de Quincy and David Earl of Huntingdon. He was renowned in the Welsh wars, and named Captain General of Brittany in 1229. He died two years afterwards, having had no children by either of his wives.

Richard, the second son, styled by Matthew Paris "the flower of chivalry in that time," then held the Earldom during three tempestuous years. It had at first been withheld from him by the King, who ordered him out of the kingdom as a traitor; but having gone over to meet his brothers in Ireland, he returned thence with a great force to seize his inheritance, and took possession of his castle of Pembroke. Upon this the King relented, acknowledged his right, and accepted his fealty; yet not long after the new Earl was again in arms, and leagued with the Welsh prince Llewellyn, defending his castles, storming and taking others, and fighting and winning pitched battles against the Royal levies. At length a plan was devised at Court for getting rid of him. His great Irish domain was promised to Maurice Fitz Gerald, then Justiciary of Ireland, if he could "take this Earl living or dead," and the promise was confirmed by a patent of assurance. Accordingly, the Justiciary, in order to bring Mareschal over to Ireland, made a forcible entry on his lands; and he at once hurried to the rescue, landing with a retinue of not more than fifteen men. Then one of his own liegemen, Richard de Marisco, who was a secret emissary of Fitz Gerald's, came to propose that he should "raise all the power he could, and subjugate that whole Realm to his obedience." At this audacious proposition the Earl naturally paused; but the wily traitor urged it upon him all the more vehemently. "What do you fear?" he said. "Will you degenerate from your valiant Ancestors, who never turn'd their Backs to an Enemy? Who then will believe that you are the Son of the victorious William Mareschall? See, Conquest waits at your door! Behold your ancient Rights by lineal Descent, which your most puissant Ancestor, who took the name of Strongbow, most valiantly acquired!" Mareschal's pride and ambition were stirred: he accepted the enterprize, raised what force he could within his territories, and besieged and took Limerick. At first none dared to make head against him; but when he encountered the Justiciary, and was brought face to face with the King's soldiers, he speedily perceived that treason had been at work in his camp. His men hung back or deserted; Marisco and others refused to cross swords with Fitz Gerald, and he found himself left at the mercy of his enemies. He told them that he saw he was betrayed, but would rather die with honour than quit the field; "and looking back upon his Brother Walter, commanded some of his Servants to take him to his Castle near at hand, that he might not perish with him, whereby his whole Generation should be extinct. And having put his Men in Order, exhorted them to go on with Courage, for the sake of Justice, and the English Laws; himself boldly charging into the midst of his Enemies. But some of those in whom he most trusted, perfidiously forsaking him, he was left almost alone: Nevertheless, though opprest with Numbers on every side, he slew many: but at length his Horse being killed under him, he was stabb'd into the Back, and carried Prisoner to his own Castle:" where he died. He had never been married.

His next brother, Gilbert, and Anselm, the youngest, who had both been implicated in his rebellion, were at that time the King's prisoners; and were summoned to Court on the news of his death. They came "bare-headed, barefooted, with Arms bare to the Elbows, to crave his mercy:" and the King kissed them, pardoned them, restored his inheritance to Gilbert, and delivered to him the Rod of Marshal of his Court, according to custom, at the following Whitsuntide. Before very long, however, he was once more in disfavour, and forbidden to appear at Court; having fallen under the King's displeasure for taking part with his brother-in-law, Richard Earl of Cornwall. He, again, was childless, though twice married; first to Margaret, sister of the King of Scotland, with whom he "had a noble Dowrie;" and secondly, to Maud de Lanvaley; and was killed in 1241 at a Tournament at Ware. He was "mounted upon a lusty Italian Horse, with whose Qualities he had not been acquainted; and first curbing him, and afterwards giving him the Spur, the Horse furiously mounting, broke both the Reins of his Bridle, and cast him out of the Saddle. Whereupon, hanging in one of the Stirrups, he was so dragg'd about, trodden upon, and bruised, as that he died the same Evening."

Walter, the fourth son, whose life had been saved by his chivalrous brother, had much ado to obtain livery of his lands. The King rehearsed all his grievances against the Mareschals; and bitterly upbraided him with the treason of Richard, and the disobedience of Gilbert, who, in defiance of his express prohibition, had attended the tournament in which he lost his life. "And thou," he continued, "in contempt of me, wast also there. With what Face, therefore, cans't thou lay claim to that Inheritance?" However, by the good offices of the Bishop of Durham and others, he ultimately obtained his Earldom, and died peaceably at Goderich Castle in 1246. He had married the heiress of Robert de Quincy, but no heir had been born to him; and his last surviving brother, Anselm, sixth Earl, "a Youth of singular comeliness and hopes," followed him to the grave within eighteen days. Thus, by an extraordinary fatality, all the five sons of the renowned William Mareschal had, within twenty-seven years of his own death, one after the other passed away without posterity; "their Mother, as 'tis said, prophetically foretelling their Deaths in this sort."

The five daughters, on the other hand, had no lack of descendants. Anne, the eldest of these great heiresses, was three times married; first, to Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; second, to William de Warren, Earl of Surrey; and third, to Walter de Dunstanville. She had for her share, with other manors, that of Hempsted-Marshal, and the office of Marshal of England, which she transmitted to her son Roger Bigod, fourth Earl. Joan, the second, was the wife of William de Montchensy; and it was through her daughter and eventual heir, Joan, that the Earldom of Pembroke came to William de Valence, and in the following generation passed, by the marriage of a second heiress, to the kindred blood of Hastings. Isabel; the third, had Kilkenny for her portion, and married, first, Gilbert de Clare, fifth Earl of Gloucester; and second, the King's brother, Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Poitou and Cornwall, who was elected King of the Romans in 1257. Sybil, the fourth, married William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, to whom she brought Kildare; and Eve, the youngest, was the wife of William de Braose of Brecknock.

The male descent was continued by a younger line, founded by Sir John Mareschal, a nephew of the first Earl of Pembroke's, who, like him, had taken King John's part against his barons, and been very active in his service. He was munificently rewarded with various forfeited estates; and the grant in fee of the office of Marshal of Ireland; and married a rich wife, Aliva, the eldest coheiress of Hubert de Rie. His grandson William took the other side, and joined the baronial standard against Henry III.; but died soon after. His two sons, being under age, received the King's pardon, with permission to inherit their grandmother's property: and the younger, who became the heir, was summoned to parliament by Edward I. in 1309. John, the second baron, his only son, died about 1316, leaving as his sole heir a sister named Hawise, married to John Lord Morley. His lands lay chiefly in the counties of Norfolk and Lincoln.

There were no doubt other collateral branches; for the original Norman name appears in the Liber Niger. Leonard de Venuiz held a barony in Essex 1165; and Robert de Venuiz occurs about 1130 in Wilts. It has travelled down to our own time as Venus or Veness, and is now extremely common among the cottagers and farm labourers in the neighbourhood of Battle Abbey.

Vrnall :

for Vernol or Verneuil, a strong city on the skirt of Normandy. According to Anselme, the seigneurie of Verneuil was held by the D'Espagnes, and passed from them to the house of Noailles in 1578. The name is not unfrequent in England, and found both in Scotland and Ireland. Robert de Vernuil paid a fine in Buckinghamshire, 9 Ric. I.—Hunter's Fines. King John confirmed to Nun-Appleton Priory, York, the gift of Henry FitzHenry de Vernoil (Mon. i. 909). John de Vernuil was Sheriff of Wilts 40, 43, & 45 Hen. III.; the last time jointly with Galfrid de Scudamore. Either he, or a namesake, is entered in the Testa as a tenant in Worcestershire. Sir Henry de Vernoil, temp. Ed. I. held of Robert Lutterell in Yorkshire, and married Agnes, one of the co-heiresses of Swain de Houghton. "Among the Anglo-Normans who settled in Scotland in the 12th century was a person named Vermel, who received from David I. the lands of Romanach. His son, Philip de Vermel, granted a portion of them to the monks of Newbattle, between 1179 and 1189, and there were similar grants to the canons of Holyrood. There were several generations of Vermels in these lands."—Chambers' Peebles. The name degenerated to Wermel. Sir Henry de Vernoil was one of the "fideles," and principal men of Ireland in 1301 (Palgrave's Parl. Writs). The Vernoils bore Argent fretty Sable a canton Gules.

Vnket :

a singular name, rarely to be met with; and each time under a fresh disguise. The first mention I have found of it is in Eyton's Shropshire, as Onyet or Ovyet. At the Assizes held coram Rege at Salop, 1226, "Stephen de Ocle, as tenant of half a virgate at Norton, was impleaded for the same by Geoffrey Ovyet, a minor, as heir of William Ovyet, a Crusader. The question was similar to that in a suit of mart d'ancestre, viz. 'whether William Ovyet was seized, on the day when he left for Jerusalem.'" The jury found that he was not. Again, at the Shropshire assizes of 1256, "Richard, son of Richard Onyet, was sued for disseizing William Vylande and his wife of a tenement at Astley." Robert Ungot, of Norfolk, occurs about 1272 in the Hundred Rolls. I am doubtful whether we can include Thomas and William de Unketel, who were of Somersetshire at the same date, in the family;—probably not. But the name certainly reappears once, if not twice, in Norfolk. On an old oaken screen that divides the chancel of Croxton Church from the nave, is inscribed:—* * * Willmi Ungot Capelli: et Petri Ungot et Anabule * * * Parentum Suor. William Ungot was the incumbent in 1471.—Blomfield's Norfolk. In the same county, a brass in Tottington Church commemorates Luke Vngar, Margaret Pory his wife, and their son, 1598.

Vrnafull: I can offer no better suggestion for this name than Vesnevale, Wenevall, or Verneville. Robert de Wenevall witnesses William Count of Boulogne's charter to Eye Priory (Mon. Angl.). Robert de Warmewule paid a fine in Dorset in 1207.—Hunter. William de Wennevale was of Wiltshire, 1189-90 (Rot. Pip.). "The fief of Vennesval (Esnevall) is among the returns of service in 1172, where is this entry, Robertus de Wesneval iii. mil. et ad suum servicium xi. mil. et iii. partem mil.; the castle, its caput, was situate in the vicinity of Pavilly. Helouis de Vennesval rendered accompt, as in 1195, of 200 li. of the ferm of the land of her husband, out of which she had 40 li. allowed for the sustenance and raiment of her three sons; the remainder being by her paid in at the Treasury. By writ to the Barons of the Exchequer, 9 Jan. 1202, King John made known to them that he had acquitted Robert de Esneval of 80 li. money of Anjou, which sum was owing by him of the arrears of his land, which his mother owed to the King, whilst the land of the said Robert was in her hands, and of which she was accustomed to answer to the King." Stapleton's Rotuli Scaccariae Normanniae. In the chartulary of Stanley Abbey, Wiltshire, is found a confirmation by Robert de Wesnevalle of some land at Heckham that had belonged to his uncle William de Wesnevalle. Robert de Wendevale (was it the same?) held part of a knight's fee at Folkestone of Hamo de Crevecoeur; and William at Sakesthorp in Norfolk,—Testa de Nevill. A William de Werneville, in 1232, presented to the church of Hymelworth (Hemsworth) in Yorkshire.—Archbishop Gray's Register.

Vasderoll :

I believe that here an s has inadvertently slipped into the place of an l, and that we should read Val de Roil, or Val de Ruel, from the castle of Vaudreuil in the arrondissement of Louviers. "The fortress of Vallis Rodolli has been constantly reputed the villa in which Fredegundis, the widow of Chilperic, was constrained to fix her abode."—T. Stapleton. It was one of the important frontier fortresses of Normandy, and gave its name to a former bailifry of the Duchy. "Joannes de Valle Deruile" is entered in Duchesne's Feoda Normanniae as holding one fee of Hugh de Montfort; and Stephen de Valle Rodolli occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1189-90. At the battle of Hastings, "the archers of Val de Roil put out the eyes of many an Englishman with their arrows."—Wace. Brian de Valle de Rieul (Valle Rodolli) witnesses two charters to Shrewsbury Abbey in the time of Stephen (v. Eyton's Salop): and Roger de Valle Rodolli was of Worcestershire 1155-58.—(Rot. Pip.)

Vaberon :

I take this to be Vaubadon or Valbadon, a name three times written in Domesday. Ansfrid de Valbadon was a baron in Northamptonshire, where he likewise held of Bishop Odo; "Rannulfus de Valbedon" (Renouf de Vaubadon in the Dives Roll), and "Osmundus de Valle Badonis" were both sub-tenants, the former in Kent, and the latter in Herts. Some of Ranulph's descendants were seated at Shipborne in the time of Henry III. Of Osmond I can only find one solitary notice in Hertfordshire, where he held the manor of Wells. "Pannage for fifty hogs lies to this land, which Osmond de Valle Badonis entered upon in the time of King William." Chauncy's Herts. The name is never again mentioned in that county, but in the time of Henry II. we meet with it in Surrey. "Hatcham then belonged to a family named Vabadune, of whom James de Vabadune left Richard his brother and heir, and Richard left a daughter and heir, who married Roger Bavent."—Manning and Bray's Surrey.

Valingford :

for Wallingford. "At the time of the Norman invasion," says Lysons, "Wigod, a powerful Saxon, had a castle at Wallingford, to which, after the battle of Hastings, he invited the victorious Monarch; the invitation was accepted, and at this place the Conqueror received the submission of Archbishop Stigand, and the principal barons, before he marched with his army to London. During his abode at this place, he celebrated the marriage of Robert D'Oyley, one of his favourite generals, with the only daughter of Wigod. About the year 1067, the King fearing that his new subjects might establish a garrison at Wallingford as they had already done at Oxford, commanded Robert D'Oyley to build a strong castle there; this castle was frequently used as a State prison, as will be seen in the course of its subsequent history; Aldred, Abbot of Abingdon, is the first person on record who was imprisoned there.

"Maud, only daughter and heir of Robert D'Oyley, brought the castle, town, and honour of Wallingford in marriage to Milo Crispin, and after his death to her second husband, Brien FitzCount, who, being devoted to the interest of the Empress Maud, immediately on her arrival in the kingdom fortified Wallingford Castle, and declared on her behalf. This castle afforded her a secure retreat, when she escaped from Oxford, eluding observation, as our historian relates, by passing along the river, then frozen over, in white garments; the ground being at the time covered with snow. Stephen several times besieged this castle, but in vain; having built a fort at Cromarsh, on the opposite side of the river, for the purpose of carrying on the siege to better effect, Brien FitzCount despatched a messenger to the Duke of Normandy, who coming over with an army to assist his friends at Wallingford, laid siege to the King's fort or castle of Cromarsh; Stephen hastened to its relief, and the two armies were encamped only three furlongs asunder, when proposals were made for an accommodation; a peace was in consequence concluded before the walls of Wallingford in 1153, by the terms of which the fortress of Cromarsh was to be destroyed at the King's cost, and Brien FitzCount pardoned and taken into favour.

"Before the close of Stephen's reign, Brien took upon him the Cross, abandoned his possessions, and went to the Holy Land; his wife had before taken the veil at a convent in Normandy. In consequence of this event, King Henry II., on his accession to the throne, seized into his own hands the honour and castle of Wallingford;" and it ever after continued Crown property.

The name of Wigod is synonymous with Bygod, and would suggest that the Lord of Wallingford was one of the Norman settlers found in this country previous to the Conquest.

Venicorde :

for Vandelicourt: a name that has already been given as "Penecord" (see p. 42), and is again repeated further on.

Valiue :

This also is a duplicate, for it stands for Valoines. Peter de Valoines, in his grant to St. Mary's, York, is styled "Petrus de Walins." (Mon. Angli.) It is here entered as Valenges (see p. 257).

Viuille :

from "Widville, Guidoville, or Viville, which was held from the De Toesnis in Normandy. Hugh de Guidville came to England 1066, and 1086 held in Northants and Leicester (Domesday). Robert, his son, temp. Henry I., granted the tithes of Guidoville to Conches Abbey, with consent of Ralph de Toesni (Gall. Christ, xi. 132, Instr.), and in 1130 held the estates of Roger de Mowbray in farm from the Crown. (Rot. Pip.) He had, 1. Ralph, father of Robert de Withville, whose brother William de Widville of Northants 1165 (Liber Niger) was ancestor of the Earls Rivers; 2. William, whose son, Richard de Withville, held five knight's fees in York from Mowbray, and half a fee in capite (Liber Niger). He was a benefactor to Byland Abbey (Burton, Mon. Ebor). Walter de Widville occurs t. Richard I. (Mon. ii. 984); and William, son of William de Wyville, in 1299 confirmed his ancestor's gifts to Byland Abbey. From this line descend the Baronets Wyville."—The Norman People. Hugh de Witwile, the founder of the family, held of the Honour of Grentemesnil,^[106] and appears to have been seated at Sproxton, in Leicestershire. They long continued in the county. Robert de Wyville of Stanton-Wyvill, was knight of the shire 23 Edward I., and was summoned in 1299 to go with horse and arms to Berwick to oppose the Scots. Either seventh or eighth in descent from him was William Wyvill, who died s. p. 10 Henry VII.

William de Wydeville, who, according to the Liber Niger, held half a knight's fee of Robert Foliot, was seated at Grafton in Northamptonshire, where his descendants continued for a great many generations. One of them, Richard de Wydeville, Constable of Northampton Castle, and twice Sheriff of the county under Edward III., married the widowed Lady of Warkworth, Elizabeth, heiress of the Lyons 5 another was Constable of the Tower and Esquire of the Body to Henry V.; but it was reserved to a third Richard, esteemed the handsomest man in England, to build up his fortunes by a stolen match with Jaquetta Duchess of Bedford. Not only was she by birth a Princess of Luxemburgh, but, as the widow of the King's uncle, the third lady of the realm, and when she chose for her second husband a poor Northamptonshire squire, her marriage took place without the Royal license, and was kept secret for several years. It was discovered at the same time as the Queen's misalliance with Owen Tudor, when "cloth of frieze was matched with cloth of gold;" and the Duchess' dower was declared forfeit to the Crown. Sir Richard had to pay a fine of £1,000 to obtain his pardon and its recovery. He was advanced at Court through the good offices of Cardinal Beaufort; was created Lord Rivers in 1448, became a Knight of the Garter and Seneschal of Acquitaine, and received some small grants of land. Yet he was ill able to make provision for the five sons and seven daughters that had been born to him; and he sought and obtained for the eldest girl a place at Court as maid of honour to Margaret of Anjou.

Elizabeth Wydevill was remarkably beautiful; fair as the day, with a wealth of pale yellow hair, that is represented in a contemporary illumination in the Harleian Collection as streaming down her back and reaching to her knees.^[107] She had no lack of suitors, and was married to Sir John Grey, son and heir of Lord Ferrers of Groby, a gallant young soldier who had the command of the cavalry in Queen Margaret's army. He led the desperate charge that decided the fortune of the second battle of St. Albans in 1461, but died of the wounds he received there. As a vehement Lancastrian that had revolted from the House of York, he was "the more hateful to those of that family"; and his little sons were deprived of his fair inheritance of Bradgate. The eldest of the two was then not more than four years old; and their widowed mother took refuge with them in her old home at Grafton. One day, hearing that the King was hunting in the neighbouring forest of Whittlebury, at that time a royal chace, she waylaid him under a spreading tree still known as the Queen's Oak, holding her fatherless boys by the hands, and throwing herself at his feet, besought him to restore their patrimony. Edward, who "had a heart for every new face," was struck with admiration at the sight of the lovely widow, kneeling in tearful supplication before him, and the scene of this first eventful interview became the trysting-place of many subsequent lovers' meetings. He had no intention of making her his wife, thinking to win this fresh prize (as he had several others) on easier terms than marriage; but although he was undeniably "the goodliest personage of his time," and Comines ill-naturedly hints at some former "Amorettes" of the beautiful Elizabeth, on this occasion he pleaded in vain. She would not listen to him: but, aided by the counsels of her scheming mother,^[108] stood firm to the only answer she had to give. She was, she declared, of far too mean an estate to become his wife, and yet esteemed herself too highly to be his concubine. The King was desperately in love, and "when he perceived that there was no other remedy but that he must shifte his saile to that scantling of winde," made up his mind to marry her. The Duchess arranged the wedding with such despatch and mystery that even Lord Rivers was not informed of it; and Edward and Elizabeth were married "in most secret manner, early in the morning, upon the first of May, 1464, at the house called Grafton near Stony Stratford. At which marriage was none present but the spouse, the spousesse, the Duchess of Bedford her mother, the priest and two gentlewomen, and a young man to help the priest sing. After the spousailles the King rode again to Stoney Stratford, as if he had been hunting, and then returned at night. And within a day or two he sent to Lord Rivers, saying he would come and lodge with him for a season, when he was received with all due honour, and tarried there four days, when Elizabeth visited him by night so secretly that none but her mother knew of it."—Fabyan. She was then thirty-three, nine years older than her bridegroom, having been born several years before the public acknowledgment of her parents' marriage. Her clandestine wedding, hurried on with such anxious precipitation, was attended with some obloquy, and gave dire offence when it became known. The Duchess of York—the same "proud Cis" who in her beautiful youth had been named the Rose of Raby—wrote a letter of angry remonstrance to her son. But it was too late. On Michaelmas Day, in the old palace at Reading, he declared Elizabeth to be his wedded wife, and at the following Whitsuntide she was crowned Queen.

She lost no time in providing for her needy and numerous relatives. Her six comely sisters, till then portionless and unsought, were mated with the loftiest nobles of the realm; she married her brother Anthony to the greatest heiress of her day, the orphan daughter of Lord Scales, and made her father an Earl. He was further appointed Lord Treasurer, and caused bitter discontent by tampering with the coin and circulation. Her eldest brother John, a fine young man, was so greedy of gold as to contract "a diabolical marriage" (as William of Worcester wrathfully styles it) with a richly dowered widow in her eightieth year, Katherine Duchess Dowager of Norfolk. The very name of the Queen's rapacious kindred stank in the nostrils of the haughty baronage, and "became abhorrent to the nation."

The newly-made Earl did not long survive his elevation; for both he and his degraded son John perished in the Lancastrian revolt of 1469. They were captured in the Forest of Dean by Robin of Riddesdale (Sir Robert Hildyard of Winestead), and beheaded at Northampton without judge or jury. Anthony, jure uxoris Lord Scales, who then succeeded, was justly accounted one of the most accomplished gentlemen of the age. He was strikingly handsome; of noble and courtly bearing; peerless in the saddle; brave as steel; an excellent scholar no less than an excellent soldier; fond of literature; "great in feats of arms, and abundant in pilgrimages." The first printed book ever seen in England was published by Caxton under his and Lord Worcester's patronage: and a translation he had himself made of the works of Christine of Pisa afterwards issued from the same press. The ladies of England selected him as their champion in the tournament that was to celebrate his sister's coronation (but which in reality only took place two years later); binding above his left knee a jewelled garter bearing the enamelled Forget-me-not, or Fleur de Souvenance, to be sent with the challenge. He singled out a worthy adversary—Charles the Bold's brother, the Bastard of Burgundy; and gained great credit by worsting him in the lists. They fought for three successive days at Smithfield in the presence of the King. The first day "they ran together with sharp spears, and parted with equal honour:" the next the Bastard was unhorsed, and "Lord Scales rode about him with his sword drawn," in token that he held his life in his hand but on the last day they were on foot, armed with pole-axes, and strove "valorously, till the point of this lord's weapon entered the right of the Bastard's helm." The King then threw his warder down, and the honours of the combat were adjudged to Lord Scales.

He was greatly honoured and trusted by his brother-in-law, whose fortunes he faithfully shared during the civil war, following him in his brief exile to Holland, and fighting by his side on his triumphant return. He was then constituted Governor of the town and castle of Calais, the tower of Rysebank, the castle of Guisnes, and the adjacent marches, for a term of seven years, and named Captain General of the King's forces by sea and land. Some years before, he had received a grant in tail of the Isle of Wight; and when his young nephew was created Prince of Wales in 1473, he was appointed his governor, with the high office of Chief Butler of England. During the same year, he went on pilgrimage to Spain and Italy. But with the life of Edward IV., his glory departed from him; and in 1483 he was one of the first that fell a victim to the evil ambition of the Duke of Gloucester. He and the Queen's second son, Sir Richard Grey, were treacherously seized at Northampton, and taken to Pontefract, where, after a short imprisonment, he was beheaded in front of the Castle, without even the pretence of a trial, or a chance of opening his lips in his own justification. He had been twice married, but left no posterity. His next brother, Lionel, was Bishop of Salisbury; the fourth, Edward, had d. s. p.; and thus Richard, the youngest of the five brothers, became the third Earl of this ill-starred house, which ended with him in 1490.

Elizabeth Wydevile died two years afterwards. Though her husband was notoriously unfaithful to her, and "received many others into the bosome of his fancie," she retained her hold over him to the last. She had a fair share of her mother's craft and cunning, and knew how to gain her end; "helping herself," says Lord Bacon, "by some obsequious bearing and dissembling of his pleasures." But she was patient and submissive in adversity, and passed through trials that might melt the hardest of hearts to pity. There are few more pathetic pictures in history than that of the fugitive Queen in the Sanctuary at Westminster, sitting "a-low on the rushes, all desolate and dismayed," with the glittering eddies of her beautiful hair, that had escaped from her widow's coif, enfolding her in a golden veil. All around her was "heavinesse, rumble, haste, and businesse with conveyance of her householde-stuff into sanctuary." The eldest of her two boys, from whom she had just parted for ever, had been born when she was before enrolled as a Sanctuary woman; and the day was close at hand when she was to be robbed of the one that remained to her. She clung to him passionately as he was taken away, crying, "God send thee safe keeping! Let me kiss thee once ere thou goest, for God knoweth when we shall kiss together again!" Then followed the last and most terrible scene of all, when the news of their murder "struck to her heart like the sharp dart of death." She fell swooning to the ground, "and there lay in great agony like to a dead corpse. And after she was revived and came to her memory again, she wept and sobbed, and with pitiful screeches filled the whole mansion. Her breast she beat, her fair hair she tare and pulled in pieces, and calling by name her sweet babes, accounted herself mad when she delivered her younger son out of sanctuary for his uncle to put him to death. After long lamentation, she kneeled down and cried to God to take vengeance, 'who,' she said, 'she nothing doubted would remember it.'"—Sir Thomas More. Her son-in-law Henry VII. is said to have confiscated her property, and not long before her death she retired to a nunnery at Bermondsey, from whence,

"Placed upon a bier
In happier hour than on a throne;"

she was borne to her place of sepulture in St. George's Chapel.

The remotely connected Yorkshire branch of this house, whose name more nearly retained its ancient spelling as Wyvill (in which form it is again inserted on the Roll), still exists in the male line. Richard de Withville, who is entered in the Liber Niger, was a benefactor of the monks of Byland (Burton, Mon. Ebor.); and in 1299 William, son of William de Wyville, confirmed his ancestor's gifts to the Abbey (Mon. ii. 984). They were seated at Slingsby, and probably held of the Fitz Hughs, whose coat they bore with changed tinctures. The elder line appears, by Leland's account, to have ended before his time. "Wyvel of the Northe, that was the ancientest of that Name, had his principal House at Slingesby yn Yorkshire. And this Wyvelle was a Man of faire Landes. Slyngesby about a v. Miles from Malton yn Riedale in the way from Malton to Newborow, that is distant xii. Miles from Malton. The House of Slyngesby and the Landes of this Wyvelle be devolvid to the Lord Hastings by Heires General.

"That Wyvell that now is dwelling at Burton Parva by Masseham in Richemontshire, cummythe of a yonger Brother of the Wyvelle of Slyngesby. He hath Burton Parva by an Heyre Generalle of one of the Pygotes of the Northe * * * * The Howse cawlyd Clifton, like a Pile or Castlelet, distant about a mile and an half from Litle-Burton, was the Lorde Scropes of Masham. This Lorde Scropes Landes in Continuance devolvid to 3 Doughters of one of them. Whereof one of them was maryed to Strangaise of Harlesey, a nother to Danby, the 3. to Strelley Com. Notts. Of this thirde descendid 2. Doughters, whereof one was maryed to Bingham, and other to Wyvelle that now liveth and hath Clifton by her." This is, however, not quite accurate. The youngest of Lord Scrope's three daughters, between whose descendants the barony of Scrope of Masham fell into abeyance in 1517, was the wife of Sir Ralph Fitz Randolph of Spennithorne, and it was the eldest of her five daughters that married Sir Nicholas Strelley. The youngest, Agnes, was the heiress that brought Sir Marmaduke Wyvill "a great accession to his estate;" though why the last born of five sisters, all of whom were married, and (with a single exception) had children, should have been so richly endowed, I am at a loss to conjecture.

Their grandson, another Sir Marmaduke, Vice Chamberlain of the Household to Queen Elizabeth, was created a baronet in 1611, and towards the end of James I.'s reign, removed to Constable-Burton, their present seat. The next Sir Marmaduke suffered heavily for his loyalty during the Civil War; his house was twice sacked by Cromwell's troopers, and he was mulcted of upwards of,£1,300 as composition for his estate. The last in succession was the seventh baronet—again Sir Marmaduke—who died a bachelor in 1774. His sister had married her cousin, the Rev. Christopher Wyvill, to whom she brought the estates, but who could not claim the baronetcy. An uncle stood in his way; for his father (who was a grandson of Sir William Wyvill, the fourth baronet) had an elder brother who went out to America, settled in Maryland, and died there about 1750, leaving a son. On this son's posterity, if alienage do not bar their right, the baronetcy (unclaimed and dormant for more than one hundred years) has clearly devolved.

Vancorde :

see Venecorde: a duplicate.

Valenges :

or, as Leland gives it, Vallonis; from Valognes in the Cotentin. Peter de Valognes or Vallonis received from the Conqueror fifty-seven lordships in the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Cambridge, and Lincoln, and built his castle at Orford in Suffolk. He was Viscount of Essex 1087; and with his wife Albreda, the daughter of Hubert de Rie, founded Binham Priory in Norfolk "for the welfare of the souls of William the Conqueror and Maud his Queen, and for the good estate of Henry I." His son Roger was an adherent of the Empress Maud, and left six sons: 1. Peter, d. s. p.; 2. Robert, who had only a daughter, Gunnora, married to Lord Fitzwalter; 3. Geoffrey, Lord of Burton in Yorkshire, d. s. p.; 4. John, a priest; 5. Philip; 6. Roger, who obtained from William the Lion, King of Scotland, Kilbride in Clydesdale, with other lands in the west of Scotland, that passed to his daughter Isabel, the wife of David Comyn.

"Philip de Valoniis, the fifth son, also came into Scotland, towards the end of the reign of Malcolm IV. He was a constant attendant on William the Lion, and was one of the hostages for his liberation. In recompence, the King made him a grant of the manors of Panmure and Benvie, and appointed him High Chamberlain of Scotland about 1180. He witnessed the agreement betwixt King William I. and King John in 1209; was continued Chamberlain by Alexander II. on his accession, 1214: and dying on the 5th of November 1215, was interred with great solemnity in the chapter-house of Melrose."—Wood's Douglas. His son William succeeded him as High Chamberlain, but only survived him by four years, leaving an only daughter, Christian, his sole heiress, who was married about 1224 to Sir Peter de Maule.

"Of this Family," says Dugdale, "was also Alan de Valoines, who in 32, 33, and 34 Henry II. was Sheriff of Kent. So likewise in 1 Richard I." He had considerable grants in Kent from the latter, "with liberty to keep Greyhounds and Braches, to hunt and take the Hare and Fox in any of the King's Forests:" but left no heir save his brother Robert, whose line ended with two grand-daughters. "Another Branch of this Stock" was Theobald de Valoines, Lord of Perham in Norfolk whose daughter Berta married Ranulph de Glanville, Justice of England; he had also a son named Thomas, who took part in the Baron's War. There is no further mention of his descendants, but in Coeur de Lion's reign we find another Philip de Valoines, whose heiress, Sybilla, married one of the Stutevilles. Their son, Eustace, probably died s. p., as her lands were inherited by her kinswoman Christian de Maule.

Wardebois :

in Leland's list Verbois, from Verboys, near Rouen. This family gave its name to Warbois or Warboys, formerly spelt Wardeboys, a considerable village on the high road from Huntingdon to Ramsey. Unfortunately there exists no History of Huntingdonshire in which to seek for some notices of its owners: and Camden only tells us that the families of this little county "have been so worn out, that though it has been very rich in Gentry, yet but few Sirnames of any note are remaining, which can be drawn down beyond the reign of the last Henry." Warboys passed to the Cromwells, and "Sir Oliver" (the usurper's uncle), "sold it to Sir John Leamon, who said, It was the cheapest Land he ever bought, tho' the dearest that ever Sir Oliver sold; for it seems that this latter, tho' otherwise a wise Man, yet had not that Wit, either to keep his Estate, or sell it to its Worth."

Walter Wardebois is mentioned in the county as early as 1199. (Rotuli Curiae Regis.) Geoffrey de Wardbois, a townsman of Cambridge, was "charged with having joined in the great riot against the Master and Scholars of the University" in 1322.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.

I find in Anselme's Histoire Genealogique de la France that the seigneurie of Verbois was brought to the Harcourts in 1326 by Alix de Brabant.

Ward :

see Delaward.

Wafre :

According to Eyton, "this name occurs frequently in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;" and it is still borne by Hopton-Wafre in Shropshire, and Tedston-Wafre in Herefordshire. Robert le Wafre, in 1253, held Hopton in capite of the Earl of Hereford of the Honour of Brecknock; and Tedstone under John de Wildebouf of the same Honour; both of which were brought in marriage by his only child, Lucia, to a younger son of Lord Mortimer of Wigmore. "The obit of Alice, mother of the above-mentioned Robert, was annually celebrated in Hereford Cathedral. John le Wafre 20 Ed. I. held two virgates of land at Marston by the service of conducting the treasure of our Lord the King from Hereford to London, as often as he should be summoned by the Sheriff, with one horse and an iron helmet, at the costs of the King, to wit, twelve pence a day towards London, and returning at his own proper costs."—Duncumb's Herefordshire. Simon de Wafre held by the same serjeanty, as did Petronilla de Wafre in the time of Henry III. William de Waure represented Canterbury in the parliament held at Westminster 9 Ed. III.—Hasted's Kent. He was one of the three Crown Commissioners appointed to enquire into the case of William de Septvans 41 Ed. III.—Archaeologia Cantiana. "Robertus de Waura" held three parts of a knight's fee of Robert Fitz Odo at Wavre (now Church-Over) in Warwickshire.—Liber Niger. William de Waure occurs in the Staffordshire Pipe Roll of 1199-1200.

Wake :

or Wac; a baronial name, first mentioned in Normandy in the early part of the eleventh century. "There is a charter to Bernay in the Mem. Anti. Norm. IV. 381, granted it would seem, by Duke Richard II. at the great council at which he, in 1027, made disposition of his duchy in favour of his son. Besides dignitaries of the church, it is signed by one hundred and twenty-one viscounts, barons, &c, and among them is Goffredus Wac."—Taylor's Wace. He held Rebercil (now Rebercy) in the arrondissement of Bayeux, and was in all probability the father of the "Sire de Rebercil" who figures in the Roman de Rou as one of the five knights that challenged Harold to come forth and cross swords with them in the battle. It is strange that the name should not be written in Domesday; but we find the Wakes seated at Dowlish-Wake, in Somersetshire early in the ensuing century.—Collinson. Dugdale commences the pedigree with Hugh Wac (probably the same Hugh that founded the Abbey of Longues in Normandy and endowed it with the church of Rebercil in 1168), who married a great Lincolnshire heiress, Emma de Gand. She was a descendant of the famous outlaw Hereward, that defended the Isle of Ely against the Conqueror; and from him the English Wakes, repudiating their Norman ancestry, have gloried to derive their name. Through him they have been traced back by some fanciful genealogist to "Oslac, general and butler to King Athelwulf in 849;" and they retain as their crest the Wake knot^[109] that is traditionally said to have been his badge. Yet Mr. Freeman avers that "the surname of Le Wake is not given to Hereward in any authentic writing, though it is given him in writings that are not of yesterday." Neither his only child and heiress, Torfrida, nor her husband Hugh de Evermue, assuredly ever bore it. Torfrida, again, had no son; and her baronies of Bourne and Deeping were conveyed by her daughter to Richard de Rollos, whose father, Richard de Rullos or de Ruelles, had been Chamberlain to William the Conqueror. He had two sons; of whom the younger, Richard, left an heiress named Adelidis, married to Baldwin Fitz Gilbert or De Gand, who founded Bourne Abbey (in 1156) as well as Deeping Priory. Their daughter and sole heir, Emma, was the wife of Hugh Wac. It thus seems clear, that the first authentic appearance of the name of Wake in the descendants of Hereward was through an intermarriage with a Norman family nearly one hundred years after his death.

Emma de Gand must have been Hugh's second wife, as his son Geoffrey (mentioned in his charter to Longues), did not succeed to her estates. This may have been the same Galfrid or Geoffrey Wac to whom King John granted Ebbesborne-Wake in Wiltshire, where his posterity continued only till the time of Henry III.

The son of Hugh and Emma, named after his grandfather Baldwin, and endowed with his mother's two Lincolnshire baronies, attended Coeur de Lion's coronation, and was one of the hostages given for his ransom. He was followed by two more Baldwins, treading so quickly on each other's heels, as to suggest the interpolation of a generation. According to Dugdale's dates, the first Baldwin died in 1201, his son in 1206, and his grandson before 1213. The last-named married Isabel de Bruere, and their son Hugh inherited Torbay, and a great estate when her brother William de Bruere died s. p. in 1232. Hugh's own wife was one of the richest heiresses in the north of England, Joan de Stuteville, dowered with Cottingham, &c, in Yorkshire, and the Barony and Forest of Lydal in Cumberland. When she was left a widow in 1241, she resumed her maiden name, and paid a very heavy fine (9000 marks) to obtain the wardship and marriage of her son, and "liberty for herself to take to Husband whom she should think fit." This proved to be Hugh Bigot, Lord Justice of England.

Her son Baldwin was in arms against Henry III. in the Baron's War, and twice taken prisoner; first at the storming of Northampton, and then with young Simon de Montfort at Kenilworth. How he made his escape on either occasion, "I have," says Dugdale, "not seen; but having been an active person in the North against the King, he was one of those, who after the Battel of Evesham made head again, with Robert Earl Ferrers in Derbyshire; and was with him at the Battel of Chesterfield. Whence (though Ferrers had the fate to be there taken, and many of his party slain) he fled; and after that, with young Simon Montfort and some others, got to the Isle of Ely; where having held out as long as they could, he at length rendred himself; and submitting himself to the King's mercy, obtain'd pardon and restitution of his Lands."

These had been increased by his marriage with one of the co-heiresses of Robert de Quincy of Colne-Quincy in Essex and his wife the Welsh princess Helen; and in this parish—since known as Colne-Wake—a very ancient building still bears the name of Wake's Hall.

John, the next heir, who had served in France and Gascony, had summons to parliament as a baron in 1294; and dying a few years afterwards, was succeeded first by a son of his own name who did not long survive him, and then by another, Thomas, Lord Wake, for seventeen years one of the most potent nobles of the realm.

He early showed an independent spirit, for in 1317, "being still in Ward, he refused to marry the person tendered to him, taking another Wife without the King's License," for which he was mulcted of 1000 marks. The offence was of course aggravated by the high rank and Royal blood of this chosen bride, who was the daughter of the Earl of Lancaster, Lady Blanche Plantagenet. "In 19 Ed. II., when most of the Nobility forsook the King, and took part with Queen Isabell, he joyned with her in raising an Army: which causing the King (with those his Favourites, who had occasioned that unhappy breach), to flee into Wales, she took upon her the whole sway of the Realm; and thereupon shortly after, in the King's name, constituted this Thomas, Lord Wake, Justice of all the Forests South of Trent, and Constable of the Tower of London." After the King's deposition, he was further appointed Constable of Hertford, with licence to castellate at Cottingham; and served Edward III. in his Scottish wars, where he sought to recover some lands that had been wrested from him by Robert Bruce. In 1329 he was Governor of the Channel Islands, and in 1339 the Guardian of the Lincolnshire coast. Yet he was far from having always been on cordial terms with his Royal master, who had entertained suspicions of his loyalty; and in this latter year, "the King, returning from Brabant, came about midnight to the Tower of London, and finding no more than three servants there, and his own Children, grew so highly offended, that he presently caused the Lord Mayor of London, as also this Thomas, several of the Judges, and other persons of note, to be sent for, and committed them to several prisons."

Lord Wake died childless in 1349; and his sister Margaret, then the widow of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, inherited the barony, with a long list of possessions in Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Cumberland, Westmorland, Norfolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, and Lincolnshire. She, too, died shortly after; and as the last of her two sons, John Earl of Kent, followed her to the grave within three years, the Wake barony passed with the Earldom to her daughter Joan. This was the beautiful Plantagenet heiress, who has gone down to posterity as the Fair Maid of Kent, and after being twice married and twice divorced, became the wife of the Black Prince and the mother of Richard II.

There yet remained the descendants of the first Lord Wake's younger brother Sir Hugh, who had by his father's gift Blisworth in Northamptonshire with Deeping in Lincolnshire, and is the immediate ancestor of the present house. Sir Thomas, the next, distinguished himself under the Black Prince at Najara and elsewhere, and was Seneschal of Rouergue. He married an heiress, as did his grandson and great grandson; and the latter, a gentleman of Ed. IV's bedchamber, who was five times sheriff and three times knight of the shire for Northampton, was styled the "Great Wake" from the extent of his property. Other wealthy alliances brought the family into Somersetshire: and in 1621 "King James thought fit to fix Baldwin Wake of Clevedon in that co. somewhat nearer the rank of his ancestors by creating him a baronet." His son raised a troop of horse for Charles I., and mortgaged his estate to serve him. The sixth baronet took the name of Jones on inheriting Courteen Hall—still the family seat in Northamptonshire—and Waltham Abbey in Essex: but he left no children, and it was discarded by the cousin who succeeded him. It would have been a grievous lapse from the stately baronial name they have the honour to bear, which has enjoyed the exceptional distinction of being perpetuated by an unbroken and unquestioned descent in direct male line, from the distant time when it was first heard in England.

Baynard's Castle, in the East Riding, was among the multifarious possessions of the Wakes; and there is a local tradition that it was burnt down by the owner on the very night that he had received intimation of the coming of Henry VIII. The King, who was then at Hull, signified his intention of paying him a visit: and Wake, who had a remarkably handsome wife, and was unable to decline the proffered honour, "preferred the loss of his house to the risk of the King's admiration."

Wareine :

William de Warrenne, the "loyal young vassal" to whom, as Orderic tells us, Duke William had committed the castle of Mortemer in 1054, was the son of Ralph, Sire de Garennes, so called from a place in Normandy, afterwards named Bellencombre, where a magnificent castle long remained. He attended the great council at Lilleboune, and fought at Hastings:

"De Garenes i vint Willeme,
Mult li sist bien el chief li helme."

Few among the Duke's followers were as munificently dealt with, for "his possessions resembled the dominions of a sovereign prince rather than of a subject." He held the great baronies of Castle Acre in Norfolk, Lewes in Sussex, and Coningsburgh in Yorkshire (with twenty-eight towns and hamlets within its Soke), besides grants in nine other counties—three hundred English manors in all. Like many other Norman nobles, he claimed as an ancestress one of the numerous nieces of Duchess Gunnor (Nepotes plures praedictae Gunnorae) whose descendants "have been inaccurately set down as kinsmen instead of distant connections of the Conqueror."—Planche. But he himself was bound to his sovereign by a closer tie. He was probably William's son-in-law, as his wife, who died in child-bed in 1085, was the mysterious Gundreda believed to have been Queen Matilda's daughter. Orderic says she was the sister of Gherbod the Fleming, Earl of Chester, without alluding to her parentage, but William de Warrenne, in his charter to Lewes Priory, states his donations to be for the soul (among others) of his Lady, Queen Matilda, the mother of his wife (matris uxoris meae). Mr. Freeman conjectures that she and Gherbod were the children of the Queen by a former marriage—probably clandestine and informal, as it is passed over in silence by all the chroniclers. From the splendid provision made both for Gherbod and his sister's husband it is at all events clear that they must have been closely connected with the Conqueror.

When the new King returned to Normandy the year after the Conquest, William de Warrenne was one of. the "valiant Men" employed under Bishop Odo and William Fitz Osbern in the government of the Kingdom, and in 1074 he and Richard de Bienfaite were Chief Justiciaries of England. On the breaking out of the rebellion of Ralph Guader and the Earl of Hereford, having vainly summoned the two Earls to appear before the King's High Court, "they laid aside the Gown, and took up the Sword; wherewith, meeting with those bold Rebels at a place called Fagadune, they valiantly fought, and happily vanquished them; and for terror of others, cut off the right Foot of all they took alive."—Dugdale. In 1087 he stood firm for William Rufus against the revolted Bishop Odo, and for his good service in the field and council chamber received the Earldom of Surrey. He died the year following, and was buried by Gundreda's side in the priory he had founded at Lewes. This, as well as its cell in his Norfolk stronghold of Castle Acre, was for Cluniac monks, in ever-grateful remembrance of the great respect and honour with which he and his wife, when passing through Burgundy on a pilgrimage to Rome, had been entertained at the Abbey of Cluny.^[110]

The second Earl—"a skilful and stout Soldier"—forfeited his great estate in 1101 by taking part with Robert Courtheuse; but when peace was concluded between Henry I. and his brother, he was restored to his Earldom, and from that time forward continuing faithful to the King, and "in favour as much as any," commanded the rear-guard at the battle of Tinchebrai, where Courtheuse was vanquished and taken prisoner. He died in 1135, leaving by his wife, Elizabeth de Vermandois, the widowed Countess of Mellent, three sons; William, third Earl; Reginald, who married the heiress of Wirmegay; and Ralph, who died s. p., besides two daughters. Adelina, the youngest of these, married Prince Henry, the son of David of Scotland.

The third William—the last Earl of his race—died in the Holy Land, but the manner and place of his death are not known. He had joined the Crusade of 1145 under the Emperor Conrade and St. Louis, and never returned home. His only child was a daughter named Isabel, on whom devolved his Norman and English honours and splendid domain. She was twice married, each time to a bastard; for her first husband, William de Blois, was the son of King Stephen, who gave him the Earldom of Mortaine in Normandy; and the second, Hamelin Plantagenet, was the son of Geoffrey of Anjou, and base-brother to Henry II. Each bore her titles of Earl of Warrenne and Earl of Surrey, for she had no children by her first marriage.

William de Blois had been a quiet, unambitious man; but Hamelin Plantagenet^[111] and his posterity were great potentates in five successive reigns. He carried one of the three Swords of State at Coeur de Lion's coronation, and was entrusted with the 70,000 marks of silver collected for his ransom. His son was numbered among the four Earls that guaranteed to the Pope that King John (then under excommunication) should "do whatever was required of him"; witnessed his consequent abdication and homage; was present at Runnimede; and Constable of Bamborough and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with all Northumberland "committed to his trust." Henry III. several times employed him; first of all in getting rid of the obnoxious favourite Falk de Breant, whom "he had command to take to the Sea Coast, and then leave to the Winds"; and he officiated as Cup-bearer at the King's marriage. John, the next heir, a man of fiery, imperious, and unstable temper, who bore the title of Earl of Surrey for fifty-four years, had married Alice, daughter of Hugh le Brun, Count de la March, the sister on his mother's side to Henry III., and took up arms against Simon de Montfort in his brother-in-law's behalf. But, "being in the Van of the Royal Army at Lewes with Prince Edward, he and William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, did there unworthily desert him at the very beginning of the fight, and fled to Pevensey Castle, and thence to France." The barons promptly seized Lewes Castle and his other possessions, which he vainly strove to recover, till he joined Prince Edward after his escape from Hereford, and, taking part in the battle of Evesham, he "had the benefit of that glorious Victory," and was re-instated. About the year 1268, he had a bitter quarrel with Sir Alan le Zouch touching some title of land, and "discerning that he must submit to the Justice of the Law, having first passionately vented himself in foul language, at length assaulted Sir Alan and his son in Westminster Hall with such violence, that he almost killed the one and much wounded the other. And having done so, fled to his Castle at Reigate," locally known as Holms Castle; a strong place, built on the site of a former Saxon fortress that had arrested the march of the Danes, and commanded the pass through the wide valley that stretches across West Kent—

"Holmesdale,
Never won, ne never shall."

But he was closely pursued and pressed by Prince Edward with a superior force, and had to submit in all humility, meeting the Prince on foot, and imploring his mercy. Nevertheless, he was mulcted of 8,400 marks fine. When Edward I. issued the first writs of Quo Warranto in 1277, and the barons were questioned as to their titles, our Earl brought out a rusty sword, and unsheathing it before the justices—"Behold, my lords," he said, "here is my warranty; my Ancestors coming into this land with William the Bastard, did obtain their lands by the Sword, and with the Sword I am resolved to defend them, against whoever shall endeavour to dispossess me: for that King did not himself conquer the land and subdue it, but our progenitors were sharers and assistants therein." The next year he claimed and obtained free warren on some of his Sussex lands, pleading a former grant by King John "in regard of their surname De Warenna"; and in 1282, when the King appointed him and Roger Mortimer guardians to the sons of Griffith ap Madoc, one of the loyal Welshmen that had opposed Llewellyn, he appropriated the poor boy's inheritance with a high hand. "These Guardians," writes Powell, "forgetting the service done by the Fathers of the Wards to the King, so guarded their Wards with small regard, that they never after returned to their Possessions: And shortly after the said Guardians did obtain the said Land to themselves by charter of the King." He commanded three several expeditions into Scotland, and was appointed Governor of the kingdom after the victory of Dunbar; but met with a crushing defeat at Stirling in 1296. He died in 1303, on his return from another Scottish campaign, and was buried under the chancel pavement at Lewes, with this inscription:

"Vous qe passer ob bouche close,
Prier pur cely ke cy repose:
En vie come vous esti jadis fu,
Et vous tiel, serretz come je su:
Sire Johan Count de Garenne gist ycy;
Dieu de sa alme eit mercy.
Ky pur sa alme priera
Croiz mill jours de pardon abera."

"Certain it is," concludes Dugdale, "that he was a Person of high Esteem with the King," for, according to his mandate to the Archbishop, prayers were offered up throughout the Province of Canterbury for the soul of "this our Earl, who had been a most faithful and useful Subject to him and the whole Realm."

He left two daughters—one of them married to John Baliol, afterwards King of Scotland. His only son had died in early life, long before, leaving a posthumous child, that succeeded to the Earldom, and proved the last heir-male. This second Earl John, a stout soldier in Edward III.'s wars, who received from Edward Baliol a grant of the Scottish Earldom of Stratherne, was twice married, but both his wives were childless; and on his death in 1347, an elder sister, Alice Countess of Arundel, was his sole heir. Her son, Richard FitzAlan, ninth Earl of Arundel, in her right also bore the title of Earl of Surrey; and it remained vested in his descendants till the time of Elizabeth. The famous house of FitzAlan then ended with its eighteenth Earl, whose daughter Mary, Duchess of Norfolk, conveyed his two Earldoms to the Howards. One or both of them have been since borne by the eldest son of each successive Duke.

The last Earl Warren had, during the lifetime of his first wife Joan de Barre (the granddaughter of Edward I.) lived openly with a concubine named Maud de Nereford, by whom he had an acknowledged son, who bore his name, and (with a canton added) his arms. This Sir Edward Warren acquired the Cheshire barony of Stockport, with Poynton, through his wife Cecily, the heiress of Sir Nicholas de Eton; and their descendants remained in the county for fourteen generations. A second Sir Edward was High Sheriff in 1563. His grandson, called Stag Warren for his great size and strength, was, as a Royalist, "in ill odour with the Parliamentarians," and lost his wife through the rough handling of a party of Cromwell's soldiers, sent to search Poynton for horses and arms. She had a favourite nag, which she endeavoured to save by mounting it herself; but she was brutally dragged out of her saddle, and so threatened and terrified that she was brought to bed before her time, and died in child-birth. The last of the house, Sir George, who lived till the beginning of the present century, left an only daughter, married in 1777 to Thomas, Viscount Bulkeley. She had no children, or near relatives; and, casting about her eyes in search of an heir, selected her friend Lady Vernon, the daughter and heiress of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, of Stapleford, co. Notts, to whom she bequeathed Poynton and Stockport. "Lady Bulkeley was slightly influenced in her devise of the property by her belief in the remote kinship of that family to her own. Watson, in his History of the Warrens, makes the Borlase Warrens to descend from a younger son of the Poynton house, temp. Hen. VII.; but this is effectually disposed of by the Herald and Genealogist (vols, vii., viii.) which shows that their descent was from a family named Waring, long settled in Warwickshire, who may possibly have descended from some earlier Wareyne of this house."—Ormerod's Cheshire (Helsby's Edition.) The Lancashire estates were devised to Lord de Tabley, who took the name and arms of Warren. Lady Vernon did the same; and on her death in 1837, her son George, fifth Lord Vernon, by Royal Sign Manual, "assumed the name of Warren only for himself, and his children thenceforward to be born."

Wate :

a name of homely and familiar sound. "Le Wayte" was the watchman who went his nightly rounds, carrying a lantern, and "a trump with which to sound the watches or give the alarm:" the guardian of the peace in the old couvre-feu days, when all decent folks were a-bed betimes.^[112] The name is very common in old registries, and was in course of time borne by many "worshipful" families. Adam de Wayte, in 1306, held in Lincolnshire; and a monumental brass in Stoke-Charity Church commemorates Thomas Wayte, who died in 1482. But surely no interpolator, however ignorant or intrepid, could venture to place it on the roll of the Norman conquerors.

It is true a Robert La Waite is entered on the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180: but in the preceding century the only name I can find that resembles it is Waet, the Anglicized form of the Breton seigneurie of Vacajet. It gave one of his designations to the mysterious Earl of Norfolk whose parentage remains an unsolved problem, and was, in this country, variously styled Ralph de Wayer or Guader and De Waet; but is called by French writers Raoul de Vacajet, Seigneur of Guader and Montfort in Brittany (v. Neustria Pia, pp. 596, 612, 627).

The vexed question of his nationality can probably never be set at rest. Mr. Freeman brands him as "the only English traitor in the motley host" of the Conqueror; a Norfolk man born of a Breton mother; and charitably suggests that, as he fought on the Norman side at Hastings, he "must have been outlawed by Harold for some unrecorded treason or other crime." The statement that he was an Englishman rests on the authority of the Abingdon and Peterborough Chronicles; while William of Malmesbury and Wace distinctly declare him to have been a Breton:

Joste la cumpaigne Neel
Chevalcha Raol de Gael:
Bret estoit e Bretonz menout,
Por terre serveit ke il out.—Roman de Rou, 13,625.

From this it appears that he commanded a contingent from Brittany, which it is difficult to conceive would have been entrusted to an outlawed alien. We learn from Domesday that he was the son of an Earl Ralph who had held in England under the Confessor, and whom Mr. Freeman, adopting Mr. Taylor's suggestion, identifies with Ralph the Staller. Mr. Planche is of opinion that he was the Confessor's nephew, Ralph Earl of Hereford, the fourth son of his sister Goda by her first husband Dreux, Count of the Vexin. He married Githa or Gueth, an English heiress, and had (according to this theory) two sons, of whom Ralph Guader was the elder, and Harold, Lord of Sudeley, the younger. He "is called Earl of Hereford by the majority of the historians, but is expressly described by the old Norman poet Gaimar as Earl of the East Angles;" and in Duchesne's list of the Normans who flourished in England before the Conquest, occurs as "Comes Est Anglias, pater Heraldi dominus de Sudeley." Ralph Guader was consequently rewarded for his services at Hastings "by confirmation only in his hereditary rights and dignities.

"The assertion that the elder Ralph was an Englishman, born in Norfolk, may not be untrue, for his mother, sister of Edward the Confessor, might have
been in this country, and in that county, at the time of his birth; while on the other hand, the Countess Githa was probably in Bretagne when Raoul was born, from which circumstance he might take the name of Gael, as having first seen the light in that castle."—The Conqueror and his Companions.

Ralph Guader had himself held land in England in the time of the Confessor, when, according to Blomfield, he possessed nearly the whole town of Buckenham in Norfolk. After the Conquest, we find him installed as Earl of East Anglia, and gallantly repelling the invading Danes, who had attacked his castle of Norwich. Yet in 1075—scarcely six years afterwards—he was in open rebellion against the Crown. The King, for some reason or other, had refused him permission to marry Emma, the daughter of his late Seneschal, William Fitz Osbern, and the sister of Roger Earl of Hereford; and Ralph, in defiance of his authority, took the opportunity of one of his absences in Normandy to celebrate the wedding with great splendour at Exning in Cambridgeshire.

"There was that bride-ale
To many men's bale."

Besides his new brother-in-law, Earl Roger, and the Saxon Earl Waltheoff, "a great company," says Freeman, "of Bishops and Abbots and other great men was gathered together;" and a large number of Bretons settled in England attended at their countryman's summons. "At the feast men began to talk treason," and air their grievances; many charges were brought against the King; and the time was declared opportune for shaking off their allegiance. All agreed upon a rising, and swore to stand or fall together. Waltheoff—whether willingly, or as he subsequently alleged, unwillingly—took the oath with the rest; but presently repented, and hastened to betray the plot to Archbishop Lanfranc. Thence he proceeded to Normandy, laden with rich gifts for the King's acceptance, to implore his clemency; but only succeeded in staving off his own execution for a time.

The two Earls, meanwhile, had gone to their several Earldoms and collected their forces, having agreed to join hands at an appointed trysting place. The Bretons flocked to Ralph's standard, and with them, added to a considerable array of mercenaries, he set out to meet his ally. But he had got no further than Cambridge when he was confronted by a formidable host, led by the Justiciary, William de Warren, Robert Malet, and the two soldier Bishops, Odo of Bayeux and Geoffrey of Coutances, that he could not attempt to encounter in the field. He retreated to Norwich, where he took ship, and went to seek aid in Denmark, leaving his newly-made bride in charge of his castle. The young Countess was a brave woman, and defended the place during a three months' siege against all the engineering skill that could be brought to bear upon it. She held it till "the King was forced to grant her his Peace, and licence to go out of the Realm" with her garrison, and then departed in triumph to Brittany, where she was soon after joined by her husband. Then, at last, Lanfranc could write the King word that "the Kingdom was cleansed of the filth of Bretons." But the fate of the poor, prisoners was altogether terrible. All who had been at that fatal bride-ale were grievously punished; some had their eyes put out; others their right feet cut off: and every one who had aught to lose suffered forfeiture. Of Ralph's own lands in Norfolk, the greatest share went to the Bigots.

Ralph, thus banished from England, long flourished in Brittany. "He lived to take the Cross at the preaching of Pope Urban, to set forth as a Crusader in the train of William's eldest son, and to die, along with his heroic wife, on their way to the Holy City. His son succeeded to his Breton estates of Wader and Montfort, and his daughter was restored to England by a marriage with Earl Robert of Leicester."—The Norman Conquest.

Watelin :

for Wacelin or Gacelin. "Gacelin, or Wazelin, probably a noble of Anjou, held lands from Geoffrey de Wirce in Lincoln 1086. John Wascelin was of Lincoln 1189, and Reginald held of Crevecoeur (Testa de Nevill). Geoffry Gascelyn was summoned to parliament by writ, 1259."—The Norman People. This must have been the Geoffrey Watelin or Wacelin entered in the, Hundred Rolls, c. 1272, as seated in Norfolk, who was a benefactor of Jerveaulx Abbey; but I can find no record of his barony either in Dugdale or Banks. Another of the name, Roger Wacelyn, occurs in the Testa as holding a knight's fee of the Honour of Hastings. The family continued in Lincolnshire for a considerable time. Richard de Wacelyn or Walkelin, 28 Hen. III., held in Foteburne, in that county, by the serjeanty of finding (with two others) one balistar, with six quarrels and a sumpter horse, in the King's army, for forty days.—Blount's Tenures. John Wascelyn, and his son, Dom. Robert—perhaps the same Robert who witnesses William de Mandevilie's grant to Waltham—are mentioned there at about the same period (Rot. Hundred.): and in the reign of Henry IV., William Wacelyn's name is appended to one of the charters of Newland Abbey, Lincoln. Unfortunately there is no county history to which we can refer for details; nor do I find any but the most cursory and disconnected notices of them elsewhere. Yet it is abundantly clear that they were pretty numerous, and widely distributed. Walter Wacelin, of York, t. Ed. I. (ibid.), is evidently the "Mons. Waut. Gacelyn, De la compaignie Mons. Eymar de Valence," who served at the siege of Stirling in 1303. At about the same date, there was an Andrew Wacelyn in Norfolk, and an Edmund Gacelyn, Warden of Clarendon Forest, in Wiltshire (Hoare's Wilts). Compton-Wascelin bears the name in Hampshire. The arms of "Sire Simond Gacelin," as given in Guillim's Roll, are Or six billets Azure, and a label of five points. Two other notices of very ancient date are to be found of them in the Monasticon. William Wascelin witnesses David Earl of Huntingdon's foundation charter of Londres Abbey, Scotland (this must have been previous to 1124, when he succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother Alexander): and somewhat later in the same century we meet with John Wascelyn in Ireland, as a witness to Theobald Fitz Walter Pincerna's foundation charter of Arklow.

Wateuil :

"from the village of Vatteville-sur-Seine, of which the Earl of Mellent was chief lord, and where he had a castle. Willielmus de Watevilla is a witness to a charter of Robert de Mellent to the Abbey of Jumieges, about the time of the Norman survey; and he himself gave to that monastery, with the consent of his wife, the church, fair, and tithes of Croixman, in the Pays de Caux."—Gage's Suffolk. It is apparent, from the accompts of the Norman Exchequer Rolls, that in 1195, Vatteville was a Royal residence, when the King hunted in the forest of Vatteville. Among the items furnished by its custodian, Robert d'Appeville, are "four nets to catch wild boars, two tunics for the use of two dog-keepers," &c, &c.

Three De Watevilles are entered in Domesday: William, who held of the King in Essex and Suffolk, and Percinges (Perching) of William de Warrenne, with two other manors—one of which was Brighton—in Sussex; Robert, who held de capite in Surrey, with five manors in other counties, under Richard de Tonbridge; and Richard, an under-tenant in Surrey.

William de Wateville—in all probability the same William who was a benefactor of Jumieges, and the head of the family, held High Rodinges and Hanningfield in Essex; and some of his descendants, "from their abode at Hanningfield, took their denomination from thence, being in old evidences written promiscuously De Hanningfield and De Wateville. Robert was probably either brother or son of that William."—Morant's Essex. According to the same authority, he was the progenitor of the Essex family. He appears as a witness to two deeds in the Bishopric of Durham in the time of Ralph Flambard (1099-1133): and has left his name to the manor of Biddic-Watervile, or South Biddic, in the parish of Houghton-le-Spring; but this would appear to have been his only connection with the North of England. His posterity was seated at Hempstead, one of the two Essex manors that he held of the Honour of Tunbridge, in which Henry III. granted Sir William de Wateville a charter of free warren in 1253. This can scarcely have been the Sir William de Waterville mentioned by Thomas of Gloucester, who, sixty-two years before, went with Coeur de Lion to the Holy Land, and was one of the six knights through whom he sent his challenge to the Soudan. (See Brande.) Both he and his son married heiresses; the latter a daughter of Sir Robert Roos of Radwinter, who bore the uncommon name of Thorema, and was the grandmother of the last of the line, Sir John, and his sister Joan. "Upon his dying without issue, she became the sole heir, and brought with her a considerable estate in marriage to Richard de Mutford, her first husband, about the year 1330. Having no issue by him, she was again married to Sir William Langham, about 1341.

"Of the same family were no less than three Knights Bannerets, all living at the same time in this county in the reign of Edward I., bearing these arms: Sir John de Wateville, Argent three chevrons Gules; Sir Robert de Wateville, the same, within a bordure indented Sable; Sir Roger de Wateville, the same, with a martlet Sable."—Morant's Essex. Sir Roger and Sir Robert were among the famous tilters at the great tournament at Stebenhithe (Stepney) in 1308, with another of the name, Sir Geoffrey Wauteville, who bore for arms: Sable semee of cross crosslets a lion rampant Argent langued Gules.

In Surrey, we find William de Waterville, in 1144, gave the manor of Warlingham, with the consent of Robert, William, and Otwell, his sons, to the convent of Bermondsey; on which either he or his son of the same name bestowed further benefactions in 1158. Hugh de Wateville was Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1155; and in the same year William de Wateville, one of the King's chaplains, was elected Abbot of Peterborough. It is recorded of him that he added three stories to the central tower of his church, furnished the choir, and founded a chapel to St. Thomas of Canterbury—"a bold thing for a chaplain of Henry II. to do." Another William was among the "forty knights and good men" summoned in 1292 by the Sheriff of Surrey "to be at Lambeth to enquire after the malefactors who lately broke into the King's Treasury, and carried away the King's Treasure to the value of,£10,000." Two of their manors, Chelsham-Watvyle and Esher-Waterville, are still called by their name in Surrey: and Manning and Bray, in their county history, suggest that it is highly probable the Robert de Merton who founded Merton College in 1264 was of this family. "The Watteviles had large possessions in Northamptonshire and Surrey. The surname of De Merton was an assumed one, probably from his having been educated at that place, which seems to have been the case with his father also. How the Watteviles of Surrey and those of Northampton were connected does not appear." The three chevrons of Merton College were certainly borne on the coat of the Watevilles, but differenced in tincture.

"Thorp Watervile Castelle upon Avon, sumwhat lower than Wndale," as Leland describes it, in Northamptonshire, was most probably built by Azelin de Wateville, "who," says Bridges, "first possessed the lordship." No traces of it are now remaining. It passed in the time of Henry III. to the sisters of Richard de Wateville, who, in 1234, had obtained a grant of free warren in Thorp and Marham. Richard's widow held Marham in dower, and it was transferred by purchase to Reginald de Wateville in 1240. Reginald, again, had no son, and left three co-heiresses, Joan, married to Robert de Vere; Elizabeth, or Petronella, married to John Wykham; and Margaret, married to Henry de Tichmarsh. In 17 Ed. II. Marham belonged to Robert de Wateville."—Bridge's Northamptonshire. Was this—as seems likely—the same Robert who received license of pardon for having been concerned in the death of Piers Gaveston, "the Ganymede of Edward II.," and was a commissioner of array in Hampshire in 1324? Two years afterwards, he "had summons to attend a parliament at Westminster, inter caeteros proceres et magnates regni; and in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Ed. III., had the like summons with the nobility of the realm. In the 32 Ed. I. (if he be the same person) he had a charter for free-warren at Overton-Waterville, in the co. of Huntingdon: and in the 9th Ed. II. fined forty shillings for license, to give certain lands at Overton-Waterville, and Ashele, in Huntingdonshire, to found a chantry at St. Mary's, at Ashele."—Banks. Nothing is said of his posterity: and no other summons to parliament was ever issued to the family. Several other members of it are incidentally mentioned:—such as Berenger, "one of those great men on the part of the rebel barons, who were taken prisoners by the Royal army at Northampton" and Geoffrey, who in the previous century married Ascelina, the youngest co-heiress of William Peverell of Brune and Dover. He died in 1162, and was, according to Banks, the father of Roger, of Thorp, who had issue. Bridges, on the other hand, declares that his son was Ralph de Wateville, who died s. p. in 1185, leaving as his heirs two sisters, Ascelina, married to—Torpel, and Maud, the wife of William de Diva. In Warwickshire Dugdale speaks of a Roger de Wateville, who held Bramcote under the Earl of Leicester that founded a monastery at Leicester, and bestowed some lands there on the new Abbey. His grant was confirmed by Henry II.

Wely :

for Vely or Vesli. "Hundfridus (a name more familiar in the form of Humphrey) was a vassal of Ilbert de Laci in Yorkshire, 1086. As 'Umfrido de Villeio,' we find him, before 1100, giving two garbs from the harvest yearly towards the endowment of St. Clement's Chapel in Pontefract Castle. He must have come from one of the places called Villey, in Calvados, in which Lassy also is situated."—A. S. Ellis. Or perhaps from the Norman fief of Vesli, as "Hugue and Guillaume de Vesli" are entered on the Dives Roll. He held in Snidal, Newton, and Ackworth; and two hundred years later we find his descendant of the same name continuing to be the tenant of the Lacies in Yorkshire. Thorner, in that county, was held of the Earl of Lincoln by Sir Humphrey de Veyley, who was likewise Lord of the manor of Owston. He was a benefactor of Selby Abbey, and in 1269 gave Herward-croft, in Holme, to Nostel Priory.—Burton's Mon. Ebor. His son's name was Robert. At about the same date, the name occurs pretty frequently in the Rotuli Hundredorum, where we find John Wiley of Northumberland, Hugh de Wiley and his son Roger of Bedfordshire, John and William de Wyly, of Wiltshire, and Ralph and Thomas de Wylies of Buckinghamshire. Nicholas de Wely, of Batham-Wily, Wilts, occurs in the Testa de Nevitt, where we likewise find he held land at Wyly of William de Dunstanville, and at Langford of the Abbess of Wilton. William de Wylie, at the same date, held in Bucks.

Werdonell :

for Verdenel. The Verdenels held of the fee of Marmaduke de Thweng in Yorkshire 31 Ed. I. "Adam Verdenel was bailiff of York in 1287-8. He was the son of Robert Verdenel "de Marisco, Ebor," bailiff in 1254, who founded a chantry at the altar of the Blessed Virgin in the church of St. Saviour.

John Verdenel, brother to Robert, was bailiff temp. Henry III. another John was chamberlain in 1290: Vincent Verdenel was chamberlain in 1295, and bailiff in 1304. Robert, son of the above-mentioned Adam, was living in 1304, and his son, Thomas Verdenel of York, died about 1333."—Inquisition of Knights Fees, Yorkshire, p. by Surtees Soc.

Wespaile :

Roger Waspail is mentioned in the Liber Niger as holding five fees of the Earl of Gloucester. "Smallbrook, in the parish of Warminster (a part of the Duchy of Lancaster) was held, as early at least as the reign of Henry II., by the family of Waspail by military fee. The Waspails came in with the Conqueror, and were at first tenants to the family of Clare, and afterwards became proprietors, for we frequently see their seal used in old deeds. Their residence was for many ages at Smallbrook (their mansion of Olwey), but for the last generation or two at Hertley-Waspail, or Steple Hertley, Hants."—Hoare's Wiltshire. Roger held from Coeur de Lion in 1194; William in 1295, and John in 1359: the latter is also styled Lord of Hertley-Waspail, and built the existing parish church. There is no mention of the name after the time of Henry VI., when Smallbrook "appears to have passed by a female heir to Hugh Pakenham."

Wiuel :

see Viville.

Beer :

see Delabere.

Belasyse :

from Bellassize, near Coulommieres. This family bore the punning motto "Bonne et Belle assez" (in allusion to the fleur-de-lis on their coat) and gave their name to Bellasis,—more commonly Bellas—in the county of Durham, which "they held from a period little later than the Conquest."—Surtees. It is believed to have been a Roman station, and is now "a farmhold, with stone walls of great thickness, and the remains of a regular moat, the usual defence of manor houses, of the second class in a level country." During the thirteenth century—probably before 1272 (Surtees shows that the date usually given, 1380, is erroneous) John de Bellasis surrendered the estate to the Prior and Convent of Durham, in exchange for Henknowl, near St. Andrew's, Auckland. This transaction was evidently highly favourable to the monks, and a local distich, still well remembered in the neighbourhood, speaks of it as an act of madness:

"Johny tuth' Bellas, daft was thy poll,
When thou changed Bellas for Henknoll."^[113]

It was in fact a sacrifice made on religious grounds, "According to constant tradition, John de Bellasis, being minded to undertake the Crusade, found himself sorely let and hindered by his attachment to the estate of his ancestors. To remove this stumbling-block, he exchanged the green pastures and deep meadows of Bellasis with the Church of Durham for Henknoll. He lived, it seems, to return and repent of his bargain." About 1313, one of his descendants acquired Houghton Le Spring, in the same county, through its heiress. She was the only sister of Sir John Le Spring, the last of his race, who was murdered in his own manor house by Robert Lascelles.^[114] This seems to have been in their possession for a short time only; but they continued for more than two hundred years longer at Henknoll, till they were transplanted to a grander home in Yorkshire.

"Anthony Bellasis, a Master in Chancery, and one of the Council of the North, was a prudent, wary man, who laid the foundation of the future fortunes of the family. He was one of the King's Commissioners for visiting the Religious Houses, and obtained a grant of the site of Newborough Abbey in the North Riding, which he settled on his nephew, Sir William Belasyse."—Surtees. He died in 1552; and Sir William then entered upon "a very great estate in Yorkshire," as it is called by Lord Clarendon, and served as Sheriff of the county 16 Eliz. He had six sons, none of whom had issue except Henry, his heir, and Brian, to whom he gave Morton House, in the co. Durham. Henry was among the first baronets made in 1611; and, soon after the accession of Charles I., Sir Thomas, the next in succession, was created Baron Fauconberg of Yarm. In all the troubles that ensued, he faithfully adhered to the King's party; was rewarded with a Viscountcy in 1642, and, after the fatal rout of Marston Moor, was forced to fly the country with the Marquess of Newcastle, whose fortunes he had followed in the siege of York. His second son, Col. John Belasyse, a gallant and zealous Cavalier, who raised six regiments of horse and foot in the King's service, had, at the commencement of the same year, received the title of Lord Belasyse, of Worlaby in Lincolnshire. The eldest, Henry, likewise a staunch and courageous loyalist, died in his father's lifetime, leaving a goodly progeny of seven sons and seven daughters. Lord Fauconberg himself died in 1652, having compounded for his estate with the sequestrators by payment of a heavy fine. Five years afterwards, his heir—the heir of so loyal a house—was married at Whitehall "with all imaginable pomp and lustre" to Oliver Cromwell's daughter^[115]—a match that might have stirred the young Viscount's father and grandfather in their honoured graves. "There were," says Clarendon, "many reasons to believe that this young gentleman, being then about three or four and twenty years of age, of great vigour and ambition, had many good purposes, that he thought that alliance might qualify and enable him to perform." Lord Fauconberg was, however, little trusted and still less employed by the Protector, who "grew to hate him perfectly:" and we next find him betraying his brother-in-law, and actively engaged in aiding the Restoration; then sent as Ambassador to Vienna by Charles II.; and finally, receiving an Earldom from William and Mary in 1695. He died without posterity; Mary Cromwell had brought him no children; and the eldest son of his brother Sir Rowland succeeded as third Viscount in 1700. Another Earldom was granted to the next heir by George II. in 1756, but expired with Henry, the second Earl, in 1802. The second of his four daughters, Lady Anne, carried Newburgh and all the great Yorkshire estate to the Wombwells. The older title, thus shorn of its fair possessions, passed to two brothers, who were distant kinsmen of the Earl's, Rowland and Charles Belasyse, successively sixth and seventh Viscounts Fauconberg. The latter, who was a Roman Catholic priest, died in 1815, the last heir-male of his ancient house.

Long before this, all its younger branches had died out one by one; and that founded by the brave Cavalier who had been created Lord Belasyse by Charles I. was the earliest extinct. He was thrice married, and his third wife had twelve children; but the only one of his sons that lived to manhood died before him; and he was succeeded by a grandson, with whom the line expired in 1692. His daughters thus became co-heiresses; and "a costly and lofty monument" erected over his burial place in St. Giles-in-the-Fields by two of them that survived till 1736 records his services to the Crown. He was Governor of York, and commanded in chief in Yorkshire, where he fought the battle of Selby with Lord Fairfax; Lieutenant General of the counties of Nottingham, Derby, and Lincoln; Governor of Newark (defending that garrison till the King himself called upon him to surrender); and three times thrown into the Tower by the rebels.

The posterity of Brian Belasyse of Morton House (uncle of the first Viscount) survived till late in the following century. His son Sir William served as High Sheriff of Durham from 1625 to 1640; and "received King Charles on his Scottish progress in 1633, at the head of the gentry, 'all giving the Sheriff's livery, ash colour, lined with blue bayes.' The loyalty of Sir William's sons during the Civil Wars nearly occasioned the utter ruin of the family; and after the Restoration their losses and services, though acknowledged, passed unrewarded amidst the crowd of suffering loyalists."—Surtees. The last heir, his great-grandson, died in 1769, leaving a daughter named Bridget, who was never married, and bequeathed her estate to Lord Fauconberg. A younger branch had ended in 1751 with Thomas Belasyse of Haughton-le-Skerne, whose only child was the wife of Richard Bowes, a surgeon at Darlington; and of another, that migrated to Cheshire, I can find no account after 1794.

I may note that the name, in its old provincial form of Bellas, is still to be met with in Teesdale.

Bowser :

one of the spellings of Boursieres or Bourchier. See Bourchier.

Bulmere :

a famous name in the North. The most ancient of all the time-worn towers of Raby bears two gigantic sculptured b's for Bertram de Bulmer, placed there when it was restored and heightened in the fourteenth century by John Lord Nevill; and the same letter is shown on his seals, and appears on the bordure of his shield in Durham Cathedral. This was in memory of the vast inheritance that, seven generations before, the daughter of Bertram de Bulmer had brought to Geoffrey de Nevill (whose heiress Isabel married the Lord of Raby): comprising the castles of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, and Brancepeth in the county of Durham, with a whole train of estates and manors, dependent on these great fees.

Bertram de Bulmer was the eldest of the three sons of Asketil or Anchitel, a benefactor of the canons of Nostel, who is mentioned in 1131 (Rotul. Pip.), and the great-grandson of a more hazy Henry de Bulmer, living in the previous century. Hutchinson, who gives the pedigree somewhat differently, styles them Lords of Bulmer and Brancepeth; though "from what early period the Bulmers were seated at Brancepeth" he is unable to inform us. Their christian names, however, sufficiently indicate that they were not of Saxon lineage. "One matter," he adds, "points out the great antiquity of this castle; that our records furnish us with no licence for fortifying and embattling, which is not the case of any other in the county." The present castle, "Stronglie sett and buildid" with "two Courtes of highe Buildyng," as Leland describes it, is the work of the Nevills. According to tradition, its name of Brancepeth or Brawn's-path was derived from a huge wild boar or brawn, "a formidable animal which made his lair on Brandon (Brawn's den) Hill, and walked the forest in undisputed sovereignty from the Wear to the Gaunless."^[116]—Surtees.

Bertram de Bulmer's chief residence, however, would seem to have been beyond Tees, though his wife—a Surtees—was a daughter of the Bishopric. He was Viscount of Yorkshire for the first nine years of Henry II.'s reign; whence the castle he built at Hutton was called Sheriff-Hutton. Although the lion's share of his splendid domain accrued to the Nevills through his daughter Emma, he left behind him a nephew of his own name, the son of his brother Anchitel, who was Lord of Bulmer in Yorkshire, and the ancestor of a great feudal house, for several centuries seated at Wilton in Cleveland. The hamlet of Thorp-Bulmer, co. Durham, also continued to be held by his descendants, till, with all their other estates, it was forfeited under Henry VIII. They were of high rank and reputation in the county, and intermarried with the best blood of the North. In the 14th century, Sir Ralph Bulmer, who had served in the Scottish wars, and been employed as Commissioner of Array and Chief Inspector of the Army in the North and East Ridings, was summoned to parliament at the accession of Edward III. The King afterwards appointed him Constable of York, and gave him licence to castellate his manor house at Wilton. During the previous reign, he had received a special charter of free-warren in all his demesne, enabling him to "hold deer in his park at Risborough, and keep dogs to hunt therein." He died in 1357, leaving a son of the same name, "but none of his successors," says Dugdale, "were ever after Barons of the realm." His grandson Sir William, followed Henry V. through his French campaigns, and by a curious indenture, still preserved, and bearing date 1416, placed his wife under the charge of Sir Thomas Surteys while he was away from home. For a covenanted payment of ten marks, Dame Elizabeth Bulmer was "to be received into Sir Thomas' house at Dinsdale for the space of one year, and be well and honourably entertained with her waiting-maid and page (being of decent and sober behaviour)." This Sir Thomas, undoubtedly the "personage of great gravity and decorum" he is reputed to have been, was the custodian of more than one of his neighbour's wives, for Dame Claxton was, at the same time, and under the same conditions, domiciled at Dinsdale during the absence of her husband, "whose youthful blood or more active spirit had called him to the wars of France." Another Sir William, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, 9 Hen. VIII., led the Durham men at Flodden, where "the forces of the Bishopric were placed in the foreward of the English army, and after the victory, the shrine of St. Cuthbert, in addition to its ancient trophies, was decorated with the banners of many of the Scottish nobility, won on that memorable day."—Surtees.

"And under Bulmer's banner brave
The Bishopric of Durham came."

He married Margery Conyers, and had three sons: 1, Sir John; 2, Sir Ralph, whose wife, a co-heiress of Aske, brought him only one daughter; 3, Sir William, who married the heiress of Elmedon, co. Durham, and eventually became the heir-male of the family.

Sir John, the eldest son, joined the ill-starred Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. He was connected with Robert Aske through his brother's marriage; but it needed no family ties to summon him to the field in the cause of the old religion. All Yorkshire was afoot. The "clash of the alarm bells" pealed all over the country; the beacons were on fire; and Aske's letter, hung on the church doors or posted on the market cross of every town, "called upon all good Englishmen to make a stand for the Church of Christ, for the commonwealth of the realm, and their own livings." There were none of the great Northern houses, with the exception of the Cliffords, the Dacres, and the Musgraves, that did not respond to the call, and wear the badge of the Five Wounds. Sir John was among the thirty-four peers and knights that met in the castle hall at Pontefract—the so-called Parliament of Pontefract—to pronounce against the Reformation; and with the other principal leaders, paid the penalty on the scaffold. On June 20th, 1537, he was hanged at Tyburn with Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Francis Bigod, Sir Stephen Hamarton, Sir Nicholas Tempest, young Lumley, and the Abbots of Fountains and Jerveaulx. Nor did the King's vengeance stop there. Lady Bulmer—horrible to relate—was burnt at the stake. Yet the sole crime alleged against her was that she, with her husband and some others, had plotted to seize the Duke of Norfolk, and carry him a prisoner to Wilton Castle.

This martyred woman was the illegitimate daughter of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham (himself beheaded in 1521), and became Sir John's second wife. Her only child, John Bulmer of Pinchingthorp, died s. p.; but by his first marriage with Anne Bigod, her husband had had two other sons, Sir Ralph, and William, styled of Levennige. Sir Ralph, who was restored in blood and received back some of the forfeited estates at the accession of Edward VI., had only daughters. William had three generations of male descendants, but they had all disappeared or become extinct in the following century.

There remained the posterity of Sir William Bulmer of Elmedon (the youngest brother of the unfortunate Sir John), who were seated at Tursdale in the co. of Durham till 1638. In the beginning of James I.'s reign we find Sir Bertram Bulmer living there "in considerable splendour. He was probably one of the most gallant and expensive men of his age; he succeeded to the estate at an early age in 1598, and on the first coming in of King James received knighthood at Durham. He afterwards spent much of his time at Court, and would then be exactly the character described in the excellent old song—

'With new titles bought with his father's old gold,
For which many of his father's old manors are sold,
Like a new Courtier of the King's, and the King's new Courtier.'

After his fortunes were broken, Sir Bertram led a troop, which he raised himself, in the Low Countries; where his men on one occasion deserted him, and he was taken prisoner. He returned to Durham, and died in 1638."—Surtees. The burdened estate was then sold; but, besides his debts, the spendthrift knight left behind eight sons and five daughters, several of whom "were reduced, soon after his death, to very low conditions of life." Though his eldest son married a Yorkshirewoman with some fortune, the family never recovered from the ruin in which he had involved them, and gradually sunk into utter obscurity and oblivion. Surtees could only trace the descent to 1718. One Bertram Bulmer, in 1726, kept the cockpit and bowling-green in Gray's Inn Lane, and had in his possession an ancient emblazoned family pedigree, extending beyond the Conquest.

Contemporary with Sir Bertram was a Sir Bevis Bulmer, sometimes described as "Bulmer the Projector," who "engaged in mining expeditions—a frequent source, in that age, of adventurous wealth or total ruin," and died in 1615. Probably it is to him that Ben Jonson alludes in one of his plays:—

"I was bred i' the Mines
Under Sir Bevis Bullion."

Bowlers :

or De Boilers. "The barony of Boulers or Boularia was one of the principal fiefs of Flanders, and belonged to a powerful race of nobles. Stephen de Boularia, 1096, witnessed a charter of Manasses, Bishop of Cambrai, and joined in the first Crusade (Alb. Miraei, Opera Diplom. i. 166). Baldwin de Boilers, his son, received from Henry I. the barony of Montgomery, with the hand of Sybil de Falaise, his niece."^[117]—The Norman People. It was this Baldwin, the first castellan of Montgomery, who gave the town its Welsh name of Tre Faldwin, the town of Baldwin. "In the year 1121, as Baldwin de Boilers, he affixed his signature and attestation to Henry I.'s great Charter to Shrewsbury Abbey." He was a second time married, and left children by each of his wives; but the succession is shrouded in mystery. Dugdale introduces another Baldwin, who was a Northamptonshire feudatory in 1165, but Eyton discards him as an intruder, named in reality Buelot, and states that Baldwin I. was followed by his son and heir Stephen, "seigneurial Lord of Stallington in Staffordshire before the year 1160"; then by Almaric, or Amalric, Lord of Montgomery in 1162, "but how related to his predecessor I cannot tell"; and lastly by Robert, "how related to Almaric I cannot determine." This is all the more perplexing, as Stephen is known to have had a son, named Robert, who would naturally have succeeded to the Honour. Eyton believes that "his line expired in the reign of King John;" but other accounts, as we shall presently see, make him ancestor of the existing family.

The other Robert, who was, beyond all doubt, Lord of Montgomery, and attended Coeur de Lion to Normandy in 1194, married Hillaria, one of the three great Trusbut heiresses, and died childless in 1203. Hillaria, having paid the customary fine of three hundred marks, with the gift of a palfrey, to the King, "that she might not be distrayn'd to marry again," lived a widow for thirty-eight years, and must have been at least ninety at her death in 1142. She had devoted, or vowed, her body to be buried at Lilleshall Abbey, of which she was a most munificent benefactress. Among other gifts, she gave the whole of one of her Yorkshire estates for "the maintenance of the convent kitchen, and the augmentation of victuals in the Refectory; and it is stipulated that there shall be no withdrawal of the food previously and customarily set before the brethren!"

Robert was succeeded by his brother Baldwin II., who likewise left no posterity, and died in 1207. With him expired the elder male line of De Boilers, and his inheritance passed to William de Courtenay.
Hope-Bowdler and Ashford Bowdler, both originally held of the Honour of Montgomery, retain the name in Shropshire; and the latter was the seat of a probable "off-shoot from the ancient Lords of Montgomery." The first mentioned there is Roger de Bouler, living in 1203: the last, John Budler, held in 1308.

Stephen de Bouler's son Robert, who, as Eyton conceives, left no posterity, is represented in The Norman People as the patriarch of a flourishing race. "He appears to have had possessions in Somerset, and in 1194 had a suit with the Abbot of Ford (Rotul. Curiae Regis). His son or grandson was seated at Wood, Somerset, temp. Ed. III., and was ancestor of the Bullers of Wood (Visitation of Somerset, 1623). From this family descended the Bullers of Devon and Cornwall, and the Lords Churston." There must, however, be some confusion in the chronology that gives to a man born in the twelfth century a son or grandson living at least 127 years afterwards.

Of these West-country families, Ralph Buller, who acquired Woode through a Beauchamp heiress in the fourteenth century, is the first ancestor on record. His posterity afterwards removed to Lillesdon, in the same county. The first who settled in. Cornwall was the son of Alexander Buller of Lillesdon, Richard, of Tregarrick, who married Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Trethurffe of Trethurffe, and cousin and co-heir of Edward Courtenay Earl of Devon, and died in 1555. Two families of his descendants, the Bullers of Morval and Lanreath, still remain in Cornwall; but the elder line returned to Devonshire during the last century, and is seated at Downes, which came through a co-heiress of the Goulds. Another younger branch, representing the distinguished Judge, Francis Buller, obtained a baronetcy in 1790, and the title of Baron Churston in 1858.

Belomy :

Ralf Belami occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1189. In England Robert Bellamy held of the fee of Henry Gaston, Seneschal of Richmondshire.—Gale. It seems likely that this name had a similar origin to Bonamy, derived from Bon Ami (which is found in Normandy at the same date), and stands for Bel Ami.

A family of Bellamy was seated at Radford in Nottinghamshire; and, according to Thoroton, bore Azure on a bend Or, cotised Argent, three crescents. He furnishes us with no account of them but the Bellamys of Markham must surely have belonged to the same stock. Robert, grandson of Nicholas Bellamy of Markham, was in 1570 seated at Lambcote Grange, Stain ton, "a grange of the neighbouring Abbey of Roche. It continued in the possession of his descendants for several generations. His son, Original Bellamy, and Ralph Fretwell of Hellaby, both at the time aged men, appeared at St. George's visitation 1612."—Hunter's South Yorkshire. In the pedigree they then entered, I find two more generations bearing the remarkable Christian name of Original—also used by the Babingtons of Rampton—and the last of these, born in 1606, was the eldest of eleven brothers. "It appears in the Journals of the House of Lords, vol. iii. 136, that Original Bellamy, one of the yeomen of His Majesty's guard, being arrested at the suit of Bryan Cooke and others, by the under sheriff of Nottinghamshire, it was ordered that an habeas corpus be awarded for bringing him before the lords, and that Bryan Cooke be brought to answer for the contempt. This was in March 1621."—Ibid. Lambcote Grange was afterwards in the name of Pursglove, and what became of this numerous family does not appear.

The Bellamys of Uxendon in Middlesex, who bore similar arms, occur in the previous century. A brass in Harrow Church commemorates one of the daughters of this house, Dorothy Bellamy, the wife of Anthony Frankysche, with the date 1574. The family were devout Roman Catholics, and it was in their house that Anthony Babington and his fellow-conspirators took refuge from their pursuers in 1586, and remained for some time concealed.^[118] An old Derbyshire ballad, the Complainte of Anthonie Babington, tells how

"Not knowing where to goe nor have perfitt staye,
To Harrow-on-the-Hill myselfe I convayde,
There in Bellamyes howse a little tyme I stayde."

Jerome Bellamy was in consequence executed as a traitor.

Other scattered notices of the name are forthcoming. In the Hundred Rolls of Edward I. we find Gilbert and Roger Belamy in Oxfordshire, Matilda Belamy in Dorsetshire, and Hugh and John Belami in Kent. John and Peter Belami were of Edenbridge, in the latter county, in 1317 (Kent Fines): and the family reappears in Dorset during the last century, when Edward Bellamy of Rampisham, a wealthy wool-stapler, bought Beuvill in Corscombe, and owned Evershot, Cheddington, &c. The last-named died intestate in 1815.—Hutchins' Dorset. In Northants "one Bellamy gave lands in Elmington Lordship to Tansover, Oundle, Cotherstock, and Glapthorne; XL shillings to each town, to put two scholars to the University." Bellamy of Sudley is among the recorded pedigrees of the Visitations of Bucks, 1575, and 1634. Sir Edward Bellamy was Lord Mayor of London in 1735, and bore Or on a cross Azure five crescents of the field.

Belknape :

In the church chest at Clapham in Sussex, there remains a loose brass with the following inscription: "Hic jacet bona et virtuosa Griselda, nup. ux. Joh' is Cargyll, una filiar' Henr' Belknap, armigeri, consanguinii et unius heredu' Rad' i Boteler, militis, d' i de Sudeley, que obiit xi die Julii a° d'ni m° cccclxxxxviii, cujus anime propitietur Deus. Amen." This Henry Belknap was the son of Sir Hamon Belknap, by Joan, one of the sisters and co-heirs of Sir Ralph Boteler, created Lord Sudeley, of Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire in 1441. The Belknaps were seated at Knelle, in the parish of Beckley, Sussex, and Sir Hamon is mentioned among the captains in the retinue of the Duke of Bedford at Agincourt. He was the son of Sir Robert Belknap, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the time of Edward III., and one of the Judges called before the King at Nottingham, "where the King's many Questions were resolved into this, 'Whether he might by his regal Power revoke what was acted in Parliament?' To this all the judges, Sir William Skipwith alone excepted, answered affirmatively, and subscribed it.

"This Belknap underwrote unwillingly, as foreseeing the Danger, and putting to his Seal, said these words: 'There wants nothing but a Hurdle, a Horse, and a Halter, to carry me where I may suffer the Death I deserve; for if I had not done this, I should have died for it; and because I have done it, I deserve death for betraying the Lords.'

"Yet it had been more for his Credit and Conscience, to have adventured Martyrdom in the Defence of the Laws, than to hazard the death of a Malefactor in the Breach thereof. But Judges are but Men; and most desire to decline that Danger which they apprehend nearest unto them.

"In the next Parliament, all the Judges were arrested in Westminster Hall of High Treason: when there was a Vacation in Term-time, till their places were re-supplied. Sir R. Tresilian, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was executed; the rest, including Sir Robert Belknap, had their Lands (save what were entailed) with their Goods and Chattels, forfeited to the King; their persons being banished; and they, by the importunate Intercession of the Queen, hardly escaping with their lives."—Fuller's Worthies. Belknap went to Ireland, and though eventually suffered to return home, remained under attainder for the rest of his life. The family ended with Sir Hamon's grandson Edward, who was seated at Weston in Warwickshire, and was "a man of much public action," distinguished as a soldier, and of the Privy Council both to Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He died in 1520, leaving his four sisters his co-heirs.

There had been a Kentish branch of the Belknaps, seated at the Moat, near Canterbury; of whom Philip was Sheriff of Kent in 1456, and Mayor of Canterbury in 1458. His only child, Alice, married Henry Finch of Netherfield; and the Moat afterwards became the residence of her descendant, John, Lord Finch of Fordwich, the Lord Keeper by whom (according to Clarendon) the "errors and mischiefs of the Star Chamber were introduced" in the time of Charles I.

The manor of Belknap in Wiltshire must owe its name to this family, though I can find no record of its having been in their possession. That of Belknap in Essex was, according to Morant, "probably acquired by marriage into the family of Somery."

Beufort :

This name, familiar to us as that given to the eldest bastard son of John of Gaunt from the castle in which he was born, of course cannot here apply to him. There are several other places in France from which it may be derived, such as Beaufort in Champagne, the fief of the De Broyes, Beaufort-en-Santerre, Beaufort-sur-Meuse (Froissart dedicated the first volume of his Chronicles to Robert de Namur, Sire de Beaufort-sur-Meuse), and the Comte of Beaufort, confiscated from Jacques d'Armagnac, Due de Nemours, by Louis XI. in 1470. In the seventeenth century Jean Gaspard de Beaufort-Canillac was Marquis de Montboissier.—See Anselme.

There are but few traces of it to be found in England. "Ralph Fitz Richard held Rochinges, Kent, from Hugh, Baron de Montfort, in 1086 (Domesday): and appears to have been the son of Richard, Sire de Beaufort in Anjou, whose daughter married Hugh, Baron de Montfort (Des Bois, Diet, de la Noblesse), ancestor of the Montforts of Beaudesert."—The Norman People.

Hugh de Beauford held in 1165 one knight's fee in Bedfordshire of Simon de Beauchamp.—Liber Niger. One of the name—probably his descendant—is buried in Oseney Church. "Beaufort a Knight lyith in the Quire at the Hed of Countess Ela.

"This Beaufort and an Abbate of Oseney buildid the Body of the Chirche now standing at Oseney, and ther be porturid their Images in the Volt of it."—Leland.

James Beauford, of Heytesbury, received a grant 21 Ed. III.: Osbert Beaufort is mentioned six years afterwards.

Beaupount :

I have never succeeded in meeting with any one that bore this name. "Ponte-Belli et Catton," in the Wapentake of Harthill, East-Riding, Yorkshire, is entered in Kirkby's Inquest, as then held by John de Dayvill of the Honour of Chester.

Coniers :

or Coisgnieres, as the name was spelt in Normandy; one of the noblest families in the North of England. "Roger Conyers was by William the Conqueror made Constable of Durham Castle and Keeper of all the arms of ye souldiers within the Castle, wh was after past to him ye saide Roger by deede to him and his heires mailes for ever, under the great seale of William de Santo Carilepho, Bishop of Durham."—(Bowes MSS.) According to the MS. a second Roger succeeded to his father, and to him followed a third to whom "Henricus II. Rex. Angliae dedit vel confirmavit Constabulatum de Dunelme." "I know," says Surtees, "of no actual proof to establish this transmission; but there is sufficient evidence from charters in the Treasury to prove that the Norman family of Conyers, Lords of Bishopton (and possibly from the same early date owners of Sockburn), held the rank of nobles or Barons of the Bishopric at least from the reign of Henry I. Bishop Ralph Flambard gave Rungetun in Yorkshire to Roger Conyers before 1126. His son was that Roger Conyers whose important services to Bishop William de St. Barbara are on record in Simeon. The story runs thus: Conyers afforded the Bishop a safe retreat in his strength or Peel-house of Bishopton; and he afterwards had the address to bring the Scotch intruder Comyn a humble, kneeling penitent before the Episcopal throne. To bring about this most wished conclusion implies as much courage, and certainly more address, than if the Constable had finished the contest in the usual manner with the bloody hand. The Constable's staff, and the Wardenship of Durham Castle, which he had recovered from Comyn, seems a most appropriate reward; and if the green acres of Sockburn were added to the gift, he was still not overpaid."

His descendants continued Lords of Sockburn for more than five hundred years, holding it of the Prince-Bishop by a curious tenure, said to date from the time of Hugh Pudsey, who first purchased the Earldom of Sadberge from Coeur de Lion. "At the first entrance of the Bishop into his Diocese, the Lord of Sockburn, or his Steward, meets him in the middle of the river Tees, at Neasham ford, or on Croft Bridge, and presents a faulchion to him, with these words: 'My Lord Bishop, I here present you with the faulchion, wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon, or fiery flying serpent, which destroyed man, woman, and child: in memory of which, the King then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn, to hold by this tenure, that upon the first entrance of every Bishop into the country, this faulchion should he presented.' The Bishop takes the faulchion in his hand, and immediately returns it courteously to the person who presents it, wishing the Lord of Sockburn health, and a long enjoyment of the manor." This ceremony used to be performed with great state and solemnity. The High Sheriff, attended by the Militia-horse and all the gentlemen of the county on horseback, escorted the Lord of Sockburn to the trysting-place on the banks of the Tees, where they awaited the coming of the new Palatine. A blast of trumpets from the other side announced that the Bishop and his train had come in sight; and at this appointed signal the whole assembled company rode into the river, and formed a guard of honour to receive him in the middle of the ford, hailing him Count Palatine and Earl of Sadberge. Bishop Cosin, in 1661, was met by an array of one thousand horsemen, and writes: "At my first entrance through the river of Tease there was scarce any water to be seene for the multitude of horse and man that filled it, when the sworde that killed the dragone was delivered to me with all the formality of trumpets, and gunshots, and acclamations, that might be made." This ancient service was performed for the last time in 1826 on Croft Bridge, at the coming of Bishop Van Mildert, the last Prince-Palatine of Durham; but no longer by a Conyers, for Sockburn had long before passed into other hands, and the Palatinate Act has now, I am sorry to say, provided for its extinction. The old falchion,^[119] however—the title deed of the estate—is still preserved by the present Lord of the Manor, Sir Edward Blackett of Matfen.

The legend on which this service was founded is thus recounted in an old pedigree: "Sr John Conyers, Knt. slew yt monstrous and poysonous vermine or wyvern, aske, or worme, yt overthrew and devoured manie people in fight, for that ye scent of yt poison was so strong that no person might abyde it. And by ye providence of Almighty God this John Conyers, kt. overthrew ye saide monster, and slew it. But before he made this enterprise, having but one sonne, he went to the Church of Sockburne in compleate armour, and offered up yt his onelie sonne to ye Holy Ghost. Yt place where this greate serpent laye was called Graystane; and this John lieth buried in Sockburne Church in compleat armour before the Conquest." The Greystane still lies in a field near the churchyard; and the effigy of the slayer of the Worm keeps its place in the ruined chapel. It represents a knight, cross-legged, in the chain-mail of the thirteenth century, unsheathing his sword against a dragon coiled by his side, its teeth fastened in his shield. "I will not doubt," says Surtees, "that some gallant exploit is veiled under this chivalrous tale." There are many similar legends in the North of England.^[120] Another falchion, that had slain the Pollard Worm, was presented to the Bishop at his first coming to his castle of Auckland: and the ugly eft that grew to be the Lambton Worm, and the curse of the country side, was fished out of the Wear by an ancestor of Lord Durham's.

But to return to our pedigree. In 1195, Roger de Conyers, the heir of the house (a grandson of the faithful Conyers who sheltered the fugitive Bishop in his peel-house) sold Sockburn to a younger brother of his father's, and established himself at Hoton (Hutton) Conyers in Yorkshire. Both there, and in their native County Palatine, the family spread and flourished in many different branches, of which one was to be found in Northumberland. They were allied by marriage to all the great historical names of the North—Nevill, Percy, Scrope, St. Quintin, Beauchamp, Fauconberg, Fitzhugh, Bigod, Lumley, Bulmer, Lisle, Tyas, Newburgh, Markenfield, Savile, Dawney, &c, &c, and in the time of Edward III., Sir John Conyers of Sockburn had to wife one of the co-heiresses of the Barony of Aton—Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Gilbert, second and last Lord of Aton, who represented the great Northumbrian house of De Vesci. John de Coigners, in 1313, received a pardon as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster: and two of the name, Robert de Coignefs of Norton Coigners, a Commissioner of Array in the North Riding, and Geoffrey de Coigners, from Northumberland, were summoned to attend the great Council at Westminster in 1324 (Palgrave's Parl. Writs). In 1507, Sir William Conyers of Hornby, Constable of the castles of Richmond and Middleham, who had served under Lord Surrey at Flodden, was created Baron Conyers by Henry VII. He rebuilt the old castle, overlooking the Vale of Mowbray, that had descended to him from the St. Quintins (" before but a meane thing," according to Leland), and married Lady Anne Nevill, daughter of Ralph, third Earl of Westmorland, by whom he had a son and successor. But this second Lord Conyers left only three co-heiresses, and of these only one—Elizabeth Darcy—had issue. Her son, Conyers Darcy, was the first Lord Darcy of the last creation (see Any), and ancestor of the Earls of Holderness, extinct 1778. The barony of Conyers then devolved upon the last Earl's daughter, Amelia Marchioness of Carmarthen, and after her death on her son George sixth Duke of Leeds, by whose descendant it is now borne. Another of the house of Hornby, who acquired Horden through a Claxton co-heiress in the fifteenth century, was the ancestor of Sir John Conyers of Horden, on whom Charles I. conferred a baronetcy in 1628, that continued for nearly two centuries.

Yet, of all this wide-spreading and powerful family, "the stately cedar that overshadowed both Durham and Yorkshire," not a single scion now survives. Not one male heir is left to represent them, even in the county that was the cradle of their race. Not one stone is now left upon another of the old manor house at Sockburn, where Leland was the guest of Master Conyers, and admired his "green inheritance, the lovely lawn, and the circling Tees."^[121] Even "the little church, standing lowly on its level green," that had "survived the halls of its ancient patrons," is now dismantled, and the monuments and brasses of the Conyers, which filled a chapel on its north side, have—with one solitary exception—been dispersed. The glory has indeed departed from their house.

Surtees mournfully enumerates all the defunct families that had sprung from the parent stock: viz. "Conyers of Hornby Castle, whose peerage is vested by heirs-general in the Duke of Leeds: Conyers of Bowlby, Danby-Wiske, Hutton-Wiske, Thormondby, Pinchinthorpe, Marske, and High Dinsdale, in Yorkshire: Wynyard, Layton, Horden, Cotham-Conyers in co. Durham; and Hoppen, in Northumberland. One family, derived, I believe, from the Bowlby line, still hold the rank of wealthy gentry of Essex. All the others are now fallen, and not a foot of land is held by Conyers either in Yorkshire or Durham." Even this latter family, descended from Tristram Conyers, Lord of the manors of Scarborough and Cleyton in Skipsey, Yorkshire, and Quapload in Lincolnshire, who first settled in Essex, and died in 1619, is now extinct. They had acquired Copped Hall from the Websters at the beginning of the last century, and ended not many years ago in two co-heiresses. Both were married; but one only, Mrs. Eaton, left children. There appears also to have been a branch in Lancashire, where Yealand-Conyers and Leighton-Conyers still keep the name, and Matthew de Conyers is mentioned in the Testa de Nevill. This expired about the time of Edward I., when Isolda, the heiress, became the wife of Henry de Croft.

One by one—some later, and some earlier—each of the remaining branches of this famous house had died out. The fair domain of Sockburn went, with the heiress of William Conyers, to Francis Talbot, eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1635, and passed through their daughter to the Stonors. Coatham-Conyers, first brought by Scolastica de Cotam in the time of Edward I., was forfeited by Roger Conyers, who joined the Rising of the Northern Earls in 1569. Wynyard had been transferred to the Claxtons in the previous century. The line of Layton ended in 1748. Hutton passed to the Mallorys, and Danby to the Scropes, who now hold it. Their possessions dwindled and disappeared year by year. Manor after manor was lost to its ancient lords: estate after estate alienated or carried away by heiresses, till at length they were bereft of all, and in 1810 Surtees found Sir Thomas Conyers, the last of his race, in the workhouse of Chester-le-Street! No other earthly refuge was left to him save the pauper's home, and the pauper's task of breaking stones upon the road. But he was saved at least from the pauper's grave. A subscription, proposed by Surtees, and headed by Bishop Barrington, was set on foot to rescue him from his unhappy position; and enough money was collected to remove him to a more fitting abode. The old man only lived, however, a few months afterwards; and with him expired the proud name that had shone in the county annals for the better part of eight hundred years!

Coucy :

see Gines, or Guisnes.

Camnine :

Hugo de Camin witnesses the foundation charter of Kirkham Priory (Mon. Angl.). His daughter Matilda held of Robert de Stuteville in 1165.—Liber Niger. Richard Camin occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95: and Adam Camin, of Kent, in the Hundred Rolls of Edward I.

Clairvays :

for Clerevaux, a duplicate.

Colet :

"In our Colets or Colletts (sometimes the diminutives of Colin) we are reminded of the colet, or acolyte, who waited upon the priest and assisted in carrying the bread and wine, in lighting the candles, and performing all subordinate duties."—Bardsley's English Surnames. The name is several times to be met with on the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-98, but I do not find it enrolled among the nobles of the Duchy. At nearly the same date, Alexander Culet occurs in the English Rotuli Curiae Regis, and John de Colet witnesses Geoffrey Fitz Piers, Earl of Essex's foundation charter of Sutton Hospital, Yorkshire.—Mon. Anglicanum. About 1272, Dyonisia and Walter Colet are found in the Rotuli Hundredorum, as well as John and Laurence Colet, of London. In Buckinghamshire "the Colets are to be found in the list of gentry of 1433, but have lately become extinct in the male line, and are represented by Mr. Stratfold Colet, or Collet, as the name is now spelt, of Hale-Leys, in the parish of Wendover. Sir Henry Colet, Lord Mayor of London, father of Dean Colet, was of this family."—Lysons.

Dean Colet was the celebrated founder of St. Paul's School. His name is inseparably connected with the revival of learning in the fifteenth century, when the fall of Constantinople had driven Greek scholars to take refuge in Italy, and a group of the most distinguished of them were congregated at Florence, under the wing of Lorenzo the Magnificent. It was there that the new school of teaching was first established; and that John Colet, solely "with a religious end," went to learn Greek, "the key by which he could unlock the Gospels and the New Testament." He came back to Oxford imbued with a deep sense of the early simplicity and purity of the Church, as founded by the Apostles, and divested of "the corruptions of the Schoolmen;" and laboured indefatigably and enthusiastically for the reformation of religion and the revival of letters. He preached and lectured "like one inspired—raised in voice, in eye, in his whole countenance, out of himself;" and carried away his hearers by the strange fervour of his eloquence. "When I listen to my friend Colet," writes Erasmus, "it seems like listening to Plato himself." In 1505 he became Dean of St. Paul's; and on his father's death in 1510 inherited an ample fortune, which he devoted "to the foundation of a Grammar School besides St. Paul's. The bent of its founder's mind was shown by the image of the Child Jesus over the Master's chair, with the words 'Hear ye Him' graven beneath it. 'Lift up your little white hands for me,' wrote the Dean to his scholars in words which prove the tenderness that lay beneath the stern outward seeming of the man,—'for me which prayeth for you to God.'"—Green's History of the English People. He died in 1519.

Chancer :

for Chaucer. "The name of Le Chaucier (Calceolarius) may have arisen from some serjeantry connected with the tenure of land.^[122] The family of Chaucer, Chaucier, Chaucers or Chasurs was seated in the Eastern Counties, and some members were in trade in London. Richard le Chaucer was of London 1328; John Chaucer in 1349 (Riley, Liber Albus 438: Nicholas, Life of Chaucer, 94). Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet, was probably a kinsman of Bartholomew Chaucer, who possessed estates in Cambridge, Hunts, Herts, and Essex, in 1312 (Parl. Rot. i. 449)."—The Norman People. There is some mention of the family during the previous century in Essex and Cambridgeshire.

Sir Geoffrey Chaucer, the "father of English poetry," was born about 1328 at Woodstock, where he long had his principal residence in an old quadrangular stone house, of which some remains existed in our own time. He began life at Court, as Valettus hospitii, or Esquire of the Body to the King; and received from him a grant of twenty marks yearly as Comptroller of the customs of wool; a lucrative office, as it was then the principal article of export in the port of London. Edward III. also employed him abroad; and in 1372 a mission which was "probably connected with the financial straits of the Crown" took him to Italy, where, at the brilliant court of the Viscontis, he attended the marriage of the Duke of Clarence with the Duke of Milan's daughter Violante, and met Petrarch, Boccacio, and Froissart. He served in the French campaign of 1350, during which he was taken prisoner; but after his release at the treaty of Bretigny he never again bore arms; and in 1389 and 1390 we find him acting in the peaceful and (as one might suppose) uncongenial capacity of Clerk of the Works to Richard II. His first poem had been written many years before, when he was not yet thirty:—a young man of "a fair and beautiful complexion and full red lips," wearing a forked beard; graceful and majestic in his deportment, and clad in a dark-coloured doublet and hood; a knife and pencase at his girdle. His last and greatest work, "The Canterbury Tales," of which the design had been suggested by the Decameron, engaged the ten closing years of his life, and was left unfinished at his death. His final words of farewell, "The Gode Counsaile of Chaucer," were written "upon his dethe bed, leying in his gret anguyse," but tranquil and peaceful to the end. "No poetry was ever more human than his; none ever came more frankly and genially home to its readers. The first note of his song is a note of freshness and gladness. 'Of ditties and of songes glad, the which he for my sake made, the land fulfilled is all over,' Gower makes Love say in his lifetime; and the impression of gladness remains just as fresh now that four hundred years have passed away."—Green.

He had married one of the domicellae (maids of honour) of Queen Philippa, her namesake Philippa de Roet, daughter and co-heir of a knight of Hainault, and sister of Catherine Swinford, who in 1369 became the wife of John of Gaunt. This connexion brought him into close alliance with the Lancastrian party; for he paid assiduous court to his Royal patron and brother-in-law, became warmly attached to him, and was necessarily involved in his disgrace. He probably lost his office of Comptroller when, in consequence of the riot in London, he had to betake himself to flight; and he did not live to see the turn of the tide that would have borne him back to fortune. He died in the very year of Henry IV.'s accession, and was buried in the chapel of St. Blaise (now called Poet's Corner) in Westminster-Abbey. The honours and rewards that should have been his now fell to the share of his only son, Sir Thomas, who, in the first beginning of the new reign, was appointed to the high office of Chief Butler of England; further became Constable of the castles of Knaresborough and Wallingford, Keeper of Knaresborough Forest for life, and received from Henry IV.'s Queen Woodstock and three other Oxfordshire manors "for his good service." He married Maud, the younger of the two daughters and co-heirs of Sir John de Burghersh, who brought him Ewelme in Oxfordshire with Donnington in Berkshire; and had, besides all the rest, inherited a considerable fortune. "Sum say," writes Leland, "that this Chaucer was a marchant man, and had about £1000 by the yere, and that wollesakkes be yn Ewelme in token of marchandise;" which was probably true, as his father had been Comptroller of the customs of wool in the port of London. He died in 1434, and Maud his wife in 1437, leaving an only child, Alice, as the sole inheritrix. She was three times married; first to Sir John Phelip; then to Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, and lastly to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, at one time the greatest and most powerful man in the kingdom. Her three husbands must have succeeded each other without waste of time, for, when her father died—she being then twenty-five years of age—she was already the wife of the third. "For love of her, and the commoditie of her landes, he fell much to dwelle in Oxfordshire and Barkshir;" and translated and improved the manor-house of Ewelme, "that took name of a great poole afore the maner-place, and elmes growing about yt.... The inner parte of the house is sett within a faire mote, and is buildyd richly of bricke and stone. The hall hath great barres of iron overthwart yt insteade of crosse beames. The parlour by yt is exceeding faire and lightsome, and soe bee all the lodgings there."—Leland. Only a portion of the offices is now left. The Duke and Duchess also built the beautiful parish church, endowed a free school and founded a hospital for thirteen poor men, "to be called God's house, or the house of alms," at Ewelme. Nearly the whole of Alice's life was spent in her old home, for when the unhappy Duke, captured at sea while making his escape to France in 1447, was beheaded in Dover roads, his widow was suffered to remain undisturbed in her inheritance, and survived him for twenty-eight years. She was not buried with him, but "lyes at Ewelme under a rich tumbe of alabaster, with an image in the habit of a Woves" (vowed nun) "crowned." This tomb—one of the stateliest to be found within the four seas—is yet in excellent preservation. It is surmounted by a gorgeous canopy terminating in tapering finials, that is encircled with angels in adoration; while others, placed in decorated niches, and holding shields charged with the arms of De la Pole, Chaucer, and Roet, surround the splendid altar on which rests the figure of the Duchess, her folded hands lifted in prayer. She is robed in mediaeval pomp, with her coronet on her head, and the Garter round her arm; but, in a low crypt underneath, a second effigy, seen through eight double arches that half screen it from view, shows her lying wrapped in her shroud, or the shrouding veil of some religious sisterhood. On the vaulting of this crypt is painted the Assumption of the Virgin. Close by, on an altar tomb covered with armorial bearings, are two fine brasses representing her father and mother. Sir Thomas's feet rest on a unicorn, which appears to have been the crest of the Chaucers; hers on a lion couchant, la quene fourchee, that of Burghersh.

The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk left an only son, John de la Pole, who married Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, one of the sisters of Edward IV., and thus entailed upon his posterity the fatal title to the Crown that sealed the doom of his house. Edmund, the third Duke, after having been upwards of sixteen years a close prisoner in the Tower, was executed by order of Henry VIII. in 1513: and his brother Richard, the last of the name, long an exile from England, died in 1524, fighting under a foreign banner at the battle of Pavia.

Corleuile :

or Courlaville, as the name was written in Normandy. A Robert de Courlaville was Bailli de Mortaing in 1344.—Memoires des Antiquaires de la Normandie. Richard de Carleville, in 1165, held one fee of the barony of Richard Ewyas in Herefordshire (Lib. Niger): and perhaps we may include in the family Peter de Cordanville, a tenant of Robert d'Estouteville's in Yorkshire (Ibid). Roger de Carleville gave some land at "Alveredesfeld and Hertsterst," to Stoke Priory in Suffolk.—Mon. Angli. Henry de Carleville, in 1316, was joint Lord of Bruton, Somersetshire.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs.

Clarvaile :

or Claville, one of the Barons of Domesday. "Which of the places in Normandy called Claville gave name to this family has not been discovered, but there is a village of that name in the Campagne de Neubourg, a little to the west of Evreux, from which it is rather more probable they sprung than from Claville Motteville in the arrondissement of Rouen, mentioned as their original seat, because a great majority of the followers of the Conqueror were drawn from that part of the Duchy that lies Southwards of the river Seine."—Hutchins' Dorset. Walter de Claville, in 1086, held of the King Burlescomb, Legh, Lomene, &c.—thirty manors in all—in Devonshire; and East Morden, since known as Morden-Maltravers, with four other lordships, in Dorsetshire. One branch of his descendants—probably the elder—settled on the larger estate in Devonshire (Morden being the only Dorsetshire manor they retained); and had their caput baronies at Burlescomb, near Tiverton, where another Walter de Claville—no doubt the grandson of the first—founded the Priory of Canon's Legh 1161-73. He held twelve fees of the Earl of Gloucester (Lib. Niger), whose feudatories the Claviles appear to have been, and was followed by six generations of descendants. Of these, "Sir Roger Clavell died sans issue, whom William, his brother's son, succeeded, whose grandchild John Clavell was slain the next day after his marriage, coming from London to these parts, but his wife was found with child and brought a son, who had Lomen Clavell and other his father's inheritance, and left them unto William his son in the time of King Edward III.; from which family Beare of Huntsham is descended by the heir-general, and there was great contention between Sir Henry Percehaye and Thomas Beare about the inheritance of William Clavell after his death, as appeareth on record."—Risdon's Survey of Devon. Sir William Pole confirms this account of the dispute between the two claimants to Lomen Clavell. Yet it does not tally with the pedigree given by Hutchins, and derived from the cartulary of Canon's Legh, which states that on the death of the last heir, about 1374, the next in blood was a remote cousin, John Aysshlyn; and it is certain that this John inherited Morden. The hamlet of Lomen-Clavell, "the ancient inheritance of Clavell from the Conquest," and Bukinton Clavell, retain the name in Devonshire.

In Dorsetshire "the family of Clavell could boast an antiquity not to be equalled in this county and very rarely in any other," for it was carried on in the male line till the latter half of the last century. Four of the manors held by Walter de Claville in Domesday "seem to have passed at a very early period to a younger son—perhaps before the time of Henry II. Robert de Clavile held a fee in 'Porbica' in the time of Henry I., of which two hides were given to the Abbot of Tewkesbury, probably about 1106, soon after the Monastery of Cranborne became a priory dependent upon the former house. The gift was conferred by charter of King Henry I. In 12 Hen. II., Radulphus de Clavill held one fee in Dorset of Alured de Lincoln, of the new feoffment, and Robert de Clavile held another of Gerbert de Perci, of the old feoffment."—Ibid.

This family, like most others, was split up into various divisions. A branch held West Holme, one of the original Domesday manors, till the time of Edward I., when Margaret de Clavile conveyed it to John Russell of Tyneham. Two others were seated in the Isle of Purbeck, one, the Claviles of Quarr, in the parish of Worth Maltravers, ended under Henry VIII. with an heiress married to Thomas Daccomb; the other, of Leston in Langton-Maltravers, was carried on through a cadet till 1774. He had acquired Smedmore, Barneston and other property in the Isle of Purbeck through his wife, Johanna Wyot, in the reign of Henry VI.; and Smedmore continued to the last the home of his posterity. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, Sir William Clavell, Knight Banneret, "built a little newe house at Smedmore, and beautified it with pleasant gardens." This Sir William was "a great but unfortunate projector," who, as the result of his speculations, was forced to sell or mortgage the best part of his estate. The remainder, with Smedmore, he devised to a distant kinsman, Roger Clavell of Winfrith, passing over his brother's son John, who, as next of blood, was his heir apparent. For this, it must be admitted that he had a sufficient excuse. The graceless nephew had fallen into evil courses and evil companionship very early in life, and at the beginning of Charles the First's reign was apprehended, convicted, and condemned for highway robbery. The Queen, it is said, interposed in his behalf, and he received a pardon; but remained long enough in prison to write a whole quarto volume of poems. Some of these effusions are addressed to the King; some to the Queen, the nobles, the judges, &c.; and one is entitled "A Recantation of an ill Life," dated "From my lonely, sad, and unfrequented prison in the King's Bench, October, 1627." When he regained his liberty, he lost no time in presenting a poetical address to "his ever dear and well approved good uncle Sir William Clavell," craving his forgiveness, and promising never to return to his former course of life. If he did—

"O then for ever disinherit me!" He kept his word, and men marvelled at

his "most singular reformation;" but Sir William was obdurate, and Smedmore passed to the distant kinsman. The last heir, George Clavell, bequeathed it to his nephew William Richards, on condition that he took the name of Clavell; but it once more perished with him, and its next bearer—his brother—died childless and intestate in 1833. There remain, however, representatives of a family formerly seated in the Isle of Wight, who, "though they have hitherto failed in establishing the connecting link, there can be no doubt are descended from the Claviles of Purbeck."—Ibid.

Clavelshay, or Clavelsleigh, now called Classey, in Somersetshire, took its name from some Clavilles who had considerable possessions in that neighbourhood. But their allusive coat Or three keys Gules, has no analogy with that of the Dorsetshire house, Argent, on a chevron Sable three chapeaux Or.

Euers :

a renowned Border family, whose exploits as march-wardens have been sung in many a tale and ballad, and last, but not least, by Sir Walter Scott—

"When the Douglas true, and the bold Buccleuch
'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood."

They were Barons of Wittonde-Wear in the county of Durham, where they had their castle, as well as Lords of Kirkley, in Northumberland; and descended from Eustace Fitzjohn, one of the greatest barons in the reign of Henry I. (see Vesci), by his second marriage with the heiress of the Constable of Chester. Their younger grandson, Roger, received the barony of Warkworth from Henry II., and was the father of Richard, who founded Langley Abbey in Norfolk. King Richard gave him Eure in Buckinghamshire, from which place his grandson Hugh, the ancestor of the Lords Evers, derived his name. It was consequently never borne till the reign of Henry III., and has no business here.

Fitz Vrcy :

"In the time of King Stephen the family of Fitz-Urse (a name which in after days degenerated into Fitzour, Fyshour, and Fisher) became possessed of the great manor of Williton; they had their descent from that Urso, or Ursus, who in the time of William the Conqueror held lands in Grittleton, and other parts of Wiltshire, of the Abbey of Glastonbury. The first of the name who enjoyed this manor was Richard Fitz Urse, who died about 14 Hen. II., leaving issue three sons; Sir Reginald, Sir Robert, and Walter. Sir Reginald, the eldest, had his residence at Williton, in a house which he afterwards gave to his brother Robert, with a moiety of this manor."—Collinson's Somerset. This Sir Reginald was among the courtiers standing in the presence chamber at Bur; near Bayeux, a few days before Christmas 1170, when the King gave audience to the three prelates that had been excommunicated by Thomas a Beckett, and came to lay their complaint before him. One of them wound up his statement with the emphatic declaration: "Sir King, as long as Thomas lives, you will have neither good days, nor peaceful kingdom, nor quiet life." Upon this, Henry blazed out into one of the sudden fits of frenzy—described as "something beyond anger"—to which all the earlier princes of the blood of Plantagenet were prone; and stormed against the haughty prelate that "first came to court on a lame sumpter mule," and now "lifted his heel against him." "What cowards—what wretched sluggards—have I reared at my court," he cried, "who care nothing for their allegiance to their master! not one of them—not one"—he repeated over and over again, "that will rid me of this lowborn priest!" These dangerous words, spoken before so many witnesses, met with an immediate response. On that same night Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, and Richard de Bret started for England to do the King's bidding; and rode so fast that a messenger despatched to recall them only reached the coast after they had sailed. They went first to Saltwood Castle, then held by Ranulph de Broc, another enemy whom the Archbishop had put under the ban only two days before; and there concerted their plans, and levied a troop of men at arms in the King's name. Thence they rode to Canterbury, and on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 29th, dismounted at the Archbishop's gate, announcing that they brought him a message from "the King over the water." The interview was brief and threatening, and all but ended in open violence; the knights came out again with flashing eyes, crying "To arms! to arms!" and at this signal their comrades trooped in through the archway of the palace, shouting the royal watchword "Reaux! reaux!" (King's men). Then, casting off the cloaks and gowns that concealed their armour, and girding on their weapons, they set off in quest of the Archbishop, who had been partly forced and partly persuaded to take refuge in his cathedral. Fitzurse, with a sword in one hand, and a carpenter's axe in the other, took the lead, as he had done throughout, and first confronted Beckett in the transept, where he stood, in the gathering twilight of the winter afternoon, deserted by all but his chaplain, and two other faithful priests. "Reginald," said he, "you have received many favours at my hands: why do you come into my church armed?" Fitzurse answered only by planting the axe against his breast, with the savage words, "You shall die—I will tear out your heart!" Then, dropping his weapon, he laid hold of the collar of the Archbishop's cloak, to drag him out of sanctuary; but Beckett wrenched it away, set his back against a pillar, and grappled fiercely with his adversaries, seizing Tracy by his coat of mail, and flinging him headlong on the pavement. While he was struggling to his feet, Fitzurse sprung forward with his drawn sword, and Beckett, now roused to fury, called him by a foul name, and taunted him with being his liegeman.^[123] "You profligate wretch, you are my man—you have done me fealty—you ought not to touch me I" Fitzurse retorted, "I owe you no homage contrary to my fealty to the King!" then, waving his sword above his head with the cry "Ferez, ferez!" (strike, strike) he aimed a blow at the Archbishop, but only dashed off his cap. Beckett "covered his head with his joined hands, bent his neck, and said, 'I commend my cause and the cause of the Church to God, to St. Denys of France, to St. Alfege, and all the saints of the Church.'" The next blow—the first that drew blood—was struck by Tracy; the second either by him or Fitzurse; but it was only at the third, which was again dealt by Tracy, that "he sank on his knees—his arms falling—but his hands still joined as if in prayer; and, with his face turned towards the altar of St. Benedict, murmured in a low voice, 'For the name of Jesus, and the defence of the Church, I am content to die.' Without moving hand or foot, he fell flat on his face as he spoke, with such dignity that his mantle, which extended from head to foot, was not disarranged."—Dean Stanley. As he lay there bleeding, Richard le Bret, not to be behindhand in ferocity, fractured his skull with one last tremendous stroke, snapping his sword in two on the marble floor (see vol. i., p. 160), and "Hugh of Hornsea, the subdeacon who had joined them as they entered the church, taunted by the others with having taken no share in the deed, planted his foot on the neck of the corpse, thrust his sword into the ghastly wound, and scattered the brains over the pavement—'Let us go—let us go,' he said in conclusion; 'the traitor is dead; he will rise no more.'"—Ibid.—Then the murderers rushed out of the church, shouting their battle cry "Reaux! Reaux!" in mad triumph; ransacked and plundered the palace, seizing many papal bulls, charters, &c, that were sent to the King, and finally took out of the stables the horses "on which Beckett had prided himself to the last," and rode back to Saltwood. "The next day they rode forty miles by the sea-coast to South Mailing, an archiepiscopal manor near Lewes. On entering the house, they threw off their arms and trappings on the large dining-table which stood in the hall, and after supper gathered round the blazing hearth; suddenly the table started back, and threw its burden on the ground. The attendants, roused by the crash, rushed in with lights and replaced the arms. But soon a second still louder crash was heard, and the various articles were thrown still further off. Soldiers and servants with torches searched in vain under the solid table to find the cause of its convulsions, till one of the conscience-stricken knights suggested that it was indignantly refusing to bear the sacrilegious burden of their arms. So ran the popular story: and, as late as the fourteenth century, this table was still shown in the same place. From South Mailing they proceeded to Knaresborough Castle, a royal fortress then in the possession of Hugh de Morville, where they remained for a year (see Morville).

"From this moment they disappear for a time in the black cloud of legend with which the monastic historians have enveloped their memory. Dogs, it was said, refused to eat the crumbs that fell from their table. Struck with remorse, they went to Rome, to receive the sentence of Pope Alexander III., and by him were sent to expiate their sins in the Holy Land."—Ibid. Some say that Fitzurse died on his pilgrimage thither; others that he went over to Ireland, and there founded the family of Mac Mahon—Mac Mahon being the Celtic equivalent of Son of the Bear. "On his flight, the estate which he held in the Isle of Thanet, Barham or Berham Court, lapsed to his kinsman Robert de Berham—Berham being, as it would seem, the English, as M'Mahon was the Irish, version of the name Fitzurse."—Ibid. One half of his Somersetshire manor of Williton he bestowed on the Knights of St. John, in expiation of his crime. The story of his Irish descendants is, however, entirely discredited by other authorities, and Eyton, in his History of Shropshire, emphatically contradicts it. "I can," he says, "mark no further event in the life of this miscreant, nor can I state the period of his death. He left one only child, a daughter. Her name was Matilda. She married Robert de Courtenay, and had by him an only son, William, who died in 1214, without issue. Thus did the descendants of Reginald Fitz Urse continue in England, and became utterly and demonstrably extinct." This grandson was probably the same William de Courtenay who in 1210 founded the Priory of Woodspring (of which the ruins still crown the banks of the British Channel) in honour of the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Thomas of Canterbury.

But the posterity of the second brother Robert Fitzurse remained at Williton till 1362. Robert's grandson, Sir Ralph, who lived in the time of Henry III., gave his name to Brompton-Ralph, also in Somersetshire, of which the family had been chief tenants under the Lords Mohun ever since the Conquest.

Gargraue :

This is another evident interpolation. Gargrave is the central parish of the district of Craven, in Yorkshire; it is entered in Domesday as "Gheregrave, Terra Rogerii Pictavensis." It was afterwards added to the two fees of Percy and Romilly; and in 8 Ed. I. belonged to Geoffrey de Nevill, in right of his wife Margaret.

Glanuile :

from Glanville, near Caen. "About 1064 Rainald de Glanville witnessed a charter of Roger de Mowbray in favour of Holy Trinity, Caen." (Gall. Christ, xi. 60 Justr.) Ranulph de Glanville, probably his son, was one of the barons of William Malet, Lord of Eye in Suffolk, under the Conqueror, and a benefactor to the monks of Eye, on the foundation of their monastery. His son William, "being a very devout man, bestowed on the Cluniacs all the Churches in his Barony" in the time of Henry I.; and his grandson Bartholomew—still more devout—founded Bromholme Priory as a cell to Castleacre, where his father had been buried. Nothing further is heard of Bartholomew,^[124] except that he was Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk from 1170 to 1176, and left two sons, William and Bartholomew, who both died s. p. (vide Blomfield), but his brother Ranulph "became a great man in his time." He first served with William de Vesci in Northumberland, raising the siege of Prudhoe Castle, and taking the King of Scots prisoner at Alnwick in 1174: five years later was one of the Justices Itinerant of the Northern Counties, and in 1180 advanced to the great office of Justiciar of the kingdom, which he held till the King's death. He was one of the witnesses to Henry II.'s will when it was declared at Waltham in 1182, and employed to raise troops in England to aid the King in the difficulties that arose "in his Territories beyond the seas." Richard Coeur de Lion removed him from the office of Justiciary, in order to bestow it on Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham. "Glanville had then attained an advanced age. According to one contemporary authority, the Justiciar, sinking under bodily infirmity, and disgusted by the vices of the young Monarch, became anxious to surrender up his trust. Glanville, therefore, solemnly resigned his office to less competent successors, and departed, as a crusader, to the Holy Land. It is said, that by anxiety and vexation, his intellect became much enfeebled. And dying shortly afterwards, leaving only female issue, not an individual remained who bore his honoured name. Other contemporaries inform us that Glanville was deprived of the Justiciarship by the rapacious Monarch, who at the same time removed the sheriffs and their ministers throughout the kingdom, ransoming them to the very last farthing; and Glanville himself was cast into prison, until he purchased his enlargement by submitting to a fine of,£3,000. The latter account is not destitute of plausibility; for Coeur de Lion's avarice was equalled only by his extravagance."—Sir Francis Palgrave. Glanville is said to have died in the Holy Land, during the siege of Acre. He had founded and "plentifully endowed" two religious houses in Suffolk; Butley Priory (in 1171), and Leyston Abbey, both for Canons Regular of St. Augustine; the former built on a manor that his wife, Berta de Valoines, had brought him in dower. He left only three daughters, "unto whom he gave all his Lands, before he went towards Jerusalem." Maud, the eldest, married Sir William de Auberville; Amabel, John de Arderne; and Helewise, Robert Fitz Ralph, Lord of Middleham in Yorkshire. The Suffolk barony of the Glanvilles consisted in 1165 of nine and a half knight's fees; and they have sometimes been styled Earls of the county. "There be of the later writers," says Camden, "who report that the Glanvils in times past were honoured with this title; but seeing they ground upon no certain authority, whereas men may easily mistake, and I have found nothing of them in the publicke records of the Kingdome, they must pardon me, if I believe them not."

The Glanvilles of the West of England are derived by Prince from the house of the great Justiciar, though he admits that the descent could not be proved, and the arms are entirely different.^[125] About the year 1400 they settled at Halwell, in the parish of Whitchurch, Devonshire, which continued in their possession till the last century, and afterwards at Kilworthy, near Tavistock. "Here," says Westcote, "is also a family deserving a due remembrance; Sir Francis Glanvile, knt, whose father was a learned lawyer, very well practis'd therein, and call'd to the degree of a serjeaunt. At this call there were two more of this county, in all three: Drewe, Glanvile, and Harris. Of whom I remember in my youth I have heard this proverb commonly spoken, one gained as much as the other two; one spent as much as the other two; and one gave as much as the other two; but how to distinguish them and give every one his right therein, I freely and truly confess it surpasseth my knowledge." The learned lawyer was Sir John Glanville, a cadet of the house of Halwell, who was one of the Justices of the Common Pleas in the reign of Elizabeth, acquired a considerable fortune, and built Kilworthy House. "He was a great lover of justice and integrity, being careful to hold the balances entrusted to him with an even and steady hand, not inclining to either side out of awe or dread, out of favour and affection."—Prince's Worthies of Devon. There is a local tradition that he actually pronounced sentence of death on one of his own children. It was a daughter, whose first imprudent love affair with a lieutenant in the navy had been nipped in the bud by intercepting her letters; and who had since married an old man at Plymouth, nicknamed "Wealthy Page," for whom she did not care. When the young lieutenant returned home from sea, and she discovered the fraud practised upon her, they agreed together to get rid of poor Mr. Page; and he was accordingly strangled in his bed by his wife and her waiting-woman. A neighbour that lived opposite stated in evidence that "hearing at night some sand thrown against a window, thinking it was her own, she arose, and looking out, saw a young gentleman near Page's window, and heard him say, 'For God's sake stay your hand!' A woman replied, ''Tis too late, the deed is done.' On the following day, it was given out that Page had died suddenly in the night, and as soon as possible he was buried."—Bray's Traditions of Devonshire. The wife, her maid, and her lover, were all three tried, condemned, and executed, and sentence was passed upon Mrs. Page by her own father,^[126]

Judge Glanville's eldest son, Francis, proved a dissolute spendthrift; and judging him unfit to bear the honours of the family, he bequeathed Kilworthy and the whole estate to his younger son John, who was, like himself, a distinguished lawyer. This second Sir John was born at Tavistock, "that fruitful seed-plot of eminent and learned men"; but practised his profession at Lincoln's Inn, and with such success that in 1637 he became Serjeant at Law, and was soon afterwards chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. Clarendon calls him "a man very equal to the work, of a ready, voluble expression, dextrous in disposing the House, and very acceptable to them." He kept his popularity through all the stormy scenes that followed; and when the King dissolved the parliament, loyally attended him to Oxford. For this he was thrown into prison at Exeter in 1645 as "a desperate malignant," and only bought his liberty three years later by the payment of a heavy fine. At the Restoration he was appointed King's Serjeant, "shining the brighter for being so long eclipsed"; but died the year following at his house of Broadhinton, in Wiltshire.

Kilworthy, his father's bequest, had long before passed out of his possession. Francis, the disinherited elder brother, had been struck with remorse and consternation at his father's will. Though often warned of his fate, he had treated his father's words as idle threats, and was altogether unprepared to meet the blow. It sobered him at once and for ever; thenceforward he was an altered man, and having once set his foot in the right direction, he never either faltered or drew back. Sir John, while anxiously watching his amendment, for some time kept aloof, not choosing to interfere till he had convinced himself that the change was real. When he could no longer doubt that Francis's penitence was sincere and lasting, he invited him to a grand banquet at his house of Kilworthy.

Great preparations had been made for this entertainment, and a great number of guests were assembled. Friends and neighbours had come from far and near, with many of the first magnates and dignitaries of the county; and when all were gathered round the board, Sir John took the repentant prodigal by the hand, and seated him in the place of honour. After the many courses had been duly served, and his guests had partaken of his good cheer, he called for one last dish, ordered it to be placed before his brother, and "with a cheerful countenance" bade him raise the cover. It contained only a heap of parchments—the title-deeds of Kilworthy; and placing these in his brother's hands, Sir John solemnly called the honourable company there present to witness that he freely and fully restored them to him. He wished that all should know the respect in which he now held his reformed brother; "and in giving him back his birthright," added he, "I do no more than my father himself would have done, had he lived to see this day." Francis burst into tears, fell on his brother's neck, and sobbed out his thanks, declaring that he should never have reason to repent of his generosity. He kept his word, and filled his place worthily as the head of the house; but his line ended with his son, and Kilworthy passed to his niece, Mrs. Manaton. The noble-hearted younger brother is, however, still represented. His three eldest sons left no posterity, and the fourth, Julius, who became eventually his heir, removed into Cornwall, and bought Catchfrench, their present seat, in 1726.

The elder line of the Glanvilles ended in abject poverty. Harwell had been long since sold; and the last heir-male, Jack Glanville, died not many years ago in the poorhouse at Bradstone. He had been in the service of Mr. Kelly of Kelly as his huntsman; and is said to have been a man of shrewd good sense, and much humour and mother-wit. He prided himself on his blood, boasting that better was not to be found in all Devonshire. Yet none of his kith and kin—not even the old master whom he had served—were found willing to rescue him from the degradation of ending his days as a pauper!

There was also a Cornish branch of the Glanvilles, seated at Launceston; of which Lysons finds the first mention early in the seventeenth century. They held fast to the traditions of their Devonshire cousins; for it used to be an old saying in the county that "a Godolphin was never known to want wit, a Trelawney courage, and a Glanville loyalty."

Gascoyne :

or Le Gascon.^[127] "The name speaks for itself. William and Geoffrey de Gasconia are mentioned in 1209-10 (Hardy, Rot. de Libertate). In 1266, Ismenia, widow of Philip le Gascoyn, paid a fine in Salop (Roberts, Excerpt.), and Philip le Gascoyn had a suit in the same county twelve years before (Rotul. Hund.). An ancient family of this name was seated near Coutances, in Normandy (Des Bois)."—The Norman People. The Gascoignes were for many generations settled at Gawthorpe in Yorkshire, where their old hall stood by the side of the lake, about two hundred yards south of Lord Harewood's present house. It had come to them early in the fourteenth century, through the marriage of William Gascoigne with its heiress, Mansild de Gawkethorp. Thoresby, in his History of Leeds, quotes a voluminous pedigree, "transcribed from the Original in sixteen Large Sheets of Parchment curiously delineated and attested by Henry St. George Norroys," which, according to the fantastic wont of the heralds, deduces them from "Ailrichus, a noble Saxon who was banished by William the Conqueror"; and gives "fifteen Williams in lineal succession (of whom six were Knights): viz. seven before, and seven after the celebrated Sir William Gascoigne, Chief Justice to King Henry IV." But the pedigree in truth only begins with his grandfather, the fortunate William that espoused the Lady of Gawthorpe, for a shadowy haze of unreality hangs about the five preceding Williams. Thoresby can furnish us neither with a date, a wife, nor a dwelling place, for any one of them.

The great illustration of the family is Shakespeare's hero, the undaunted Judge who, as the Sovereign's representative, upheld "the majesty and power of law and justice" against the Sovereign's own son, and did not hesitate to

"Rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison
The immediate heir of England."

The young prince had imperiously claimed one of his followers, who was arraigned for felony, and when Gascoigne refused to give him up, "came to the place of judgment, set all in a fury, all chafed, and in a terrible manner, men thinking that he would have slaine the judge." The Lord Chief Justice, thus threatened, "sat still without moving, and with an assured and bold countenance," charged the Prince to remember that "he kept there the place of the King his sovereign Lord and father," severely reproved him, and committed him to the Fleet for contempt of court. When the mad-cap prince had become his sovereign, Gascoigne expected to see this courageous act heavily visited upon him; but the young King generously reappointed him Lord Chief Justice:

"You did commit me;
For which, I do commit into your hand
The unstain'd sword that you have us'd to bear;
With this remembrance,—That you use the same
With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit
As you have done 'gainst me."
—Henry IV., Part II., Act V., Scene 2.

So says Shakespeare; and so it assuredly should have been. But, alas, for the pitiless logic of facts, before which our fairest illusions are doomed to disappear! These noble words in reality were never spoken; for the sequel of the story is unhappily not true. Mr. Foss, in his Judges of England, has conclusively proved that it was Sir William Haukford, and not Sir William Gascoigne, who, on March 29, 1413 (eight days after Henry's accession to the throne), was appointed Chief Justice of England. This is further confirmed by the inscription on a brass filletting that surrounded Gascoigne's tomb in Gawthorpe Church, which (though the filletting itself was stolen during the Civil War) is yet preserved. He is there recorded as "nuper Capit. Justic. de banco, Hen. nuper regis Angliae quarti": but we find no mention (as there infallibly must have been) of his having filled the same office under Henry V. His effigy represents him in his Judge's robes, wearing the collar of SS., with the coif covering, as of old, the whole head, and a gyptiere or purse at his girdle.^[128] He was twice married, and left sons by both wives; but all his descendants in the male line had passed away by the end of the following century. His eldest son was the grandfather of another Sir William, who married Joan, the only child of John Nevill of Oversley in Warwickshire. This John's father was Ralph, the second son of Ralph Daraby, first Earl of Westmoreland, by his first wife Margaret Stafford. The elder brother, John Lord Nevill, died in his father's lifetime, leaving three sons, of whom the first-born, Ralph, succeeded as second Earl. "This Neville," says Leland, "lakkid heires male, wherapon a great concertation rose betwixt the next heire male and one of the Gascoynes." The next heir male was his nephew Ralph (son of Sir John, who fell at Towton in 1461): and his right was so manifest that it seemed impossible to dispute it. Yet, in 1523 Surrey writes to Wolsey (of whose household, as we shall presently see, one of the Gascoignes was Comptroller): "I am informed Sir William Gascoyne doth intende to beare my Lorde of Westmerland's armes, pretending title to the Earldom of Westmerland * * * * I beseech your grace to speake with the heralds in this matter, and to write unto Sir William for the reformation therein." The line ended in the time of Elizabeth with the fifteenth Sir William, whose only daughter and heir Margaret married Thomas Wentworth, grandfather of the famous Earl of Strafford. The latter thus became heir-general of these Gascoignes, and when he received his Earldom in 1640, chose to take his second title from the old Nevill castle of Raby, not only in honour of his grandmother's Nevill blood, but in provocation ("the most unnecessary," writes Lord Clarendon, "that I have known") of his old adversary Sir Henry Vane, who was then its owner.

"James Gascoigne, the son of the Lord Chief Justice by his second wife, settled at Cardington in the reign of Henry VI., and became possessed of a manor, which seems to have been the principal manor, by marrying the heiress of Pigott; his grandson, Sir William, who twice served the office of sheriff of the counties of Bedford and Buckingham, was comptroller of the household to Cardinal Wolsey.^[129] On each side of the altar in Cardington church is a monument with an open arch, in the Gothic style, but of no very ancient date. That on the S. side is in memory of one of the Gascoignes, perhaps Sir William Gascoigne, grandfather of John Gascoigne, the last heir male of the family; the other is the monument of Sir Gerard Hervey, who died in 1638. This Sir Gerard, who was knighted by the Earl of Essex for his bravery at the siege of Calais, he being the first man who entered the town, possessed a temporary interest in the manor of Cardington, of which in his epitaph he is called Lord, by marrying one of the co-heiresses of John Gascoigne. The manor afterwards became the property of Sir George Blundell, who married the other."—Lysons' Bedfordshire.

One other branch there was, that survived till the present century. A brother of the Chief Justice, Nicholas Gascoigne of Lasingcroft, was the ancestor of Sir John, seated at Parlington, and created a baronet of Nova Scotia by Charles I. in 1635. There were six baronets of this name, of whom Sir Edward, the fifth, had the credit of re-paving York Minster with stone from his own quarry at Huddlestone. Sir Thomas, the last, lost his only son by an accident in the hunting-field in 1809. The young man (he was then but twenty-four) when taking a fence, caught his head in an overhanging bough, and was killed on the spot.^[130] His father died a few months after, and was succeeded at Parlington by an utter stranger in blood, to whom he bequeathed the whole of his fortune, Mr. Richard Oliver, the husband of his step-daughter Mary Turner. She was the only surviving child of Lady Gascoigne's first marriage with Sir Charles Turner, and both she and her family adopted the name and arms of Gascoigne.

"This ancient and worthy family," says Fuller, "gave for their Armes the Heade of a Lucie or Pike, cooped in Pale; Whereon one merrily:—

"The Lucie is the finest Fish
That ever graced any Dish;
But, why you give the Head alone,
I leave to you to pick this Bone."

The following astounding entry in the Register of St. Edward's Church, Cambridge (see Lysons) refers to one of this family;—

"Elinor Gaskin said She lived fourscore years a Maid,
And twenty-two years a wedded Wife,
And ten years a Widow, and then left this Life."

The Elizabethan poet, George Gascoyne, who remains to be noticed, was "born of an ancient and honourable family in Essex," and the eldest son of Sir John Gascoyne, knight. But he was early in life disinherited by his father, it is conjectured on account of his extravagance while studying the law at Gray's Inn; and sought to better his fortunes abroad. "Having a rambling and unfixed head," writes Wood, "he left Gray's Inn, went to various cities of Holland, became a soldier of note, which he afterwards professed as much, or more, as learning, and therefore made him take this motto, Tam Marti quam Mercurio." He held a captain's commission under the Prince of Orange, and did good service in the wars, but was taken prisoner under the walls of Leyden, and sent back to England. We are not told how he was introduced at Court, but he accompanied the Queen in her progress to Kenilworth, and wrote a masque for the occasion, in which he performed a part. The first collection of his poems appeared in 1572, five years before he died: and was the only "unchastised" edition ever published of them, as some of his verses are exceedingly licentious. Yet a pamphlet written in his praise by George Whetstone eulogizes "his well-employed life no less than his godly end." He was not much over forty at the time of his death.

Gaunt :

Few among the Conqueror's companions of arms were so splendidly rewarded as Gilbert de Gand, who held one hundred and seventy-two English manors.; yet there is much doubt—or at least much difference of opinion—as to who he really was. Dugdale, and after him Sir Henry Ellis and others, have called him a younger son of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, and consequently the nephew of Queen Matilda; but this opinion appears to be now altogether exploded. Mr. Freeman discards it as "an amazing piece of genealogy," and promptly dubs him "a Flemish adventurer," without stooping to explain how or why it was that a mere soldier of fortune received so vast a grant of territory. On the other hand, the author of The Norman People furnishes him with a lineage more consonant with his fortunes, tracing his direct descent from Witikind, the renowned opponent of Charlemagne in the eighth century. "When, after many years of resistance, Witikind was compelled to submit, c. 780, he was invested with the Dukedom of Angria (L'Art de Verifier les Dates, xvi. 145). Ludolphus, one of his descendants, was Duke of Saxony, and died in 864, leaving by his wife (a daughter of Eberhard, Duke of Friuli), Bruno Duke of Saxony. He married a daughter of the Emperor Arnold, and declined the Imperial throne. Bruno had two sons, 1, Henry the Fowler, Emperor in 919, father of the Emperor Otho, who succeeded 936; 2, Wickman. Wickman was created Count of Gand 940, by the Emperor Otho, his nephew, and had two sons: 1, Theodoric, Count of Gand, ancestor of the Counts of Gand and Guisnes; 2, Adalbert, father of Ralph, father of Baldwin de Gand, Count of Gand or Alost, ancestor of the Counts of Alost, whose younger brother, Gilbert de Gand, became Baron of Folkingham in England." Gilbert was, if not the nephew, the cousin of Queen Matilda; and could claim our great King Alfred as one of his ancestors. "He was sixth in male descent from Wickman, 'Count of the Castle of Gand,' who had married Leutgarde, granddaughter of Elfthryth, Countess of Flanders, the daughter of Alfred."—A. S. Ellis.

Gilbert, among his other possessions, received the broad lands of Ulf the Constable, lying chiefly in the counties of Nottingham and Lincoln, and chose his predecessor's capital manor, Folkingham, near Grantham, as the head of his barony.

The first mention of him is in 1068, when the Conqueror, after the surrender of the city of York, placed it under the joint command of William Malet, Robert FitzRichard, and Gilbert de Gand; and he and Malet were still in charge when, in the following year, the Danes landed in England, besieged and captured the city, and put the garrison to the sword. Only Malet, with his wife and two children, Gilbert and a few others, were spared for ransom or exchange. He died during the reign of Rufus, and was buried in Bardney Abbey, which he had refounded and re-endowed about 1086-89. It had lain in ruins for more than three centuries, having been destroyed by the Danes under Inguar and Hubba.

"He had by Alice his wife, daughter of Hugh de Montfort, Lord of Montfort-sur-Risle, and eventually heiress of her brother, 1, Gilbert de Gand, who died without issue in his lifetime; 2, Hugh, who. inheriting the extensive fief of his mother's family in Normandy, took the name of Montfort, and was ancestor of the lords of that place and Coquainvilliers. He married Adeline, sister of Waleran, Count of Mellent, and being soon after drawn with him into the revolt in Normandy in favour of William Clito in 1123, was taken prisoner, and Ordericus, writing apparently in 1135, says "he has now groaned in fetters for thirteen years"; 3, Walter de Gand, ancestor of the Earls of Lincoln; 4, Robert de Gand, most probably another son, Provost of Beverley under the celebrated Thomas a Beckett, Dean of York, and Chancellor to King Stephen; 5, Ralph de Gand, perhaps another son, besieged in the castle of Montfort-sur-Risle by Henry I. in 1123; and three daughters at least: 1, Emma, married to Alan de Percy; 2, (Agnes?) wife of William Fitz Nigel, Constable of Chester to Earl Hugh; and 3, * * * * married to Ivo de Grentemesnil (Ord. Vit. VIII. xvi)."—A. S. Ellis.

Walter de Gand succeeded to all his father's English possessions, and founded Bridlington Priory, in Yorkshire, besides granting fresh endowments to Bardney. "A person," says Dugdale, "of great Humanity and Piety, who, when he was an aged Man, and near his death, Commanded a brave Regiment of Flemings and Normans in that famous Battle against the Scots, commonly called Bellum Standardi," where "his eloquent speech and prudent conduct" are highly commended. His wife was Maud, daughter of Stephen, Earl of Brittany and Richmond, who brought him all Swaledale as her marriage-portion; and at his death in 1138 he left three sons: Gilbert, Robert, and Geoffrey.

Gilbert II., according to the Baronage, was promoted to an Earldom by an inconceivable stroke of fortune. "In his youth, being with King Stephen in that fatal Battle of Lincoln, he was with him taken Prisoner, and thereupon compelled by Ranulfe, Earle of Chester, to marry his Niece, viz. Rohais (or as some call her Hawise), daughter and Heir of William de Romare,^[131] Earle of Lincolne; Whereby he had the title of Earle of Lincoln, in her Right." This statement is in flagrant contradiction with the acknowledged custom of the time. The hand of a great heiress—always at the sole disposal of the Sovereign, was, under the most favourable circumstances, only granted on payment of a large sum of money; and the tax thus levied on each fortunate bridegroom formed a considerable portion of the Royal revenue. That a Countess in her own right, the niece of one of the greatest potentates in the realm, should have been freely proffered—nay, more, forced upon the unwilling acceptance of a prisoner taken in arms for a hostile cause, exceeds all bounds of credibility. The following is at least a probable account. "There appears to be some reason to suspect that William de Romare was deprived of his Earldom by Stephen when he regained his ascendancy, and that Gilbert de Gant, who was a steady adherent of the King, was rewarded with it. The Priory of Rufford was founded by the latter in 1146 or 1148: in his foundation charter he styles himself Earl of Lincoln."—Bowles' History of Lacock Abbey. The title, however obtained, died with him in 1156, when he left two daughters—Alice, the wife of Simon de St. Liz, Earl of Huntingdon, and Gunnora, who was childless. Like his antecessors, he had been a great benefactor of the Church; for, in addition to this new foundation at Rufford in Nottinghamshire, he transferred the monks of Biham from Lincolnshire to Yorkshire, where they built Vaudy (Vallis Dei) Abbey on an estate he had given them at the Pope's desire.

Contrary to the received practice, his great inheritance did not devolve upon his daughters, but passed to his brother Robert, then the father of two sons; a third Gilbert, surnamed the Good, and Stephen. Both were probably very young when they were left orphans in 1162; but I was rather taken aback by the dates given by Dugdale, according to which Gilbert was still a minor, in ward of Robert de Stuteville, as late as 1197—exactly thirty-five years after his father's death! In the latter years of King John's reign, he joined the insurgent barons that invited Louis of France to reign over England, and received in recompense his uncle's Earldom of Lincoln. "So far, however, was he from having succeeded his uncle, as stated by some works on the peerage, that it was after an interval of sixty years; and he held his title for a period still shorter than the former. If the first was introduced by the sovereign will of Stephen, overruling the ordinary laws of inheritance, the second was obtruded by a still less competent authority—the invader Louis of France. This was in the last year of the reign of John; and the next year, 1216, he was taken prisoner at the battle then fought at Lincoln, and his brief career as an Earl thereupon closed; the dignity being transferred to Ranulph Earl of Chester, the great grandson of the first Ranulph and the Countess Lucia, who was evidently then considered its heiress."—Ibid. He had served Louis well, for he and Robert de Ropesby had overrun and subjugated the whole district of Holland, captured the city of Lincoln, and besieged its castle. Then followed the disastrous rout in which he was taken prisoner; but he appears to have been soon restored to liberty, and to his great barony (he had answered for sixty-eight knight's fees in 1211); and to have dropped the title of Earl of Lincoln—"a fleeting honour" that no man recognized, of his own accord. But as Gilbert the Good, the beloved friend and comforter of the poor, his memory has not been blotted out by the changeful course of six hundred years. In the town of Hunmanby, part of his East Yorkshire barony, it remains unforgotten to the present day, for a doggerel rhyme in his honour is still familiar in men's mouths, and was formerly chanted round the market cross every year on Shrove Tuesday:—

"Gilbert of Gant
Left Hunmanby Moor
To Hunmanby poor,
That they might never want."^[132]

Heckington Church, in Lincolnshire, long retained in one of its windows these grateful words: "The Lord love De Gant."

He died in 1241, and was followed by Gilbert IV., twice summoned to parliament as a baron, once by Henry III. in 1260, and again in 1264 by Simon de Montfort and the confederate barons with whom he had cast in his lot. He was taken prisoner the same year at Kenilworth, and mulcted of 3000 marks fine. His heir was his second son, Gilbert V.—Robert, the eldest, having died s. p. in his lifetime—who fought in Edward I.'s foreign wars, and followed him successively to Wales, Flanders, and Gascony. He, too, was a baron by writ in 1295, but left no successor, and with him the great Flemish house was brought to a close. His wife, Lora de Baliol, had remained childless, and he constituted the King heir to Folkingham, Barton-upon-Humber, and the greater part of his barony, reserving only Swaledale and a portion of Skendelby. On his death in 1297, this remnant of his former possessions was divided between his three sisters, viz. Margaret, the wife of Sir William de Kerdeston; Nichola, the wife of Peter de Mauley; and Julian, who remained unmarried, and bestowed her share on the nuns of Nun-Cotum.

Another branch of this house had ended somewhat earlier. Robert, the fourth son of the first Gilbert de Gant, was, as has been said, King Stephen's Chancellor, and married Alice, the widow of Richard de Courcy, who brought him the great fief of her father, William Paynell. They had two daughters, Juliana, and Alice, or Adeline, the wife of Robert FitzHardinge, and the mother of Maurice, named after his grandfather De Gant, and of Emma, his eventual heiress. Maurice held land in eight different counties, and "in 15 John covenanted to serve the King, at his own charge, with twenty Knights, himself accounted one; in consideration that he might marry the Daughter of Henry de Oilli." Within the next two years, he was in arms against the Crown, and all—or nearly all—his estates seized and given to Philip de Albini; whereupon he, very sensibly, "addressed himself to the King to make his peace." He died s. p. in 1229, and the son of his sister Emma, Robert de Gournay, was his heir.

No others of the name are mentioned by Dugdale; yet it is hard to believe that some of the numerous younger sons of the baronial line should not have left descendants. "An existing family of Gaunt, in Staffordshire claims, though only by ancient and uniform tradition, descent from Gilbert de Gant and the Earls of Lincoln, and bears their arms, Barry of six, Or and Azure, a bend Gules."—A. S. Ellis. Their first recorded ancestor was John Gaunt, a clergyman, living in 1530.

Logenton :

for Louinton or Lokinton—or, as Dugdale gives it, Levinton, a baronial name. Robert de Louinton held in Dorset and Somerset in 1189-90 (Rot. Pip.): and Roger de Lokinton, in 1246, witnesses Henry III.'s charter to Ivychurch Priory. Robert and William de Lokinton, and William's daughter Margery, occur in Yorkshire about 1272.—Rotuli Hundredorum. In Cumberland they held the Barony of Burgh-upon-Sands, which Richard, the son of Adam de Levinton, inherited in 1229. He died in 1249, childless; and was succeeded by his brother Ralph, who had already considerable possessions, for his wife Ada, one of the two daughters and co-heirs of Joan de Morville, became, by the death of her sister Helewise de Vernon, eventually the sole heiress. They had an only daughter, of whom Dugdale can only tell us, that when she lost her father in 1253, she was a minor, and in ward to Eustace de Baliol. I find in Surtees' History of Durham that her name was Hawyse, and that she married her guardian, to whom she brought the manors of Ayketon and Lasinby, and half of Burgh-upon-Sands.

William de Lovinton held at West Lavington, Sussex, of the Archbishop of Canterbury.—Testa de Nevill.

Lescrope :

The name of this illustrious Yorkshire house does not appear among the first great feudatories of the Earls of Richmond. The earliest mention of the Scropes is in Gloucestershire, where Robert Le Scrope held three knight's fees in 1165. His grandson William, in 1239, obtained a charter of free warren in all his lands of East and West Boulton, Fencotes, and Yarwick in the North Riding; and "this appears to be the first footing which a family, afterwards so powerful, obtained in Yorkshire; but whether it was acquired by marriage, purchase, or grant, does not appear."—Whitaker's Richmondshire. This Sir William, reported to have been "the best knight of the whole country at jousts and tournaments," was the father of two sons; Henry, ancestor of the Lords Scrope of Bolton, and Geoffrey, ancestor of the Lords Scrope of Masham, of whom it was said that "the older line of the Scropes had the bones, and the other the fat of Wensleydale." Henry, who was bred to the law, laid the foundation of the greatness of the family in the time of Edward I. He was first one of the Justices of the Common Pleas, and then for seven years Chief Justice of the King's Bench, continuing in high favour throughout the whole of th Edward II. re-appointed him Lord Chief Justice, and subsequently Chief Baron of the Exchequer. He died in 1336, leaving a very large estate in Wensleydale and Swaledale, besides the great fee that he had purchased from the Constables of the Earls of Richmond, which gave him a feudal superiority over many adjoining manors. His eldest son only survived him six years, dying of a wound received at the siege of Morlaix; and the second, Richard, became his heir, and in 1371 the first Lord Scrope of Bolton, Sir Richard was knighted by Edward III. at the battle of Durham; and from that time till 1385—a period of nearly forty years—there was scarcely a battle of note fought in England, Scotland, France, or Spain, in which his sword was not drawn with honour. Yet he was chiefly esteemed as a statesman, "having," says Walsingham, "not his Fellow (in Degree) in the whole Realme for Prudence and Integrity." He was Lord High Treasurer to Edward III.; and Lord Keeper to Richard II.:—the bold Chancellor who refused to affix the Great Seal to the grants extorted from the weak King by his crew of minions; and when summoned to surrender his trust, stoutly declared he would deliver what the Sovereign had confided to him to none other than the Sovereign himself. In 1379 he obtained "license to castellate" at Bolton, his caput baroniae; and there built the grand square pile with flanking towers—imposing even in its fallen fortunes—that was dismantled by order of the Parliament after standing a siege in the Civil War. "This Castell," says Leland, "standethe on a Roke Syde, and al the substance of the Logginges in ytt be yncludyd in 4. principall Towres. Yt was a-makynge 18. Yeres, and the Chargys of the Buyidinge cam by Yere to 1000 marks. Yt was finichid or Kynge Richard the 2. dyed. Moste parte of the Tymber that was occupied in buildyng of this Castell was fett owte of the Foreste of Engleby" (Inglewood) "yn Cumberland; and Richarde Lorde Scrope for Conveyaunce of yt, had layde by the way dyvers Draughts of Oxen, to cary it from Place to Place till it came to Bolton." From its "high, bleak, and barren situation," it could only be reached by a toilsome ascent that crossed the bed of "an outrageous torrent," which, during the winter months, "must often have rendered it inaccessible. Yet, such was the desire of apparent safety, or such the aversion to change, that a great family who had at their command all the warm and fertile plain beneath, chose for three centuries to take up their abode exposed to storms and tempests without, and darkness and discomfort within."—Dr. Whitaker. In 1389 Lord Scrope challenged the right of Sir Robert Grosvenor to bear the coat, Azure a bend Or, which, as he contended, his ancestors had "continually borne since the Conquest;" and after a long struggle, it was awarded to him by a Court Military, presided over by Thomas Duke of Gloucester, then Constable of England, a former sentence in favour of Sir Robert being reversed. He "dyed in Honour," at a great age, four years after the accession of Henry IV., leaving by his wife, Blanche de la Pole, three surviving sons, the two eldest each married to one of the wealthy heiresses of Lord Tibetot. Roger succeeded as second Lord Scrope; Stephen was ancestor of the Scropes of Castle Combe, now extinct; and Richard was Archbishop of York—the unhappy prelate who

"Enforc'd from his most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion,"

took up arms against Henry IV. in concert with the Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal, Lord Hastings, and others. It might have proved a formidable insurrection, had it not been nipped in the bud by Ralph Nevill, Earl of Westmorland, who by fair words and deceptive promises induced the leaders to disband their forces, and then arrested them for high treason. The betrayed Archbishop, through a priest "whose beard the silver hand of peace had touched," was, despite "the gravity of his age, the integrity of his life, and his incomparable learning," sentenced to a traitor's doom, and beheaded the year after his father's death.

His eldest brother, Sir William, had suffered a similar fate some six years before. He was one of the obnoxious favourites of Richard II., on whom wealth and honours were lavished with undiscerning profusion. In his case the Royal bounty knew neither stint nor measure, and Shakespeare simply epitomizes the feeling of the time when he makes Lord Ros declare—

"The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm."

He was a Knight of the Garter, Seneschal of Acquitaine, Governor of Cherbourg, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, Constable of the Castles of Guines, Queensborough, Beaumaris, and Knaresborough, Chamberlain of Ireland, Justiciar of North Wales, Chester, and Flint, Captain of Calais, and Treasurer of the King's Exchequer, with the title of Earl of Wiltes, and vast grants of confiscated estates. A great part of the princely inheritance of the Earls of Arundel and Warwick fell to his share; and it would be tedious to reckon up the various territories, towns, and castles, of which he enjoyed a brief tenure. "It is said," writes Dugdale, "that this William was a Person of a very malevolent and wicked disposition;" and we may judge him to have been haughty and over bearing, as, in virtue of the sovereignty of the Isle of Man, which he had purchased from William de Montacute Earl of Salisbury, he arrogantly termed himself the King's "ally."^[133] His fall was as precipitate as had been his rise. He had attempted to raise levies to oppose the Duke of Hereford's landing, but, failing in this, and "discerning a dangerous Cloud," he threw himself into Bristol Castle, to hold it for the King. The victorious invader, carrying all before him, captured the castle and its defenders, and "though some escaped death, this Earl had no favour, being beheaded there the next day, and attainted i Henry IV." He left no posterity.

Roger le Scrope, the next brother, who succeeded his father in the barony, died soon after him, but the title was long carried on by his descendants. There were altogether eleven Lords Scrope of Bolton; most of them martial men well approved in arms at home and abroad, but principally engaged in Border warfare. The seventh Lord married his kinswoman Alice, sole heiress of Thomas, sixth Lord Scrope of Masham, but she bore him only a daughter, Elizabeth, the wife of Sir Richard Talbot (Leland states that she had no children at all): and his son and heir was by his second marriage with Margaret Dacre. This heir he endeavoured to marry to Katherine Barr, and with this object entered into negotiation with her mother through Lord Dacre; but his offers for jointure, &c, were "so litell and so farre from the custom of the countrie, and his demaund so grete," that Dame Barr broke off the match, little dreaming that the girl's future husband was to be the King himself. It was this Lord Scrope who mustered his dalesmen for Flodden Field:

"Lord Scrope of Bolton, stern and stout,
On horseback who had not his peer:
No Englishman Scots more did doubt:
With him did wend all Wensadale
From Morton unto Moisdale Moor:
All they that dwelt by the banks of Swale
With him were bent in harness stour.
* * * * *
With lusty lads and large of limb
Which dwelt at Seimer-water side,
All Richmondshire its total strength
The lusty Scrope did lead and guide."

His grandson Henry, ninth Baron, was appointed, as March-Warden^[134] and Constable of Carlisle, to receive Mary Queen of Scots at Carlisle, the first place to which she was conveyed on her flight to England. Lady Scrope also came to attend upon her. It was the commencement of her life-long captivity; for on July 13th, 1568, she arrived in his custody at Bolton Castle, where she remained six months. A pane of glass out of the window of the room she occupied, on which she had written "Marie R." with her diamond ring, used to be shown at Bolton Hall. She was not kept a close prisoner, being allowed to go out on horseback, and range at will over the surrounding moors—riding always so fast as to leave her attendants far behind; and there is a local tradition that once she succeeded in getting away unobserved, and galloped as far as Leyborne Shawl, where, after much hard spurring, her guards managed to come up with her. The place is now called the Queen's Gap. Her intrigue with the Duke of Norfolk (which eventually cost him his head) was begun and carried on at Bolton, for Lady Scrope was his sister, and by her means letters and love-tokens were freely exchanged between them. There is a picturesque description of a scene in the great hall of the Castle given in the confession of poor young Christopher Norton, who, "bewitched by the fair eyes of Mary Stuart," had caused himself to be enrolled in Lord Scrope's guard. "One day when the Queen of Scots, in winter, had been sitting at the window side knitting of a work, and after the board was covered, she rose and went to the fire side, and making haste to have the work finished, would not lay it away, but worked of it the time she was warming herself. She looked for one of her servants, which indeed were all gone to fetch up her meat; and seeing none of her own folk there, called me to hold her work, who was looking at my Lord Scrope and Sir Francis Knollys" (Elizabeth's vice-chamberlain, appointed to watch the poor prisoner) "playing of chess. I went, thinking I had deserved no blame, and that it should not have become me to have refused to do it, my Lady Scrope standing there, and many gentlemen in the chamber, that saw she spake not to me. I think Sir Francis saw not nor heard when she called of me. But when he had played his mate, he, seeing me standing by the Queen holding her work, called my captain to him, and asked him if I watched. He answered, Sometimes.

Then he gave him commandment that I should watch no more, and said the Queen would make me a fool." Poor Christopher paid the penalty of his devotion at Tyburn, where he was put to death in the following year with the usual cruelties, for having taken part in the fatal Rising of the North.

The last and eleventh Lord Scrope, Emmanuel,^[135] President of the King's Council in the North, was created Earl of Sunderland by Charles I. in 1627, and died without legitimate issue three years afterwards. The Earldom thus became extinct, and the old barony fell into abeyance between the representatives of his great aunt, Mary Bowes; while a base-born daughter carried the great Bolton estate to Charles Paulet, sixth Marquess of Winchester, who took the title of Bolton on receiving a Dukedom in 1689. Little more than a century later, another illegitimate heiress (the child of Charles, fifth Duke of Bolton) brought it, on the extinction of the Dukedom in 1794,^[136]to the Ordes, now Barons Bolton. Thus, as King James said of a weightier heritage, the old Scrope lands "came wi' a lass and went wi' a lass."

The Lords Scrope of Masham fairly rivalled their kinsmen of the elder line in riches and distinction. Their ancestor Geoffrey was Lord Chief Justice, as his brother had been, both under Edward II. and Edward III.; then "sent beyond sea on the King's affairs" in 1313, he was employed in negotiating several treaties, as well as on active service in the field. For his valour in Flanders he received the rank of a Banneret. He held lands in five different counties, and received from Edward II. license to castellate his house at Clifton-upon-Yore in Yorkshire, with a market and fair at Burton-Constable, and the grant of Lord Clifford's forfeited barony of Skipton in Craven. His son Henry, a baron by writ in 1342, spent most of his life under arms, and had the custody of eight Royal castles, with the Wardenship of the county of Guisnes. The next heir, Stephen, "a martial man betimes," followed the same honourable traditions; but in the ensuing generation the fortunes of the family were eclipsed by a foul act of treachery. Plenry, third Lord Scrope, was sent by Henry V. to treat of peace with the French: "but this great Trust he shamefully abused; for, being a Person in whom the King had so great confidence that nothing of Publick or Private Concernment was done without him; his gravity of Countenance, modesty in his Deportment and Religious Discourse being always such, that whatsoever he advised was held an Oracle; upon this his Solemn Embassy to France (which none was thought so fit to manage as himself), he treated privily with the King's Enemies (being in his Heart totally theirs), and conspired the King's Destruction upon promise of Reward from the French: His Confederates in this Design being Richard, Earl of Cambridge and Sir Thomas Grey, a Northern Knight. But before this mischievous Plot could be effected (which was to have killed the King,^[137] and all his Brethren ere he went to Sea, five Ships being ready at Southampton to waft the King over into France), it was discovered. Whereupon he had a speedy Trial for it at Southampton, and being found guilty there lost his Head."—Dugdale. Not only had he been the confidential counsellor of his betrayed sovereign, but his near kinsman by marriage; for his second wife, Joan, sister and co-heir of Edmund Holland, Earl of Kent,
was the widowed Duchess of York.

"But 0!
What shall I say to thee, Lord Scrope: thou cruel
Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature!
Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,
That almost might'st have coined me into gold,
Would'st thou have practised on me for thy use?
May it be possible, that foreign hire
Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange
That though the truth of it stands off as gross
As black from white, my eye will scarcely see it."—Henry V.

The lands and honours he had so justly forfeited were restored by Henry VI. to his brother John, summoned to parliament in 1425 as Baron of Masham and Upsal, who "grew into such esteem with the King that he was advanced to that Great Office of Treasurer of the King's Exchequer." With his four grandsons, successively sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Lords Scrope of Masham and Upsal, the line terminated. The three last all died s.p., but Thomas, the elder brother, whose wife was one of the five heiresses of John Nevill, Marquess of Montagu, left a daughter married to Lord Scrope of Bolton, on whom the barony devolved, only reverting to her uncles after her death. When the last of them died in 1517, it fell into abeyance between their three sisters; Alice, married to Thomas Strangways; Mary, married to Sir Christopher Danby; and Elizabeth, married to Sir Ralph Fitz Randolph; now represented by numerous descendants. Banks remarks that "the co-heirs of this barony are now of very extensive ramification."

But the illustrious house of Scrope still boasts of a representative in the direct male line. The sixth Baron of Bolton had a younger son named John, who held Spennithorne in Yorkshire, and Hambledon in Buckinghamshire, and was the father of Henry le Scrope, endowed by his wife Margaret, the daughter and heiress of Simon Constable, with the "fair and fertile domain" of Danby-upon-Yore. Here, in a house whose "air of ancientry is becoming to the lineage of its inhabitants," his descendants have continued to the present day, and the old name still lives in honour after so many hundred years! Not very long ago, Simon Scrope of Danby claimed the ancient Earldom of Wiltes (which would have given him precedence of the Talbots, Premier Earls of England), and though the decision of the House of Lords was against him, successfully established his long and splendid pedigree.

Litterile :

for Luttrel (see Loterell).

Lislay :

or Liele. "Of this name," says Dugdale, "there were several Families, one taking that Denomination from the Isle of Ely (as it is believed) the other from the Isle of Wight. But till King John's time, I have not seen any direct mention of either; nor can I be positive in affirming which of them is most antient." A third and more probable derivation of De Lisle is "from the Castle of Lisle, Normandy. Burcharde Insula witnessed a charter in Normandy c. 1066 (Gall. Christ, xi. 61 Instr.). Robert, his son, granted lands to Cerisy Abbey, temp. William I. (Mon. ii. 961). His descendants were chiefly seated in the North of England. Ralph, John, and Robert de Insula occur in Yorkshire, Otui or Otwer de Insula in Northumberland, 1165: from whom descended Sir John de Lisle of Woodburn in that county, whose descendants long continued there."—The Norman People. There is, however, a far earlier mention of the family in this country. "In the Wiltshire Domesday, one Humphrey de Lisle is recorded as holding of the King a fief of not less than twenty-seven manors. Of this Humphrey, I can say no more than that in January 1091 he was in attendance at Hastings on King William II., then about to embark for Normandy. He appears to have left a daughter and sole heiress, variously called Adelina de Insula and Adeliza de Dunstanville, for it was the custom of great heiresses to retain their paternal name after marriage."—Eyton's Salop. She was the wife of Reginald de Dunstanville, whom she survived; and, according to the Monasticon, gave the manor of Polton to Tewkesbury Abbey "for the health of his soul."

The Northumbrian Otui or Ottewell, above named, was the son of Robert de lisle by Isabel, daughter of Richard Camville, "who, with the consent of his wife, gave him Gosforth; and Henry II. confirmed the gift. Lisle's Burn, a streamlet that gives name to a small district in the parish of Corsenside, probably received this designation from Robert de Insula, to whom it chiefly belonged. Some antiquarians think the Scotch Leslies, who were Flemings, are the same race as the Northumberland Lisles or Insulas."—Mackenzie's Northumberland. The De Lisles were considerable landowners in the county, and are often to be met with in its records. In 1272, Robert de Lisle was Lord of Chipchase, held in 1307 by Peter de Lisle, with Whitwell, as part of a knight's fee of ancient feoffment. From them it passed to the Herons. John de Lisle was Sheriff in 1326; and Sir Robert de Lisle in 1409 and 1421, in addition to being three several times knight of the shire. This Sir Robert was seated at Felton, having married Mary, daughter and co-heir of Adomar of Felton, uncle to David Strabolgie, Earl of Athole. In 1502, when James IV. of Scotland had espoused the English princess destined to convey to her posterity the crown of both realms, the young Queen, on her stately progress Northwards, was received by a De Lisle as she entered Northumberland. "The XXVIth day of the month of June, the Qwene departed from the towne of New Castell, after the custome precedent, very richly and in fayr array. And the Mayr conveyid hir owte of the said towne, and after tuke lyve of hir. Haff a mylle owte of the said towne was Syr Humfrey Lysle and the Prior of Bryngburn" (Brlnckburn) "well apoynted and well horst, to the nombre of xx horses. Their folkes arayd of their livery."—Leland. Sir John Lisle is mentioned in 1523; Thomas Lisle in 1567; and Robert Lisle in 1638. After this, we hear of them no more. Felton appears to have passed to the Widdringtons.

There had been a branch long seated in the county of Durham, where Surtees believes they held Bradbury and the Isle (from whence he suggests the name is derived) in the first ages after the Conquest. They occur "in some of the earliest episcopal charters." Sir Henry de Lisle, Lord of Wynward and Redmarshall, by charter, dated 1306, gave both to his niece Catherine, the wife of Alan de Langton. But, far from perishing with him, the race flourished on for more than three hundred years. About the time that we lose sight of them in Northumberland, we find Talbot Lisle, a "steady loyalist," seated at Barmston. "His name occurs in several of the Parliamentary lists of recusants and malignants.

He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Blakiston, and left a numerous issue."—Surtees' Durham.

John de Insula, Prior of Finchale, who was consecrated Prince-Bishop of Durham in 1274, must have belonged to this family, though not to the baronial De Lisles, "whose armorial bearings some later authors have foolishly attributed to him."—Ibid. He probably sprung from a decayed and impoverished branch, as he is expressly said to have been of mean extraction, and far too sensible a man to be ashamed of it. On one occasion, when a neighbour had sent him some country ale that made him very ill—" See," said he, "the force of custom; you all know my origin, and that neither from my parents nor my country I can derive any taste for wine, and yet now my country liquor is rendered utterly distasteful to me." He provided his old mother with a fitting establishment, and there is a comical account of her perplexities in her new position. "Once, when he went to see her—'How fares my sweet mother?' quoth he. 'Never worse,' quoth she. 'And what ails thee, or troubles thee? has thou not men and women, and attendants sufficient?' 'Yea,' quoth she, 'and more than enough: I say to one, Go, and he runs; to another, Come hither, fellow! and the varlet falls down on his knees; and in short, all things go on so abominably smooth that my heart is bursting for something to spite me, and pick a quarrel withall.'"—Greystanes.

The several baronial families of this name may have been of the same stock, but nothing that I have yet seen goes to prove it. The first whom Dugdale speaks of, Brian de Lisle, reputed one of King John's evil counsellors, left no heir male. He commanded the Royal forces in Yorkshire, and "when the Barons grew lofty and turbulent," had charge of the castles of Knaresborough and Bolsover, and various grants of forfeited estates. Under Henry III., he was again Constable of several Royal fortresses, Warden of all the Royal forests throughout England, and enriched with further Royal benefactions. He died in 1232, being then Sheriff of Yorkshire. Blandford-Brian, once Brianston, the "Brientins-towne" of Camden, and now the seat of Lord Portman, retains his name in Dorsetshire.

The next mentioned, Warine de Lisle of Kingston-Lisle in Berkshire, was the son of a Robert whose mother, Alice, had been a granddaughter of Warine FitzGerold, Chamberlain and Treasurer to Henry II. This Alice was an heiress, and the daughter of an heiress; and her grandson Warine was the husband of a third, Alice de Teys, who brought him Chilton-Teys. He served the two first Edwards in their Scottish wars, and was Constable of Windsor Castle, but, having taken up arms with the Earl of Lancaster, was hanged at York in 1327. His son Gerard, who could count up seven successive campaigns under Edward III., was summoned to parliament in 1357, but the line expired in the ensuing generation with Warine II. He was a Banneret, retained to serve the King in all his wars with twenty men-at-arms and thirty archers; and had licence to build a castle at Shirburn in Oxfordshire, which is now the residence of the Earls of Macclesfield. His wife was Margaret, heiress of the Pipards of Buckinghamshire, by whom he had Gerard, who died s. p. in his lifetime, and Margaret, sole heiress, married in 1366, at her mother's manor-house of Wengrave, to Thomas, Lord Berkeley. The marriage contract was signed when the little bride was only seven years old, and "by reason of her tender years," it was proposed that she should remain with her father four years longer. But this postponement was overruled, though it scarcely seemed unreasonable to defer her wedding till she had reached the ripe age of eleven! "The sickness of Lord Maurice (Thomas' father) "increasing, they were married in November following at Wengrave, Bucks; and his lordship being unable to attend, sent three of his household knights, and twenty-three of his household esquires. The knights attended in their liveries of fine cloth of ray furred with miniver; and the esquires in coarser ray and less costly fur. The young bridegroom" (he was only fourteen), "was clad in scarlet and satin, and wore a silver girdle; and the Lord Maurice himself, though he kept house" (from illness), "in honour of the marriage made himself a suit of cloth of gold, and gave the minstrels forty shillings."—Lysons Cambridge. Margaret de Lisle brought her youthful husband a great estate in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Cornwall, and Devon. One of her manors—West Hendred—was held by a curious tenure: "the service of buying the King's ale."

From this baby-bride no fewer than seven families, the Talbots, Greys, Brandons, Plantagenets, Sydneys, and Shelleys, derived the title of Lisle, which was certainly never borne either by herself or her husband. Their only child, Elizabeth Berkeley, married Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and left three co-heiresses: 1, Margaret, the second wife of the famous John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury; 2, Alianor, first Lady de Ros, and then Duchess of Somerset; and 3, Elizabeth, Lady Latimer. All these sisters left descendants; but on Margaret's alone were the various titles conferred; and for them a perennial wealth of honours blossomed forth from generation to generation.^[138] Besides five baronies, seven fugitive Viscountcies followed in quick succession; one of them granted in 1513 to Charles Brandon (afterwards Duke of Suffolk), merely because he was affianced to an heiress, Elizabeth Grey, who on coming of age positively refused to marry him. Finally, the vagrant title seemed to strike root in the house of Sydney, whose claim to it, as well as to the Earldom of Leicester, had been acquired through Lady Mary Dudley, the eldest daughter of John, Duke of Northumberland, beheaded at the accession of Queen Mary. There were seven Viscounts Lisle of this name, of whom the last died in 1743, without legitimate issue. His niece, Elizabeth Perry, became sole heiress, but of her six children one daughter only survived, the wife of Sir John Shelley, who took the name of Sydney on succeeding to the Sydney estates. Their son Philip married a natural daughter of King William IV., by whom he was created in 1835 Lord de L'Isle and Dudley.

Two other baronial families illustrated the old name of De Lisle. I will first treat of the Lords of Rugemont, who were perhaps of kin to those of Kingston-Lisle, and are in fact accounted of the same stock in one of the pedigrees furnished by the College of Arms; "but" (here Banks adds a word of wholesome warning), "the pedigrees of this family are very discordant to each other." Dugdale gives no hint of this relationship, but derives the first Baron of Rugemont from Robert de Lisle, the husband of Roese, widow of John de Tatteshall, and one of the daughters and co-heirs of John de Wahull. He had been in arms against King John; but received back his estates in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, York, and Kent, on making his submission to Henry III. From him descended another Robert, summoned to parliament in 1311, who "entered into Religion" in 1342, and was succeeded by his son and heir John, who had previously obtained from him a grant of the manor of Harwood in Yorkshire (then of the annual value of four hundred marks), "to the intent he might be better able to serve the King in his wars." This he did with such rare distinction as to be noted, even in that age of glorious memories, as one of the best soldiers of his day. The old father, cloistered in the Grey Friars, must have felt his heart swell with pride at his exploits in the French wars. The King loved and honoured him, and nobly rewarded him. In 1248 he received a pension of £200 a year "to support him in his degree of Banneret," supplemented three years afterwards by another of the same amount; altogether about £10,000 of our currency. "It is said by some," continues Dugdale, "that in 20 Ed. III., Sir Thomas Dagworth, Knight, with eighty Men-at-Arms, and an hundred archers, worsting Charles de Bloys, and the great Men of Britanny, who had one thousand Horse, the King thereupon made two Barons, viz. Alan Zouch, and John l'Isle, as also fifty Knights: But others affirm, that this was at the battle of Cressey, which hapned the same year.

"In 21 Ed. III. there being a Tourneament then held at Eltham, this John had, of the King's gift, a White Hood of Cloth, embroidered with Men in Blew colour, dancing; and Buttoned before with large Pearls." This was a costly, and no doubt highly coveted, mark of honour, grotesque as its fashion may appear to our eyes.

Lord Lisle was a Founder Knight of the Garter: and received in 1351 a grant of the Shrievalty of Cambridge and Huntingdon, with the office of Constable of Cambridge Castle, to hold during life. His last French campaign was with the Black Prince, whose victories he shared in 1355. He died the year following, leaving as his successor his son Robert, the last of the family ever summoned to parliament, with whom Dugdale brings their story to a close. According to the Yorkshire Archaeologia, Robert had no children, and in 1365 transferred the castle and manor of Harwood to the husband of his sister and heiress, William de Aldeburgh. But a nephew, cousin, or male heir of some kind there must have been, as the line was carried on for a long succession of generations in Cambridgeshire, where they "held very considerable lands," and resided at the manor of Great Wilbraham, otherwise Lisle's. "'The male heir of the family, Edmund de Lisle,' says Camden, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, 'is still living lord of the place, remarkable for his age, and blessed with a numerous family.' William Lisle, probably grandson to Edmund, afterwards one of the Esquires of the Body to Charles I., quitted his fellowship of King's College on succeeding to this estate: he was a learned antiquary, particularly conversant with the Saxon language, on which subject he published some treatises. We have not been able to gain any further information concerning the family of Lisle, nor to discover whether it is extinct, or when this manor passed from them or their representatives."—Lysons' Cambridge. There was a Sir George Lisle, who defended Faringdon House in 1645 against Cromwell, and possibly belonged to this stock. That it is now totally lost sight of may be inferred from the fact that the usual crowd of claimants to a dormant barony, so sedulously collected by Burke, is in this case wanting.

The other Barons De Lisle, conjectured to have taken their name from the Isle of Wight, were, "as seems probable, derived from Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon and Lord of the Isle of Wight, for in a MS. pedigree in the College of Arms it is stated that 'Geffery de Insula, son of Jordan de Insula, temp. Hen. I. and Stephen, dedit terras in puram elemosin' p' a' ia Com' Baldwin Devonsciorre.'"—Banks. They were summoned to parliament before either of their namesakes, for John de Lisle, made Constable of Carisbrook in 1266 "by reason of the turbulency of the times," was a baron by writ in 1293, and signs the famous letter to the Pope in 1299 as Dominus de Wodeton. This manor, and all the rest of his estate, was in Hampshire, except Bonchurch and Shanklin, which he held in the Isle of Wight. His son, summoned in 1307 as Johanni de Insula Veda, died s. p., leaving a brother, Walter, on whom the barony apparently did not devolve. Walter's descendants are said to have continued at Wodeton till the time of Henry VIII.; but here, again, we light upon the rara avis of a disregarded and unsolicited barony. Sir Bernard does not even enter it among his Dormant and Extinct Peerages.

An Irish family, claiming a common origin with the O'Briens, now holds the title of Baron Lisle, conferred in 1758 on John Lysaght of Mountnorth, co. Cork: but not, as far as I can ascertain, in right of any intermarriage with the English Lisles.

In Scotland, the family certainly existed for over three hundred years.

About 1243, Radulphus de Insula dominus de Duchal, a barony in Renfrewshire, witnesses several grants to Paisley Abbey. From him descended John de Lisle, to whom and to his wife Margaret de Vaux, David II. granted the lands of Buchquhan in Stirlingshire; and Sir Robert Lyll or Lyle, "a baron of an ample fortune," created Lord Lyle by James II. in 1445. His son Robert was Justiciar of Scotland under James IV., and the grandfather of James, Master of Lyle, the last of the family, who, in 1556, died without succession in his father's lifetime. His brother-in-law, Sir Neil Montgomerie, inherited the castle and barony of Duchal. These Lisles quartered the coat of Mar (one of their ancestors having married a co-heiress of the Earldom), and bore, unlike their English namesakes, Gules, a fret Or.

Lindsey :

the modern form of Limesay, given as Linnebey in Holinshed's list.

Lewawse :

This must, I think, stand for Leuveise or Visdelieu—more properly Vis de Lou: for the armorial bearings of the family were Argent three wolves heads erased Gules. "Humfrid Vis de lou held a barony in Berkshire in 1086 (Domesd.), and Ralph Vis de lou was seated in Norfolk. In both counties the family flourished for many ages. Walkelin Vis de Lou held a barony in Berks in 1165."—The Norman People. Jordan Leuveisie of Bedfordshire, and Milo Leu Veise of Suffolk appear in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194. In the latter county they gave their name to the lordship of Visdelieu in the parish of Cransford, and from early times were seated at Shotley, where they continued for seven generations. "William de Visdelieu, in 1300, married Rose, sister and heir of Elizabeth de Shotisbroke; by whom he left an only son, Sir Simon Vis-de-lieu, who left two daughters, co-heiresses, between whom his large estate became divisible."—Page's Suffolk. In Essex their name was given to Widington-Veysie's, where Robert Leuveise held three fees of William de Montfichet in the time of Henry II. They were subsequently sub-feudatories of the De Veres; and Robert le Veise (whose name is written Leuuesey in the Registry of the diocese of London) held under Richard de Playz, who died in 1327. "Gilbert Leuveis, called Veysy in the Inquisitions post mortem, the next Lord of Widington, died in 1364, leaving two daughters, Catherine and Maud. Catherine, being the eldest, brought Widington to her husband John Duke, Master of the Pantry to Ed. I."—Morant's Essex. Robert Leuveise or Vis de Lou of Essex received a writ of military summons in 1322. (Palgrave's Parl. Writs.) Two others of the family were summoned at the same time: William Leuveise or Vis de Lou, Lord of Sotebroc, Berkshire, Kirketon and Stutton, Suffolk, and joint-Lord of Shelfanger, Norfolk, who also was called to the great Council at Westminster in 1324; and Walter Leuveise or Vis de Lou, from Hertfordshire. He held property at Barford in Bedfordshire, Meldreth in Cambridgeshire, Upton and Coppingford in Huntingdonshire;, and had been one of the Supervisors of the assize of arms and array in the county of Hertford in 1315, as well as a Conservator of peace in the following year.

Muschampe :

from Muscamp, Normandy, which was held by a branch of De Tilly (Magn. Rotul. Scaccariae Normanniae). Roger de Muscamp held Wilgebi, Lincolnshire, in 1086; and Robert de Muscam his son, Seneschal to Gilbert de Gand, had issue (Mon. i. 963), Hugh, a benefactor of Nostel Priory in the time of Hen. I. (Mon. ii. 35). This Hugh, who appears in the Liber Niger as a landowner in York and Lincoln, has left his name to Muskam in Nottinghamshire, which he held of Henry Murdac, Archbishop of York. He. had a park, and no doubt a residence, at South Muskam, where some of his land was granted to Rufford Abbey, his last gift being made "when he rendered himself to the fellowship of the monks." His son and heir Robert confirmed his grants, and completed the church he had commenced building at Rufford. Robert's three sons, Ralph, Robert, and Andrew, all died s. p., and in 1223 Ralph de Gresley entered into possession of their inheritance as the husband of their sister Isabel. At North Muskam, Thomas de Muschamp held of Robert de Everingham's fee in 1165 (Lib. Niger), and was succeeded there by at least four generations of descendants, but Thoroton only carries the pedigree down to 1323, when the manor was disposed of by Thomas de Muschamp.

A more important branch of the family was seated in Northumberland, where Reginald de Muscamp is mentioned in 1130 (Rot. Pip.). Robert de Muscamp (perhaps his brother) received from Henry I. a barony of four knights' fees in Bambroughshire, and chose Wooler—a small market town to the east of the Cheviots—as the head of his honour. His son Thomas, who joined Prince Henry's rebellion in 1172, and married Maud de Vesci, the daughter of the Lord of Alnwick, was the grandfather of another Robert, considered the mightiest baron in the North of England—vir magni uominis in partibus Borealibus (Matthew Paris). Yet Dugdale tells us little or nothing about him. He died in 1249, leaving three daughters and co-heiresses: Margery, Countess of Strathearne; Isabel, married to William de Huntercombe; and Cecily, the wife of Odonel de Forde. The name, however, did not perish with him, but was of long continuance in the county. A William de Muschampe of Barmoor Castle (about a mile W. from Lowick) is mentioned in 1272: and his descendant George Muschampe was twice High Sheriff of Northumberland under Queen Elizabeth. Another Muschampe served as Sheriff in 1622, and was probably the last of his race, for after 1630 Barmoor had passed to the family of Cooke. "Tradition says, that one night the cattle of the last of the Muschampes were stolen by a party of moss-troopers. In the morning, Muschampe repaired to the place of gathering, which was near a thorn tree, in a field called the Craftmoors. Here he sounded his bugle to alarm his vassals, and at their head immediately commenced the pursuit. The thieves were taken while crossing the Tweed near Kelso. Muschampe rushed into the river, and with one blow clove Hempseed, the chief marauder, to the chine. His followers offered no resistance, and the cattle were retaken. From this circumstance the place was called Hempseed's Ford."—Mackenzie's Northumberland.

Another branch of the Muschamps, traced from Thomas Muschamp, Sheriff of London in 1463, remained at Camberwell till the middle of the sixteenth century. They had a house at East Horseley.—Manning and Bray's Surrey.

Musgrave :

the modernized form of Mucelgros. See Musegros.

Mesni-le-Villers :

There are several places named Vilers in Normandy. Roger de Vilers is mentioned by Wace among the barons who attended the great Council called by the Conqueror at Lillebonne before his invasion of England. Pagan de Vilers, his son, was one of the Lancastrian barons of Roger de Poitou. "A little above Widness, at Warrington, a passage out of Cheshire, and near unto the church, was the seat of a barony given to Paganus de Vilers to defend the ford at Latchford, before a bridge was made at Warrington."—Baine's Lancashire. This barony, thus commanding the pass of the Mersey, only remained in his house for one more generation, as the daughter of his eldest son Matthew, Beatrice de Vilers, carried it to her husband Aumeric Pincerna (see Boteler, vol. i., p. 92). But he left several other sons: Alan, the ancestor of the Traffords; Arnold (Mon. ii. 369), who died s. p.; William; and perhaps Thomas, who, according to the Testa de Nevill, received from him the moiety of Uvethorp, the land of Hole, and the moiety of Calverton in knight service. Paganus also possessed Crosby (which in the time of Stephen was held by Robert de Vilers, whose heiress married Robert de Molines), and held lands in Leicestershire and Warwickshire. In the latter county, according to Dugdale, he "was first enfeoffed of Newbolt, in the parish of Kinalton, in the time of King Henry the First. The family was sometime called of Newbolt, sometime of Kinalton, and held of the Butlers of Warrington in Lancashire. Paganus de Vilers" (grandson to the above, temp. Hen. II.) "was a great Man, and had many Sons. He gave his son William, Newbolt. The last of this family that I have seen any Thing of, was Paganus de Vilers of Kinalton, Knt. 2. Ed. III., on whose Seal was 6 Lyoncels, 3, 2, and 1." Henry de Vilers was Sewer to William de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, in the time of Henry II.; and his descendant, Gilbert, held Middleston in Warwickshire in the following century. Tarent-Vilars still bears witness to their possessions in Dorsetshire. "Roger Vilars (12 and 13 John) held four fees in Dorset, Somerset and Wilts, and his son John, seven. After this it came to the Clares."—Hutchins' Dorset.

Alan de Villiers, the second son of the Baron of Warrington, "was enfeoffed by his father in Trafford t. Henry I., which lordship was held by Robert de Villiers in the thirteenth century (Testa de Nevill). In the same century, Henry de Trafford, evidently a younger son, held lands in thanage and from the family of De Charlton (Ibid.). Hence the Baronets Trafford, for whom an Anglo-Saxon descent has been imagined."—The Norman People. It is given in Bain's History of Lancashire. "Ralph de Trafford, who is said to have died about 1050, is the first recorded ancestor, but this is before the general assumption of surnames, which, as Camden observes, are first found in the Domesday Survey."—E. P. Shirley. If the "Black Booke of Trafford" is to be credited, Ralph, and Robert Trafford, had a pardon and protection granted them by Hamo de Masci shortly after the Conquest: and their crest, "the aunncientest" in those parts, refers to the

"Trusty Trafford keen to trye,"

who made a gallant stand against the invaders. They bear "a labouring man with a flayle in his hande threshynge, and this written mott 'Now thus,' which they say came by this occasion: that he and other gentlemen opposing themselves against some Normans, who came to invade them, this Traford did them much hurte, and kept the passages against them; but that at length the Normans having passed the ryver, came sodenlye upon him, and then he, disguising himselfe, went into his barne, and was thresshynge when they entered; yet, being knowen by some of them, and demanded why he so abased himselfe, answered, 'Now, Thus.'" But why should these Anglo-Saxon gentlemen have borne such unmistakeably Norman names? I may add, that of the three townships of the name of Trafford described in Domesday, Wimbold's-Trafford belonged to the Earl of Chester, Mickle-Trafford to the Fitz Alans, and Bridge-Trafford to the Church.—Ormerod.

The existing family of Villiers "claim to belong to the race of Villiers in Normandy, from which sprang Pierre de Villiers, Grand Master in the reign of Charles VI., and Jacques de Villiers, Provost of Paris and Mareschal of France in the same period; and they may be so descended, but there is no proof of the fact."—Great Governing Families of England. Nor can I find any link connecting them with the descendants of Pagan, Baron of Warrington, though, as he held lands in Leicestershire, where their first recorded ancestor, Alexander de Vylers, was seated in 1235, the connection seems at least probable. The coat of arms is the chief difficulty. The five escallop-shells on the cross of St. George, which they now bear, were, it is said, first assumed by Alexander's son, Sir Nicholas (who went with Prince Edward to the Holy Land), in memory of his crusade. But Nichols, in his Leicestershire, gives the ancient arms of Villiers as Sable a fesse between three cinquefoils Or^[139] while the house of Warrington bore, as we have seen, six lioncels. There are, in fact, five different coats belonging to this name in England.

Sir Nicholas, on his tomb in Melton Mowbray church, is designated of Downs Ampney, Gloucestershire; but his seat was at Brooksby in the co. of Leicester, where the elder branch of his posterity remained for very nearly five hundred years. During many successive generations they were nothing more than the small country squires that Leland found them in the time of Henry VIII. "The chiefest House of the Villars at this tyme is at Brokesby in Leycestreshire lower by four Miles than Melton on the hither Ripe of Wreke or Eye Ryver. There lye buried in the Chirch diverse of the Villars. This Villars is Lorde of Houbye hard by, sumtyme Parcelle of the Bellars Landes. Where also is a meane Maner Place.

"This Villars is also Lord of Coneham in Lindecolneshire toward the Partes of Trent, and there he hath a Maner Place.

"This Villars at this tyme is a Man but of a 200 Markes of Lande by the Yere.

"There is a mene Gentilman of the Villars about Stanford." But the following century brought with it a momentous change.

Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, who died in 1605, had been twice married. By his first wife he had (besides three daughters) two sons; Sir William, created a baronet in 1619, whose line ended in 1711 with his grandson, who sold Brooksby, and Sir Edward, the ancestor of the Earls of Grandison, Jersey, and Clarendon. The second brought him three more sons, and another daughter; and being early left a widow with a slender jointure, conceived "that she should best advance her children's interests by training her second and favourite son George—then a beautiful boy of thirteen—"to woo fortune at Court." It proved to be a lucky inspiration. The lad was taught all the accomplishments of the day, being sent abroad to perfect his education; and when, in 1614, he first presented himself before the King at Apethorpe, he was a singularly handsome and fascinating young cavalier, "of stature tall and comely, his deportment graceful, and of a most sweet disposition." He had come home "with £50 a year as his sole provision"; but within two years of that time he had ousted the long-established favourite, Carr Earl of Somerset, and was reigning in his stead at Court as Master of the Horse. The usual harvest of Royal bounty followed in more than its usual plenitude; for, in the matter of grants, honours, and preferments, James did far more for his pet "Steenie," and for Steenie's kin, than he had ever done for his predecessor. In 1616 he received, with other estates, the great lordship of Whaddon in Bucks, that had been forfeited by Lord Grey de Wilton, and the titles of Baron Whaddon and Viscount Villiers:^[140] in 1617 he was created Earl of Buckingham; in 1618 Marquess of Buckingham; and in 1623, while he was absent on his romantic journey to Spain with Prince Charles, Duke of Buckingham, and Earl of Coventry. He was Lord High Admiral of England, Chief Justice in Eyre of the forests and parks south of Trent, High Steward of Westminster, Constable of Windsor Castle, &c. Both his brothers received peerages; and his mother was created Countess of Buckingham for her life. He was not less successful with the son than with the father. At first he was on bad terms with the Prince, having once, in the fervour of an early quarrel, "been very near striking him"; but by his consummate tact and skill he so completely conciliated and won him over, that, when Charles came to the throne, the Duke's power was greater with the new King than it had been with the old. "A rare felicity, seldom seen," says Lord Clarendon, "and in which the expectation of very many was exceedingly disappointed." He was, in truth, as heartily envied and detested as even a Royal favourite could well be; for his early sweetness and generosity of disposition had not stood the test of prosperity. He had become rapacious, selfish, and overbearing; the "flowing courtesy" of his manners had turned to insolence; and his pride, vanity, and ostentation had fairly outgrown all bounds. When he was sent to Paris to bring home the King's French bride, "appearing with all the lustre the wealth of England could adorn him with," he made open and violent love to Anne of Austria, and narrowly escaped being poniarded in audaciously seeking a clandestine interview. Nor was he more respectful to his own young Queen, whom he plainly told, while rating her for some fancied slight to his mother, that "there were Queens of England who had lost their heads." At last, in 1628, when he was but thirty-six, and in the full zenith of his favour, he was stabbed to the heart with a penknife by one John Felton, who had been disappointed of his commission as a captain. This man, "believing he should do God and his country good service," followed the Duke to Portsmouth, waylaid him in the lobby as he came out from breakfast, and though maimed in one hand, dealt him a back blow that proved instantly mortal. Buckingham, drawing the knife from the wound, cried "The villain hath killed me!" and dropped down dead.^[141]

He had married Lady Katherine Manners, in her own right Baroness Ros, by whom he had two sons; George, his successor; and Lord Francis, a posthumous
child, called by Aubrey "the beautiful Francis Villiers," who was slain in a skirmish at Kingston-on-Thames in 1648.

The second Duke of Buckingham was only eight months old when he succeeded his father. "With the figure and genius of Alcibiades," and an income of over,£50,000 a year, no man could have entered life under fairer auspices than he did, and few ever had greater opportunities of using their talents and advantages. But he chose to cast them all away. "He miserably wasted his estate, forfeited his honour, damned his reputation, and at the time of his death, is said to have wanted even the necessaries of life, and not to have had one friend in the world."—Banks. He is admirably depicted in Dryden's celebrated lines:—

"A man so various that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinion—always in the wrong—
Was everything by starts, but nothing long;
Who, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking;
Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking."

Like his brother, he had fought on the King's side in the Civil War, and escaped to Holland after the unfortunate battle of Worcester; but soon returned home to make his peace with Cromwell, and to propose to one of Cromwell's daughters, who refused him. He then wooed and won Mary Fairfax, the heiress of the Parliamentary general to whom his forfeited estates had been granted, and by this means recovered the greater part of them. After the death of the Protector, he was sent to the Tower by Richard Cromwell for conspiring against his government, and finally reappeared as a zealous Royalist at the Restoration, when he and Monk together rode before the King, bare-headed, on his triumphant entry into London. He was the letter B of the hated "Cabal" ministry, and the constant companion of Charles II., to whom he successively presented three mistresses; Louise de Kerouaille, who became Duchess of Portsmouth, Mary Davies, and Nell Gwynn. His own life was a scandal even in that licentious age and most profligate of Courts. He first seduced the wife of Francis Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, and then killed him in a duel. He ignored and neglected the unhappy heiress whom he had married, while squandering her fortune in the lowest debauchery and riot. At length, on the accession of James II., he betook himself to Helmsley Castle, his favourite residence in the North Riding of Yorkshire; and having caught a sudden chill after hunting, was carried to the house of one of his tenants at Kirby Moorside, where he died; not, according to Pope's famous description, "in the worst inn's worst room," for this house, still standing on the market-place, was then probably the best in the town. Neither was he, though deeply involved in debt, reduced to such dire and abject poverty as is there implied. Yet it was a dismal ending for the "gay and gallant" Buckingham,

"That life of pleasure and that soul of whim!"

He left no children, and all his honours—with the sole exception of his mother's Barony of Ros—expired with him.

I have already said that both the first Duke's brothers had been created peers by James I. Christopher, the younger, was Earl of Anglesey and Baron Villiers of Daventry in Northamptonshire, but left only one son who died s. p.; and John was Viscount of Purbeck and Baron Villiers of Stoke in Buckinghamshire. The latter, in "the very dawn of his fortunes," secured the reluctant hand of "a lady of transcendent beauty, the sole heiress of the great wealth and high blood of her mother,"^[142] Frances, daughter of Lord Chief Justice Coke. The match—forced upon her by her father's evil ambition, as the price to be paid for the good graces of the all-powerful Buckingham—was utterly distasteful to the poor girl herself, who was "tied to the bed-post and whipped into consent." Four years after her marriage, she eloped with Sir Robert Howard, and gave birth to a son, who was secretly baptised in 1624 under the name of Robert Wright. Though sentenced to do penance for adultery, Lady Purbeck was never divorced, and she and her child remained under the care of her mother till she died in 1645. Lord Purbeck then married again, but had no family. "Robert Wright," the reputed son of Sir Robert Howard, was subsequently called Villiers, and even joined with Lord Purbeck, as his son, in the conveyance of some lands; but when, in 1648, he became the husband of the co-heiress of Sir John Danvers, he adopted her name, and never would bear any other. His widow and both his sons resumed the name of Villiers; and Robert, the elder, a man of extremely bad character, chose to style himself Viscount Purbeck, and, after the death of the last Duke, Earl of Buckingham (a title that in reality had no existence), though his claim was never recognized by the House of Lords. He left two disreputable daughters as his representatives; and his brother Edward, though he no less clung to the name of Villiers, had the good sense never to attempt to take the title. Of him, too, no male descendants remain.

Thus, of all the five sons born to old Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, the posterity of Sir Edward, the second, was alone destined to endure. He had, through the influence of his half-brother, been appointed Lord President of Munster, where he was held "in singular estimation for his justice and hospitality," and died in 1626, having governed little more than a year. His wife, Barbara St. John, was the niece of Sir Oliver St. John, who in 1620 had been created Viscount Grandison, with special limitation to her children. Three of her sons, William, John, and George, successively bore the title; and the youngest, Sir Edward, was the father of the first Earl of Jersey. All four fought loyally in the Civil War; and William, the second Lord Grandison, died of a wound received at the siege of Bristol in 1643, when barely thirty years of age. He left one daughter, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, whose imperial beauty is still resplendent on many a canvas of Van Dyck's, arrayed in the steel grey satin and wealth of pearls in which he loved to paint her. She became notorious as the mistress of Charles II., who created her Duchess of Cleveland, and gave the name of FitzRoy to all her children. Her eldest son was Puke of Cleveland and Southampton; her second son Duke of Grafton; and her third son Duke of Northumberland; but the first two only left descendants.^[143]

Her uncle George, who on the death of his two elder brothers succeeded as fourth Viscount, was the grandfather of John Villiers, created Earl Grandison in 1721. But, as the new Earl's two sons predeceased him, leaving no posterity, this title became extinct at his own death in 1766; and though revived in favour of his daughter, Lady Elizabeth Mason, during the succeeding year, finally expired with her son in 1800. The Viscountcy had reverted to the Earls of Jersey, representing the President of Munster's fourth son.

Edward Villiers, on whom the Earldom was first conferred, had been deputed to attend the Princess Mary into Holland on her marriage with William of Orange, remained attached to her Court, and was appointed her Master of the Horse when she became Queen. He was much trusted by the new King, "being employed by him in most of the secret negotiations with persons of importance;" and was successively Ambassador at the Hague; at Paris; Principal Secretary of State; and one of the Lords Justices during William's absence from England in 1699. The next year he became Lord Chamberlain; was reappointed on the accession of Queen Anne; and died in 1711, the day before he was to have been named Lord Privy Seal. He had been created Viscount Villiers in 1690, and Earl of the Island of Jersey in 1697; and is now represented by the seventh Earl of his name.

His grandson Thomas (the younger brother of the third Earl) married a daughter of the Earl of Essex, Lady Charlotte Capel, whose mother had been the eldest co-heiress of Henry Hyde, the last Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, and who became her grandfather's heir. He consequently received in 1763 the title of Viscount Hyde, and in 1776 the Earldom of Clarendon. The present Earl is his great-grandson.

Montalent :

or Maltenant, from a place so named near Nantes.^[144] "Ralph Maltenant, c. 1135, witnessed a charter in York (Mon. 192): as did Gilbert Mantalent, temp. Hen. I. (Ibid. 733). The family was seated in York in 1165, when Richard Maltalent held half a knight's fee from Vesci of Alnwick, of which he had been enfeoffed by Eustace Fitzjohn (Liber Nig.): and also half a fee from Percy. He witnessed a charter of Eustace Fitzjohn (Mon. ii. 592) to Alnwick Priory. Richard Maltalent paid a fine to the Crown in Northumberland, 1231 (Hodgson, iii. 163). Thomas de Maltulent, a younger brother, settled in Scotland, temp. William the Lion (Chart. Mailros), and died 1228. His son William witnessed charters of Alexander II., and died c. 1250."—The Norman People. Sir Richard de Matulent, William's son, first possessed, among other baronies, the territory of Thirlestane, still the seat of his descendants, and gave some part of it to the monks of Dryburgh. Here, not far from the town of Lauder, he built his castle on the river Leader, the "darksome house" in Lammermuir spoken of in the old ballad that bears his name. This recounts how the English, led by the King's nephew, crossed the Border, and first lighting their torch on the Tweed, fired all Merse and Teviotdale, till, in passing up Lammermuir, their advance was barred by a grey-bearded knight who refused to surrender his fastness, and beat them back after a fortnight's leaguer. "Auld Maitland," it further tells us, was the father of three sons, then at school in France, who, some time after, to their grief and shame, perceived on the English standard the arms of Scotland, which Edward had quartered with his own. They cried out in dismay—

"Gin a' be true yon standard says,
We're fatherless a' three!"

and making their way disguised into the English camp, stabbed the standard bearer, and carried off the standard. The angry King swore that some Frenchman must have done the deed; but the three brave brothers came resolutely forward to avow it, declared their name and lineage, and offered to match themselves against any three Englishmen he might name, boasting—"

Nor is there men in a' your host
Daur meet us three to three."

The King accepted the challenge, and selected three of his best and bravest knights, promising a special guerdon to the victor:

"For every drap o' Maitland blude,
I'll gie a rig o' land."

The Scotsmen disposed of all three champions, and "maul'd them cruellie": then young Edward, the King's nephew, vowing that he would bring one of them bound to his feet, sprung forward with his pole-axe, clove asunder the elder Maitland's head-piece, and "bit right nigh the brayne." When Maitland saw his blood flow, he dropped his weapon, gripped his antagonist by the throat, lifted and threw him, and laid him, half-throttled, on the ground.

"'Now let him up,' King Edward cried,
'And let him come to me!
And for the deed that thou hast done,
Thou shalt have erldomes three!'

"'It's ne'er be said in France, nor e'er
In Scotland, when I'm hame,
That Edward once lay under me
And e'er got up again!'"

So saying, Maitland drew his dagger, and stabbed his prostrate foe to the heart.

Though all else in the tale be false, it is at least true as a picture of the wild savagery of Border warfare; of the spirit that breathes in the lines of Blind Harry:

"I better like to see the Southron die,
Than gold or land, that they can gie to me."

This furious hostility, fed by ever-recurring raids and deeds of blood, rankled on, unmitigated and unrelenting, for many centuries; and only slowly died out after the Union of the two countries. Even as late as 1517, when Sir Anthony Darcy, the brave Warden of the Marches, was slain in a peat moss near Dunse, into which his horse had floundered, by Sir David Home of Wedderburn and his men, "Sir David cut off Darcy's long flowing locks, and plaiting them into a wreath, knit them as a trophy to his saddle-bow. Nothing more strongly marks the ferocity of the time."—Ridpath's Border History.

Ninth in descent from "Auld Maitland" was another Sir Richard, employed for upwards of seventy years in different public offices, having, as King James VI. wrote, "served his grandsire, goodsire, goodame, mother, and himself dutifully and honestly," and outlived his own son for thirteen years. This son, William, for many years Secretary of State, was a man of remarkable ability, and through life the faithful and devoted adherent of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots; constantly acting for her on embassies and negotiations; and "the soul of the Queen's party" during her long imprisonment in England. He was himself placed in duresse by the Regent Morton, but rescued by Kirkaldy of Grange, who sheltered him in Edinburgh Castle, where he stood the famous siege of 1573. When the place at last surrendered, the chivalrous Kirkaldy, who had so gallantly defended it, was hung for treason on the market-place, and Maitland, dreading a similar fate, "ended his days after the old Roman fashion" by his own hand. He was the elder brother of the first Lord Maitland of Thirlestane, who received his title in 1590. The next in succession was created Earl of Lauderdale in 1624; and John, second Earl, was further promoted to a Dukedom by Charles II. Clarendon describes him as "insolent, imperious, flattering, and dissembling, fitted for intrigues and contrivances by the experience and practice he had in the committee of both kingdoms in their darkest designs; with courage enough not to fail when it was absolutely necessary, and no impediment of honour to restrain him from doing anything that might gratify any of his passions." He began life as a zealous Covenanter, high in trust with the Scottish parliament, and several times their emissary to treat with the King. In 1647—for some cause or other—he shifted his allegiance, joined the Duke of Hamilton in raising troops for the rescue of the King, and was sent over to Holland to invite the Prince of Wales to join them. His terms proved unacceptable; and on his return home he found that matters had so far changed that he could not even land in his own country, but had no resource except to sail straight back to Holland. When he next went to Scotland in 1650 with Charles II., the States would not allow him to show himself either at court or in the council chamber till he made public "satisfaction" in the church at Largs, for his accession to the so-called "Engagement." He followed the King to England; was taken prisoner at Worcester; thrown into the Tower; and only set free by Monk nine years afterwards.

While so many honest men who had ruined themselves in the King's cause were left unrewarded at the Restoration, it is startling to read of the honours heaped upon Lauderdale. The whole power and patronage of Scotland was at once placed in his hands. He was Constable of Edinburgh Castle, and Lord High Commissioner for the Crown, and made his progresses through the country with almost regal pomp and ceremony. In England, he held the highest offices of the State (his initial supplied the letter L to the famous CABAL ministry), as well as an office at Court; he was Duke of Lauderdale, Marquess of March, and a Knight of the Garter in 1672; Earl of Guilford and Lord Petersham in the peerage of England in 1674. But he did not play his cards with equal success to the end. He fell into disgrace after having voted for the condemnation of Lord Stafford, lost all his offices and pensions, and "sunk under the weight ot vexation" in 1682. Though he had been twice married, he left only one child, Anne Marchioness of Tweeddale; and thus all his new-born honours expired with him. His brother Charles succeeded to the Scottish Earldom; and the eighth Earl, on the dissolution of the Pitt Administration in 1806, received an English peerage by the title of Baron Lauderdale of Thirlestane Castle.

Merny :

for Marny, as it stands in Holinshed's list, where, as here, it is preceded by Mallory.

Muffet :

see Musset.

Mantell :

see Mantelet.

Norton :

This family, now represented by Lord Grantley, claims a direct male descent from the great house of Conyers. Collins derives them from Adam de Conyers, who, being the son of the heiress of Norton, first assumed the name. This Adam was the great-grandfather of Sir John Norton, Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1507, and must consequently have lived in the earlier part of the fifteenth century. Now we find in Dugdale that 8 Richard I.—more than two hundred years before that—Roger, the son of Robert Conyers, had a trial "against Roger his Uncle for the Lands of his Father's Inheritance in Haiton" (Hutton) "Norton, Grisebi, and Dakineshall in Com. Ebor." This was the line of Hutton-Conyers, and, according to family tradition, the elder branch, as one of the heirs of the house of Sockburn, passed or sold his lands in Durham to his younger brother, and settled in Yorkshire (v. Surtees). Leland tells us that it had ended before his time in two co-heiresses, of whom one carried Norton-Conyers to the Northetons (Nortons), and the other Hutton-Conyers to the Mallorys (see Mallory). The name is a purely English one, and an evident interpolation.

Pudsey :

De Puisay, from Puisaz, or Puisay, in the Orleannois. This place gave its name to one of the "chief nobles of France," Ebrard de Puisay, whose daughter Adelais was the second wife of the famous Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury.^[145] Hugh de Puteaco, Pusaz, or De Pudsey, was elected Prince-Bishop of Durham in 1153. No author has told us of the place of his birth, or the name of his father: we only know that he was a nephew of King Stephen, and of the Bishop of Winchester, and at that time Treasurer of York. Nevertheless, as the Archbishop had not been consulted in the election, both he and the monks who had chosen him were forced to submit to a sound whipping, standing with bare backs in the church at Beverley. Pudsey proved a haughty, reserved, and intensely ambitious prelate, of whom one of his contemporaries affirmed that the world was not crucifixus to him, but infixus in him. However, when Richard Coeur de Lion was preparing for his crusade, the Bishop, "enflamed with the zeal of the times," also took upon him the vow and the cross, and made ready for the expedition with characteristic ostentation. He built himself a "beautiful crusading galley," and had all the necessary furniture and kitchen utensils made of solid silver. He also ordered a silver throne of rare workmanship, and, by distressing his people with "grievous exactions and taxes," collected no less than,£11,000 for the expenses of his journey. A report of this "inestimable summe of money" (as it was then considered) reached the ears of the King, who, more anxious for the Bishop's gold than for his services, proposed to dispense with his vow, that he might remain at home and take care of the realm as one of the regents in the Sovereign's absence. Pudsey joyfully agreed: whereupon the King at once demanded the treasure amassed for the crusade, as now useless to him. This led to a bargain, by which he agreed to pay the money to the King, on condition of receiving a grant of the Earldom of Northumberland for life, and the Earldom and wapentake of Sadberge for him and his successors in the Bishopric. At his investiture, when he was girt with the military sword, the young King is said to have laughed merrily: "For," cried he, "am I not cunning, and my craft's master, that can make a young Earl of an old Bishop?" An additional payment of 1000 marks induced the King to appoint him Constable of Windsor and Lord Justiciary; and it was agreed that England should be divided into two districts: the Chancellor, Longchamp Bishop of Ely, to be Regent south of the Humber, and Pudsey to govern the North.

But no sooner was Coeur de Lion out of the country, than it became evident that Longchamp had no intention of sharing his authority. He positively refused to admit the Bishop as his compeer in government; and having by "artful pretences" decoyed him to London and got possession of his commission, he committed him prisoner to the Tower, from whence he only obtained his release by surrendering Windsor Castle, Newcastle, and his two new Earldoms, and giving his son Henry and one of his principal barons, Gilbert de la Ley, as hostages for his peaceable behaviour. In vain the unhappy prelate appealed to his absent master, and furnished 2000 pounds of silver towards his ransom from the Emperor Henry VI.; Richard, on returning home, showed only an increased avidity for his wealth, and he had in the end to disburse a further sum of 2000 marks to recover Sadberge. It was while travelling to London on this business in 1194 that he was taken ill, and turning back to Hoveden, died there at the age of seventy. To the last he cherished hopes of recovery, "for Godric, the holy hermit of Finchale, having assured him he should be blind ten years before his death, he considered the prophecy literally, and did not conceive it pointed out to him the blindness which pride and ambition should involve him in; and thence, while his eyes remained good, having faith in the hermit's words, he disdained to think of settling his affairs, or preparing for death."—Hutchinson.

Hugh de Pudsey was a great builder, and left behind him many striking memorials of his munificence. He restored the Castle and city walls of Durham; rebuilt the recently destroyed borough of Elvet; threw a bridge over the Wear; repaired and strengthened Northallerton Castle, and added the Keep or Dungeon Tower to the fortress of Norham; founded a Hospital for lepers at Sherburne, and St. James' Hospital near Northallerton; commenced the splendid church of St. Cuthbert at Darlington; and added the beautiful Galilee or west chapel to his cathedral. This latter was intended for the reception of women, who could only attend the services in the cathedral under protest, not being allowed to set foot beyond the prescribed limits (still marked in the pavement near the font) that fenced in the approach to the austere shrine of St. Cuthbert.^[146] He also gave to the church a crucifix and chalice in pure gold; and "Pudsey's Bible" in four volumes, folio, though robbed of many of its exquisite illuminations,^[147] remains the gem of the Dean and Chapter's library.

Three illegitimate sons had been born to him while he was Treasurer of York. Henry, the eldest, was a soldier: Burchard, the second, he made Archdeacon of Durham; and Hugh, the youngest, who is said to have been his favourite, and died before him, was Count of Bar-sur-Seine and Chancellor to Louis VII. King of France. Henry de Pudsey was the founder of Finchale Priory, where he lies buried. I can find no account of his posterity, but the family certainly remained in the county up to the seventeenth century. William Pudsey served as Sheriff in 1438. Nicholas Pudsey married a daughter of the unhappy Earl of Westmoreland, who was beggared and exiled for his share in the Rising of the North. The last notice of them is in 1640, when, according to a Royalist broadside, "About one hundred of the Scottish rebels, intending to plunder the house of Master Pudsie at Stapleton in the Bishoprick of Durham, were set upon by a troupe of our horsemen under the conduct of that truly valorous gentleman Lieutenant Smith, lieutenant to the noble Sir John Digby; thirty-nine of them are taken prisoners, the rest all slain except four or five which fled." This Stapleton line ended not many years after with Ralph Pudsey, whose daughter Anne conveyed his property to the Northumbrian Brandlings.

The Pudseys were very numerous in the adjoining county of York, where they gave their name to Burton Pudsey (Pidsey), and were seated at Settle, Northam, Barforth-on-Tees, Arnford, Lawfield, &c. In the time of Edward III. Simon Pudsey of Barforth married Catherine de Bolton, who brought him the fair domain of Bolton-by-Bolland, in Craven; where, for many generations "the Pudseys enjoyed, within the compass of a moderate estate, every distinction, feudal or ecclesiastic, which their age and country could bestow—the manor, free-warren, park, advowson, and family chantry."—Whitaker. Here, in their ancient hall, standing "very pleasantly among sweet woods and fruitful hills," Sir Ralph Pudsey sheltered Henry VI. during the summer months that succeeded the disastrous battle of Hexham. "An adjoining well still retains the name of "King Harry," who is said to have directed it to be dug and walled, in its present shape, for a cold bath. It may at first be matter of wonder how a beaten and hunted sovereign could be concealed so long. But it must be recollected that in the fifteenth century there were scarcely any formed roads, and as little communication between the remoter parts of England and the capital. It is probable that a royal fugitive would be sooner discovered at present in the farthest of the Hebrides, than at that period in Craven." Several relics of the poor King were long treasured up at Bolton: a silver gilt spoon he used, and the boots and gloves, of fine Spanish leather lined with deerskin, made for "hands and feet not larger than a middle-sized woman's," that he had worn. The tomb of the loyal Sir Ralph remains in Bolton church; a slab of mountain limestone, bearing the effigies of himself, his three wives, and twenty-five children; One of his great-granddaughters, Florence, is remembered for "the number and splendour of her marriages. This lady, whose attractions or good fortune must have been uncommon, was matched, first with Sir Thomas Talbot of Bashall, who died 13 Hen. VII.: after which she became the second wife of Henry Lord Clifford the Shepherd, and after his decease, by the procurement, as appears, of Henry VIII., gave her hand to Richard Grey, younger son of Thomas Marquess of Dorset." William Pudsey, who held the estate from 1577 to 1629, found "a good store of silver ore on his town-ship of Rimington," and nearly forfeited his life by coining it for his own use;^[148] for though he eventually obtained his pardon, he was at one moment so close-pressed that he had to take a frightful leap—still called Pudsey's Leap—to escape his pursuers. The line ended with Ambrose, High Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1683 and 1693, whose heiress conveyed Bolton to the Dawsons.

There is a place bearing this name in Berkshire. "Pusey, in the hundred of Ganfield, lies about five miles east of Faringdon, to the south of the London road. The manor is said to have been granted to the family of Pusey by King Canute, and an ancient horn is still preserved, by which it is said to have been held. The tenure of lands by cornage, or the service of a horn, was by no means unfrequent; and the Pusey horn, as well as the family of Pusey, are of considerable antiquity; but it may be much doubted whether they possessed the manor of Pusey till long after the time of Canute. When the Norman Survey was taken, there were two manors in Pusey; the principal manor, which belonged to Roger de Iveri, and a smaller one, which belonged to the foreign monastery of St. Peter super Dinam. The lay manor had, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, been the property of Aluric, a freeman. The first mention of the Puseys to be found on record is in the year 1316; but it appears by ancient deeds, in the possession of the present proprietor, that they had been settled at Pusey for six generations before Henry Pusey, who appears then to have been lord of a manor in this parish. The family became extinct, in the male line, in 1710, by the death of Charles Pusey, who bequeathed the manor to his nephew, John Allen, directing that he should take the name of Pusey, in addition to his own."—Lyons. He died s. p. and the estate passed by settlement to his wife's nephew, the Honourable Philip Bouverie. It is remarkable that there is no mention of the Puseys in the list of Berkshire gentry bearing date 1433, and that none of the name appear as Sheriffs of the county. Their tenure from Canute seems to be clearly disproved by the facts. Yet in spite of Fuller's assertion that "the lands of Berkshire are very skittish and apt to cast their owners," their long continuance at their manor remains indisputable; and they no doubt derived their name from it.^[149] I can trace no possible connection between them and the Pudseys of the North, who bore Vert a chevron between three mullets Or pierced of the field; while the coat of the Puseys was Gules, three bars Argent.

Nor did the Northern family bestow its name on Pudsey, near Leeds, the Podechesaie of Domesday, which was held in the Confessor's time by two Saxon Thanes.

Perwinke :

from the Frenchpervenche, the old name of the periwinkle, one of the earliest of our English flowers—Chaucer's "fresche Pervincke rich of hewe." But, by a lamentable coincidence, the name also serves for a sort of periwig, as given by Hall—

"His bonnet vail'd, ere ever he could thinke,
Th' unruly wind blows off his periwinke."

According to Robson, the Perwinckes, Perwinges, or Perwings bore Sable three mullets Or and a bordure engrailed Argent; the metals being in some cases counterchanged. The Perwiches (of Leicestershire and Blisworth, Northants) bore Gules a cross moline Or: and another entirely different coat belonged to the same name: Per pale Or and Gules, three crescents counterchanged.
No mention of this family is to be met with in the early records; unless we include in it Thomas de Prendwyc, who in the thirteenth century held of the barony of Vesci in Northumberland.—Testa de Nevill. But, taking into account the very slight similarity between the two names, this would be a venturesome conjecture. A seal, with the legend "S' Elie Fil' Willelmi Parwikini," was found during the repairs of Stockbury Church, Kent. "Elias, son of William Parwikin, lived probably in the reign of Henry HI. The name has not been traced: it may have been a nickname, in which, as frequently found in early times, the epithet parvus is combined; the terminal may be the diminutive found in numerous 'nurse-names,' such as Peter-kin or Perkin, Watkin, Tomkins, &c."—Archaeological Journal, vol. 10, p. 327. Here, again, we are evidently on a false scent. In Normandy I can meet with no name that even approximately resembles it, unless it be Perrinz, in Duchesne's Feoda Normanniae.

I have failed to find any mention of this family in Nichol's Leicestershire, and but few notices of it are to be gleaned in Northants. "Sir Henry Greene of Drayton was in the first year of Henry V. joined in commission with William Lord Ros of Hamlake, for suppressing the insurrection of William Perwich and his adherents, who in a hostile manner had fallen upon several of the King's subjects. * * * Thomas Parwich, 7 Hen. VI. held a knight's fee at Middleton and Collingtree: and 10 Hen. VIII. died Goditha Wigston, possessed of the manor of Milton, which she had held of the King as of his manor of Shelford in Nottinghamshire. She was the wife of William Perwich, son of William Perwich of Lubenham in Leicestershire, by whom she had issue Rose her only daughter and heir, first married to—Kehull, and afterwards to William Digby of Kettleby in the same county."—Bridge's Northants.

"A family named Perwich, who kept a boarding school for young ladies at Hackney after the Restoration, obtained celebrity on account of the beauty and accomplishments of Susanna Perwich, who was buried in the middle aisle of the church in 1661, having died 'in the twenty-fifth year of her age, of a fever she caught by sleeping in a damp bed.'"—Lottie's London. She was sung by a contemporary Calvinistic poet, who published a whole volume of lucubrations, entitled "The Virgin's Pattern," in her honour, and describes her as a paragon of perfection, "rarely accomplished," and rarely beautiful, with temples like "alabaster rocks," and "black, jetty, starry eyes."

Seint Clo: the old spelling of St. Lo or St. Laud, as found in Leland's Itinerary, where he speaks of the heiress of De la Rivers as "one of the Ladyes S. Clo." On a brass in Morley Church, Derbyshire, of somewhat earlier date (1481) it is "Seyn' clow.'"

The name is very ancient in England, though it was never included in the Baronage. "St. Lo or St. Laud, was near Coutances, Normandy, and was a barony. Simon de St. Laud, who had grants at the Conquest, witnessed a charter of William, Earl of Mortaine, in favour of Keynsham Abbey (Mon. ii. 299). The widow of Geoffry de St. Laud held from the Bishop of Winchester 1148 (Winton Domesday). Adam de St. Laud was Viscount of Lincoln 1278, and Ralph de St. Laud 1329. Thomas de St. Laud, 1297-1300, was returned as holding estates in Notts and Lincoln."—The Norman People. William de Sto Laudo held Witteham, Wilts, of Gocelin de Bayeux.—Testa de Nevill.

The principal house of St. Lo was seated in Somersetshire, where it gave its name to Newton-St. Lo. From how early a period they held it is not precisely known: but they "certainly had their habitation there in the reign of Richard I. And in the succeeding reign of King John, when such exorbitant sums of money were levied on the great men of the kingdom, to support the extravagance of that luxuriant monarch, we find the Sheriff accounting in the sum of one hundred pounds and two palfries, for the manors of Newton and Publow, the property of Roger de Sancto Laudo. This enormous demand, among other considerations, it is probable, induced this great man to take up arms with the rebellious barons against the King, whom, when his measures of reconciliation with his people failed, he is said to have some time detained a prisoner in one of the towers of his mansion here, which was embattled and otherwise fortified after the manner of a castle."—Collinson's Somerset.

He was followed by three generations of Sir Johns. The first was with Prince Edward in Palestine in 1271; the second summoned to follow him to the Scottish wars in 1299; and the third married the heiress of Alexander Cheverell, who brought him Maiden-Newton, where he had a charter of free-warren in 1382. Their son was a clerk named Edmund; but his heir and successor was again a Sir John, and "the last Lord of Newton of this name." His sole daughter and heir married Lord Botreaux; and the manor descended to her son and her grandson, the last Lord Botreaux; then passed through his daughter to the Hungerfords, and from them to the house of Hastings.

But the family was far from extinct. "From a younger brother of the Lords St. Lo descended Sir John St. Lo, who in the time of Henry VI. was Constable of Bristol Castle, and Keeper of Kingswood and Tilwood Forests. From the same branch were also descended the St. Los of Dorsetshire. These younger branches were possessed of many considerable estates in this county; but the ancient patrimonial estate merged in the families of Botreaux and Hungerford above mentioned."—Ibid.

When Leland wrote, another Sir John represented the family, and held the "several manors and lands co. Somerset and Gloucester" that had come to him from his namesake in the reign of Henry VI., besides Tormarton in the latter county, brought by the heiress of De la Rivers.

"Here" (at Southton village) "hath Syr John Saincte Lo an olde Maner Place 2. long Miles by hilly and enclosid Ground, meately well woodid.

"Syr John Saincte Lo descendit of a younger Brother of the Lordes Saincte Lo, and hath litle of his Landes. For the laste Lorde Saincte Lo lakking Heyres Male, the Landes descendid by Heyres generale onto the Lorde Hungreforde, and the Lorde Botreaux.

"A good Peace of Syr John Saincte Lo Landes cummith to hym by De la River's Doughter and Heyre his Father's Wife or Mother.

"There is a faire Maner Place like a Castelle Building at Newtoun Saincte Lo, 2. Miles from Bath by Avon, sumtyme one of the chief Houses of the Lordes Saincte Lo. The Lorde Hastinges Erie of Huntingdon hath it now.

"From Southetonne onto Chute a Mile dim. by fayre enclosid Ground. It is a praty Clothing Towne, and hath a faire Chirch.

"Syr John Saincte Lo Graundfather lyyth in a goodly Tumbe of Marble on the Northe Syde of the Chirche."

In the time of Elizabeth we find Sir William St. Lo, Captain of the Queen's Guard, and Grand Butler of England, seated at Tormarton, a prosperous gentleman of large fortune. But the whole of it passed away from his legitimate heirs. He became—in an evil hour for them—the third husband of the grasping Bess of Hardwick, then the widow of Sir William Cavendish, and solely intent on enriching herself and the children he had left her. She would only consent to marry St. Lo on condition that he settled upon her the whole of his great estate: which accordingly went, with the spoils of two other of her four husbands, to aggrandize the rising house of Cavendish. Not only his brother, but his own daughters by an earlier marriage, were thus cheated of their lawful inheritance.

The Dorsetshire branch is now the only one that survives, and has been seated at Fontmel Parva from the seventeenth century. The present house "was built, it is presumed, by Admiral Edward St. Loe, who is reported to have brought from Honduras the mahogany with which the hall is still panelled."—Hutchins' Dorset. He died s. p. in 1729, and was succeeded by his brother John. These St. Loes have added an e to their name, and three annulets to their coat of arms, for they bear Argent on a bend Sable, three annulets of the first; whereas Sir John St. Lo III. of Newton-St. Lo sealed in 1372 with a bend surmounted by a label of five points.

Tows :

or Tose. "Ricardo de Tous" witnesses the charter of the Lady Aaliza (Count Gilbert's mother) to Thorney Abbey. (Mon. Angli.) The name, as Tose, or Le Tous, is several times found in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95. They were probably seated in the Midland Counties, as Richard de Tus (was this the same Richard?) was High Sheriff of Oxon and Berks 7 and 10 John. Either this, or a very similar name, is found in Essex. "The manor of Tewes," says Morant, "is named from an owner. For Thomas de Tewes hath his name and arms in the east window of the north isle of the Church. The Arms are Azure, a fesse charged with three plates, between two chevronels, Argent. And, under them, this old French inscription, 'Ore p' le Almes Thomas de Tewes et Elizabeth lour femme.'" He held of the Honour of Clare; as did another of the family, Roger Tewe, probably his descendant, who died in 1483. He was Lord of Tendring in the same county: and "Joane wife of John Rokker, daughter of his son William Tewe, was his next heir,"—Ibid.

Several of the name are entered in the Rotuli Hundredorum, temp. Ed. I.; where we find Robert and John Thus, of Wiltshire; Walter Tuse of Suffolk; and Thomas and Laurence Tuse of Lincolnshire.

Talybois :

Here again we come upon a nick-name, clearly alluding to some long-forgotten feat of wood-craft or swordmanship. There is no saying whether, in a former age, Mr. Gladstone might not have been handed down to posterity as Taille-bois.

Four of the name—variously rendered in Domesday as Tallebosc, Talgebosc, and Tailgebosch, possessed estates in England in 1086. Ivo held a barony in Lincoln and Norfolk: Ralph and his daughter were likewise tenants in chief in Lincolnshire: and William an under tenant in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. The lion's share of these domains fell, as will be seen, to Ivo, who was Lord of the whole district of Hoyland or Holland. Nothing is actually known of them except that they were Angevins,^[150] and in one county history I find Ivo credited with the title of Earl of Angers, which certainly did not belong to him. He is chiefly important as the first husband of the mysterious Countess Lucy, whose much-disputed birth and parentage there is not sufficient evidence now remaining to determine. She certainly was not what Dugdale and all the older authorities make her out to have been—a sister of the great Saxon Earls Edwin and Morcar: the dates conclusively disprove this "amazing chronology." Mr. Planche shows that—supposing Ivo Taillebois to have died in 1114-15, as said—Lucy of Mercia would probably have been sixty years old at the very least, when "she became, hardly a month after the decease of her husband, the wife of that illustrious young man, Roger de Roumare, son of Gerald de Roumare," to whom she is said to have borne a son, William. Her father died in 1059; she was married previous to 1071, and was not then an heiress. After the second marriage (when between sixty and seventy years old) she is put down as taking a third husband, "by whom she had a small family." She survived this third help-mate, Ranulph de Bricasard, Earl of Chester, by about twenty years.

But if not Earl Elfgar's daughter, she was nevertheless of the royal blood of Mercia, for her descendants the Earls of Chester claimed kinship with it in her right. "Mr. Nichols has made it clear in the Lincoln volume of the Archaeological Institute (255) that she was a kinswoman at once of William Malet and of the Sheriff Thorold, the alleged brother of the famous Godgifu" (better known as Godiva) "who appears as Ivo's antecessor in p. 351 (Domesd)."—Freeman. Were there not in reality, as he plausibly suggests, two Countesses Lucy, mother and daughter?

Ivo Taillebois, the first husband of this centenarian heiress, was a great prince in Lincolnshire, holding his court with all due pomp and splendour
at his castle of Spalding. He was actively engaged in the warfare against Hereward, by whom he was once taken prisoner; and among other devices for subduing the Isle of Ely, a witch was, by his advice, placed in a wooden tower commanding the contested causeway, to try the effect of her spells. But Hereward was not to be daunted by witchcraft; he contrived to set fire to the structure, and burnt the poor pythoness in her tower. Ivo was a liberal benefactor of Spalding Priory, not only confirming the grants of its founder, his antecessor Thorold the Sheriff, but adding valuable gifts of his own, and bestowed it as a cell on an Abbey in his native province, St. Nicholas of Angiers. He thus incurred the undying hostility of his neighbour, Abbot Ingulphus of Croyland, who laid claim to its jurisdiction, and brands him in his Chronicle as a tyrant and a spoliator.^[151] Numerous and grievous are the charges brought against him. Some monks from Croyland that had previously joined the community at Spalding were displaced by others brought over from Angiers; he wrested from the Abbot a great part of his demesne: maimed and cropped his cattle, and hunted them with his dogs into the deep waters of the fens, where they were drowned. Ingulf further declares that he was outlawed in the latter part of the Red King's reign, and "does not mention his ever being restored to favour. Yet it is certain that his influence was very considerable in the early part of Henry I.'s reign; for in 1107 he prevailed on the King to confirm the grant of the manor of Spalding to the monks of his favourite Abbey in Anjou. About 1114, he died of a paralytic stroke, and his widow, within one month, re-married Roger de Roumare. He left no issue: but his estate, being his wife's inheritance, came with her to the first Earls of this county."—Allen's Lincolnshire. He had survived the sole issue of his marriage with the Countess Lucy, Beatrix, the wife of Ribald of Middleham, brother of Alan, Earl of the East Angles. In this, Peter de Blois piously recognizes the special interposition of Providence. Ivo and Lucy's "only daughter, who had been nobly espoused, died before her father; for that evil shoots should not fix deep roots in the world, the accursed lineage of that wicked man perished by the axe of the Almighty, which cut off all his issue."

Yet here once more we are left in a dilemma; for the fact from which the moral is drawn is by no means certain. The register of Cockersand Abbey, Lancashire, distinctly states that Ethelred or Eldred, ancestor of the Barons of Kendal, was the son of Ivo Tailbois, a great benefactor of St. Mary's, York. (Mon. ii. p. 636.) He is presumed to have been born of a previous marriage (though Mr. Ellis pronounces this "most unlikely"): or it may have been another Ivo Talbois who was his father, and bestowed on St. Mary's all the gifts detailed in the Monasticon. Dugdale, however, concludes in favour of
their identity, and is duly followed by the county historians. "In tracing the barony of Lancaster, we find the founder of this illustrious house to have been Ivo de Tailbois of the House of Anjou, who, in virtue of his marriage with the sister of the Saxon Earls, Edwin and Morcar, seconded by the favour of his prince, obtained a large portion of the north of Lancashire, and as much of Westmorland as comes under the designation of the barony of Kendal. The Richmond Fee, the Marquis Fee, and the Lumley Fee, formed portions of this barony; and William, the great-great-grandson of Ivo de Talbois, first caused himself, by Royal license, to be called William de Lancaster and Baron of Kendal before the King in Parliament."—Bain's Lancashire. According to another authority (Nicolson and Burn's Westmorland) the barony never belonged to Ivo at all. It had been originally vested in Roger de Poitou; and it was not till 1106, or five years after his forfeiture and banishment, that it devolved, by Royal grant, on Eldred. His descendant, William Tailbois, took the name of Lancaster as Constable of Lancaster Castle, and was the father of a second William, who was Steward of the Household to Henry II. I have purposely omitted the pedigree given by Dugdale, which crowds in four generations; for it seems chronologically impossible that Eldred, living in 1106, should have been the great-great-grandfather of the man who presided over the household of a prince whose reign ended in 1189.

The first William de Lancaster married the widowed Countess of Warwick, Gundreda de Warrenne; and is gratefully commemorated as the benefactor of many religious houses, above all of Conyngshead Priory in Lancashire, of which some assert that he was the actual founder. William II. (above mentioned) was his only son, and the last of the line. He is recorded to have given Henry II. "30 marks that he might have a duel with Gospatrick the son of Orme his kinsman"; but for what cause and with what result we are left in ignorance. This Orme, a younger son of Ketel, second Baron of Kendal, was the founder of a family that survived in the male line till 1790, the Curwens of Workington in. Westmorland.

William II. had taken to wife Helewise de Stuteville, and left a daughter, named after her mother, whom Cosur de Lion, not long after his coronation, gave in marriage to Gilbert, son of Roger Fitz Reinfrid, one of the Justices of his Bench. Helewise brought her fortunate husband the whole Barony of Kendal with all its ancient forest rights and great feudal privileges, which were confirmed to him anew by charter: and King John further granted him the custody of the Honour of Lancaster for life. But his line, too, was doomed to collapse. His one legitimate son, William de Lancaster, died s. p., and the barony was divided between his two daughters, Helewise de Brus and Alice de Lindesey. A third sister, Serota de Multon, had died without children. The Brus' had for their share the Marquess and Lumley Fees; and the Lindeseys the Richmond Fee.

Gilbert had, however, a bastard son, Roger, married to a Northumberland heiress, who was a baron by writ in 1299; but he, again, left no issue.

A branch of the first Barons of Kendal remained seated at Cliburn, named from them Cliburn-Talebois; but after the time of Henry V. we no further meet with the name of Talebois. It ended in a daughter, Elizabeth, married to Robert le Franceys of Cliburn."—Nicolson and Burn's Westmorland.

Ivo Taillebois—evidently a cadet of the same house, was Chamberlain to Robert de Vipont, Lord of Westmorland, in the time of King John, and in 1206 obtained the Royal license to marry the widow of William Bardolph, Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of William Fitz William, Lord of Cokedale in Northumberland. Among other possessions, he held Hurworth-on-Tees, co. Durham, in her right; and their son again married an heiress. The next, Lucas, Sheriff of Northumberland in 1300, was the grandfather of Henry Tailboys, whose wife Eleanor, daughter and heir of Gilbert de Boroden, brought into the family the lion's share of the great heritage of the Umfrevilles. Her mother, Elizabeth de Umfreville, was the only daughter of Robert Earl of Angus, by his first wife Lucy, sole heiress of William de Kyme, the last baron of that name. Elizabeth's own brother, Gilbert, second Earl, died in 1381, having survived his son and the eldest of his two half-brothers, neither of whom left children, and another half-brother, Sir Thomas, succeeded to the estates. He transmitted them to his heirs; and it was not till the lineage died out in 1436, that, by virtue of an old entail, the principal part reverted to Elizabeth's great grandson, Sir Walter Tailbois. He inherited the castle and manor of Harbottle, the manor of Otterburn, and the lordship of Redesdale in Northumberland, with the castle and seigneurie of Kyme in Lincolnshire, which, unaccountably enough, had passed to Earl Gilbert's half-brother, though he was not the son of the heiress of Kyme.^[152] It was a noble possession in every sense of the word; but was lost by attainder within the next twenty-four years. Sir Walter's son Sir William, titular Earl of Kyme,^[153] was a faithful partisan of the Red Rose, and followed its waning fortunes with unflinching loyalty to the last. He was with the Earl of Somerset on the disastrous day at Hexham Levels, when the Lancastrians, encountering the Yorkshire army under Lord Montagu, fresh from its victory at Hedgely Moor, were put to utter rout. He fled to the fastnesses of his own wild country of Redesdale, but was taken prisoner, and beheaded at Newcastle in 1461. He had been attainted in the preceding year.

Eleven years after his execution, however, his son Sir Robert was restored in blood by the clemency of Edward IV. (though Harbottle remained vested in the Crown): and the next heir, Sir George, served as Sheriff of Northumberland in 1495. He married Elizabeth Gascoyne, and was the father of four sons, of whom John and Walter died s. p., William became a priest, and Gilbert was summoned to parliament as Lord Tailbois of Kyme in 1529. There can be little doubt that he owed his elevation to his wife, Elizabeth Blount, "the beauty and mistress-piece of the time," who had been a paramour of Henry VIII.'s in the early days of his "freshe youthe." She had a son by the King, born ten years before, a, fine promising lad on whom honours had been heaped from his very infancy. He was Duke of Richmond and Surrey and Lord High Admiral of England at the tender age of six, Warden of the Scottish Marches at eight, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at eleven! Men supposed him to be reserved for an even loftier destiny, as his father was said to contemplate his nomination as successor to the throne, which the Act of Succession, passed in 1536, was intended to facilitate. But he died—it is believed of poison, a few months afterwards.

Gilbert Lord Tailbois only survived his writ of summons by a single year; and at his death left three children who successively inherited the barony. The two sons died young—the last of them in 1540; and their sister Elizabeth Lady Tailbois, though twice married, left no posterity. Her first husband was Thomas Wimbish of Norton in Lincolnshire: the second Ambrose Dudley Earl of Warwick, the brother-in-law of Lady Jane Grey. "On her death, the barony created by the writ of summons to her father became extinct: but such interest as he had in the ancient barony of Kyme devolved in abeyance between his three sisters, or their heirs representative: of which sisters, Elizabeth married Sir Christopher Willoughby; Cecilia married first William Ingleby of Ripley in Yorkshire, and secondly John Torney; Anne married first Sir Edward Dymoke, and secondly Sir Robert Carr. In the partition of the lands, the old castle of Kyme came into the Dymoke family, and long continued in it, till in the last century it was alienated into the possession of strangers.

"It is here to be observed that Mr. Wimbish, having married the daughter and heir of Gilbert Lord Tailbois, claimed to be jure uxoris Lord Tailbois; but upon solemn argument, the King himself being present, it was resolved—

"That no man, husband of a baroness, in her right should use the title of her dignity until he had a child by her, whereby he should become tenant by curtesy of her barony.

"On this occasion it is said that the King moved this question, viz.: 'If the crown of England should descend to his daughter, whether her husband should use the style of England?'"—Banks.

The name continued in the co. Durham, where "a younger branch of Tailbois of Hurworth is said to have held Thornton from marriage with its heiress; but I am unable to trace the descent with any accuracy. The last Tailbois of Thornton (who married a daughter of Barnes, Bishop of Durham) died a prisoner in Durham gaol in 1606."—Surtees' Durham.

Tauers :

Hugh and Robert Tavers occur in Lincolnshire in the Hundred Rolls of Edward I.; but there, as here, this is simply a contraction of Travers.
There is, however, a place called Tavers, on the banks of the Loire.

Vmframuile :

or Umfraville; "a Norman baronial name. The original seat was at Amfreville, in the Viscountcy of Evreux, which was held by the service of two knight's fees (Feod. Norm. Duchesne). This family came to England at the Conquest; but a branch remained at Normandy, descended from Walter de Umfreville, who was at the battle of Gisors 1097 (Orderic Vitalis, 767)."—The Norman People. The first Umfreville who came to this country—Robert with the Beard—was Lord of Tour and Vian in Normandy, and had a grant from the Conqueror of the barony of Prudhoe, and the valley, forest, and lordship of Redesdale, to be held by the service of defending his territory against thieves and wolves with the same sword with which William entered Northumberland. It was a tenure of fearful omen, for the King had gone down to the North as the harbinger of wrath, swearing that he would sweep the rebellious Northumbrians from the face of the earth, and had mercilessly kept his word. "The vast tract between the Humber and the Tyne was left without a single habitation, the refuge only of wild beasts and robbers; and William of Malmesbury states that it remained barren and desolate to his time, nearly a century afterwards. More than 100,000 persons perished by sword and famine."—Mackenzie. This terrible sword was seldom in its sheath, for "the warlike Umfrevilles" thoroughly earned their designation. No Border barons were more constantly in the saddle, or more eager at the call of the slogan; none so busied in the unceasing turmoil of the Marcher feuds, or so fierce and dauntless in their life-long warfare against the Scots. They had full jurisdiction within their spacious domain, and needed to be powerful as well as brave, for they had to hold the castles of Harbottle and Otterburn in addition to their great stronghold of Prudhoe, so gallantly defended against William the Lion in 1170. After many fruitless assaults, the Scottish King had to raise the siege and retreat homewards, and was taken prisoner on his march to Alnwick by Odonel de Umfreville and Bernard Baliol. Odonel's grandson, Richard, had the right of "preventing all persons from grazing, hunting, or cutting down timbers in the Forest of Redesdale" granted to him by King John in 1203. Nine years later, the times being threatening and his temper suspected, he had to deliver up his four sons in hostage, and pledge his castle of Prudhoe as security for his loyalty, on the condition that it should be forfeited if he transgressed, and himself dealt with as a traitor. Yet no sooner had the barons taken up arms than Umfreville appeared in their midst. His lands and castles were forthwith granted to Baliol, and though they were restored to him by Henry III., it is clear that he was little trusted, for the King soon after issued a precept to the Sheriff of Northumberland, directing him to empannel a jury of twelve knights to inspect some new buildings at Harbottle, and to demolish all that bore the semblance of fortifications. The next heir, Gilbert II. (there had been an ancestor of the same name), Warden of the Marches, whom Matthew Paris styles "the famous Baron, the Flower and Keeper of the Northern parts of England," married in 1243 Maud, in her own right Countess of Angus, and died two years afterwards, leaving a little son, Gilbert III., who in his "tender years" was inward to Simon de Montfort, the famous Earl of Leicester. He joined in his guardian's rebellion, but made his peace before the battle of Evesham, and chose this auspicious moment for obtaining certain immunities from the Crown. Edward I. constituted him Constable of Forfar, and Governor of the whole territory of Angus, and summoned him to parliament in 1295 as Baron Umfreville, and then, in right of his mother, as "Comitr de Anggos" in 1297. "The sages of the common law at that time," as Banks terms them, demurred at the title, "inasmuch as Angus was not within the realm of England," and refused to acknowledge him as an Earl until the King's writ had been produced in open court. Robert, second Earl, a soldier of great note in the Scottish wars, was one of the three powerful nobles chosen as joint Regents of Scotland, and subsequently employed to treat for peace with Robert Bruce. He was twice married first, to Lucy de Kyme, the daughter of Philip, Lord Kyme, and in the end sole heiress to her brother William, by whom he had one son, Gilbert IV., third Earl; and one daughter, Elizabeth, married to Sir Gilbert Borrowden (or Burdon) whose only child, Alianor Talbois, became the heir general of the family. The Earl's second wife, Eleanor * * * * (her surname is lost) brought him two other sons: 1, Sir Robert, who was married, but died s. p. during his brother Gilbert's lifetime; and 2, Sir Thomas, of whom presently.

Earl Gilbert IV. succeeded his father when he was but fifteen years old. He, too, was often in the wars of Scotland, and one of the leaders at the battle of Durham, where, for the second time, a Scottish king was made prisoner on the soil that he had invaded. He married the heiress of the Lucies, Maud, sister of Anthony, the last of those great Northern barons, and died in 1381, having survived his only son. This son, Sir Robert de Umfreville, "had been married to Margaret, daughter of Henry, the second Lord Percy of Alnwick, but without issue. It seems to have been in consequence of the settlement made on this marriage, that the Castle and Barony of Prudhoe descended to the Percies, and that, after the death of Earl Gilbert, his widow the Countess Maude enjoyed it for her life. She married to her second husband Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland, who after her death entered into full possession of the Castle and Barony with all its appendages, and the same continued in his posterity without any other interruption except what was occasioned by the attainders in different periods."—Hodgson's Northumberland. They are now held by his representative, the Duke of Northumberland. In 1816, Lord Algernon Percy was created Baron Prudhoe, of Prudhoe Castle, and bore the title till he succeeded to the Dukedom. It expired at his death in 1865.

Thus, by a cruel and wanton act of injustice, the great Barony of Prudhoe passed to a stranger in blood, and the rightful heirs were utterly ignored. These were the last Earl's nephews, the two sons of his half-brother, Sir Thomas (see ante). This Thomas married Joan, variously called Joan de Roddam and Joan de Willoughby, and had by her, 1, Annora, married to Stephen Waleys; 2, Sir Robert (by some authorities called the younger son, as seems most probable); and 3, Sir Thomas, Lord of Harbottle and Otterburn in Northumberland, and Holmside and Whitby in the county of Durham, who served as a knight of the shire for Northumberland in 1388 and 1389, and died in 1390, leaving four daughters, and a son then but twenty-eight weeks old. Sir Gilbert, the son (sometimes styled the Earl of Kyme), married Lady Anne Nevill, daughter of Ralph, first Earl of Westmorland, and was slain in 1421 in the wars of Anjou, leaving no posterity. But he had, as I have already said, four sisters, Elizabeth, Agnes, Joan, and Margaret, all of whom were married (three of them more than once); and there was consequently no lack of co-heiresses. According to Surtees, Sir Robert, their father's brother (who himself succeeded to Harbottle and the Lordship of Redesdale), selected from amongst them the eldest, Elizabeth (or Isabel), then the wife of Rowland Tempest, her second husband, as the heiress of the Durham estates; "by whose goodes, landes, and gyftes," says her grateful descendant, "wee, the Tempests of Holmsett, were first advanced to honest and substantial living in these partes of Duresme."

The above-named Sir Robert, who thus remained the last heir-male, was a Knight of the Garter, and Vice Admiral of England in 1410. Stowe tells us "he brought such plenty of clothes and corn, and other valuable commodities from Scotland, that he was called Robin Mendmarket; other writers say, that he sold the Scots round pennyworths of their own goods, taken in plunder." He married the widow of his uncle and namesake, Earl Gilbert's half-brother, with whom he is often confounded by the genealogists; and like him, is generally reported to have died childless. But a curious and circumstantial pedigree given in Mackenzie's History of Northumberland (vol. ii. p. 367), which I have here followed, asserts that he had a son of the name of William; adding, "It is recorded that, coming with this son to Missenden, in the county of Berks, he became a monk in the monastery there." Unless another grievous wrong was here perpetrated, it is difficult to believe that the son was born in wedlock; for, at his father's death in 1436, the castles and manors of Harbottle and Otterburn passed, by virtue of an entail, to Sir Walter Talboys; and he himself "was left with the Abbot of Missenden." Some property in and near Missenden was, it is further said, for many years held by the family. From this apparently unacknowledged and despoiled William the descent is clearly and minutely made out, though his posterity never emerged from the ranks of the smaller gentry, and gradually sunk lower and lower in the world. One was knighted by Charles II.; another was a captain of dragoons in the Earl of Essex's regiment in the time of Queen Anne; till, towards the latter part of the last century, we find another William Umfreville, the younger and only survivor of three brothers, a chandler in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Neither of the two elder ones left any children; but he had several daughters and one son, born in 1784, who, after his death, were supported by the industry of their widowed mother. The then Duke of Northumberland, hearing that a lineal male descendant of the baronial Umfrevilles was still in existence, sent to Newcastle for the boy, who was then about fourteen, and provided for him in the navy. He served under Lord Exmouth in the East Indies; eventually rose to the rank of a captain; and when placed on half pay, returned to end his days in his native county, and was buried in the tomb of the Umfrevilles in Hexham Church. He was "much regretted by all who knew his open, frank, and generous disposition;" but it must, alas! be added that this last heir to a name of such old renown, who should have taken his place in the House of Lords as Baron Umfreville,^[154] died of hard drinking. He still possessed a sword given by Henry V. to his ancestor the Vice Admiral, which, after Mrs. Umfreville's death, was sent to Alnwick Castle.

There were also Umfrevilles in the West of England, but they bore different arms from the Northumberland family. Gilbert de Humfravilla was one of the twelve knights who helped Robert FitzHamon to conquer Glamorgan; and Robert de Umfraville, in the time of Henry I., witnessed the foundation charter of Neath Abbey (Mon. i. 719). They gave their name to Doun-Umfraville in Devonshire, and were seated at Lepford, a parcel of the Honour of Torrington in that county, which had come to them through one of the co-heiresses of the last Lord of Torrington. I cannot find when they became extinct; but Lysons tells us that their heiresses married Furneaux and St. John.

In Wales the descendants of Gilbert de Umfreville continued at Penmark, the original grant made to him by Robert FitzHamon, till the reign of Edward III.

Waledger :

probably Warenger. Roger de Warenger held lands in Norfolk and Suffolk 1086; and is perhaps the same Warenger also mentioned in Domesday, who had possessions in Dorsetshire. The under-tenant of Roger Bigod, at Pebmarsh in Essex, "was one Garengey."—Morant, This also was at the time of the great Survey. Robert and Henry le Warencer were of Huntingdonshire c. 1272.—Rot. Hundred.

Avenele :

Sires de Biard, or Es-Biard, one of the great names of Normandy. The Roman de Rou gives it twice; first as the compeer of the powerful Lord of Avranches:

"D'Avrencin i fu Richarz,
Ensemble od li cil de Biarz:"

and again, further on—

"Des Biarz i fu Avenals."

Biarz or Biard, now Les Biards, is in the canton of Isigny, arrondissement of Mortaine; and the Avenels were hereditary Seneschals of the Counts of Mortaine. They held their fief by the service of five knights in the Viscountcy of Cerences. According to Vincent de Beauvais, a thirteenth-century writer of dubious authority, they descended from Harold the Dane, a kinsman and companion-in-arms of the first Duke Rollo. Be this as it may, they were, at all events, of great account in the ensuing century. Hugh de Roceto, in 1030, granted the church of Ste. Marie de Beleme to Marmoutier Abbey, with the consent (among many others) of his kinsman, Herve de Braviard, Buiard, or Biard. In a subsequent charter of 1067, Herve appears again, together with a Sigembert-de-Es-Biarz, probably his son or nephew. He was, in any case the father of Osmellinus qui cognominabatur Avenellus, mentioned in 1060 in a charter of Robert de Say, whose sons succeeded to Sigembert's estate, and took from it the name of Biarz. There were five, if not six, of these brothers. The eldest was William the Seneschal, who followed his Count to England, and fought at Hastings, but is believed to have returned to Normandy unrewarded. The elder line of his descendants held Biarz till they died out in 1258: and several branches of the family are still to be found in Brittany as well as in Normandy.—Recherches sur le Domesday.

The name of Avenel is written in Domesday, but only as an insignificant under-tenant of Roger de Montgomeri; and "we have every right to be surprised at the Conqueror's parcimony to this powerful family."—Ibid. It is clear however, that they owned a great territory in Derbyshire not long after; for "Avenel Haddon" (William Avenel in another deed) is one of the witnesses of the foundation charter of Lenton Priory in the time of Henry I.; and, by a separate charter, bestowed upon it two manors belonging to his own domain of Haddon. In 1169, Robert Avenel witnessed another donation to this Priory, and the foundation charter of Welbeck Abbey. This may have been the same Robert Avenel des Biarz whose name is appended to a charter granted in 1158 at Tinchebray by the Count de Mortaine to the nuns of Mouton; but the family was exceptionally numerous, and the coat of arms, of Avenel of Had don, Gules six amulets Argent, does not bear the faintest resemblance to that of the Sires de Biarz, chef de la branche mere, who bore De gueules a trots aigles d'argent. In the following century, Alice, the heiress of William Avenel, brought to the Vernons the vast domain that earned for the last of its Lords the title of "King of the Peak," with Mont Meland, Goriz, Auvers, Rovistrat, &c, in Normandy.

Many fragmentary notices of the family are to be found scattered about the country, and prove that, despite the alleged niggardliness of the Conqueror, they had become considerable land-owners. The Liber Niger mentions Avenels in Bedfordshire. John de Avenel, jointly with two others, was Sheriff of Gloucester 1187, '88, '89: and must have been the father of William de Avenel of the same county, who was a banneret in the time of King John. They bore the six annulets of the house of Haddon. William de Avenel (perhaps the same?) in the following reign served as knight of the shire for Cambridge, where his name is preserved by Avenel's Manor; and "held Barford-St.-Martin in capite of the King. But in the ensuing reign his estates devolved to the Crown by the attainder of Nicholas Avenel for felony."—Hoare's Wilts. This Nicholas was Custos of Graveley Forest. Gamlinghay was "the habitation formerly of the Avenels" in Cambridgeshire, "whose estate came by marriage to the ancient family of St. George."—Camden's Britannia. In the time of Henry II., Gilbert de Avenel received Gnipton in Leicestershire from his brother William de Hareston. His posterity continued there till 30 Ed. III., when the last heir-male, another Gilbert, died, leaving two daughters co-heiresses.—Nichols' Leicestershire. Galfrid de Avenel was Lord of Lokesbere temp. Hen. II., and "it continued in the name till Hen. VI. time."—Pole's Devon. Eleanor, daughter and heir of John Avenel, brought it to Edward Richards. Another branch, seated at Blackpool in the same county, ended about 1450 with three co-heiresses, married to Huyshe of Sand, Wykes of North Wykes, and Holcombe. These Devonshire Avenels bore Argent five fusils in fesse Sable between two cotises Gules. One of them, Randolf Avenel, married Adeliza, daughter of Baldwin de Meules or de Brionne, who in her own right was Baroness of Okehampton and Hereditary Sheriffess of Exeter, but she brought him only a daughter named Maud, through whose co-heiresses the barony passed to the Courtenays. "Langton Avery," in Dorsetshire, "was probably a corruption of Langton Avenel, so called from the earliest lords of it of whom we find any mention." Peter de Avenel, the son of Robert, was living 15 John, and claimed the advowson against Robert's granddaughter Matilda and her husband William FitzGerold.—Hutchins' Dorset.

On the other side of the Border, the Avenels held one of the most important of the Marcher baronies. Robert Avenel, the first Lord of Eskdale, was for a short time Justiciary of Lothian, and received his lands from David I., whom he probably accompanied to Scotland. He died a monk of Melrose in 1185, having been one of the principal benefactors of the Abbey. His daughter was the paramour of William the Lion, to whom she bore a daughter named Isabel, the wife of Robert Bruce. His son Gervase confirmed his grants to Melrose; but his grandson Robert disputed them, and had a fierce contest with the monks, which was decided in their favour by the King in person in 1235.—v. Monastic Annals of Teviotdale. With this Robert the line ended in 1243; and "his great domain passed to his son-in-law, Henry de Graham, one of the Magnates Scotiae in the parliament held at Scone in 1283."—Wood's Peerage. Gervase Avenel was among the hostages to the King in 1219, obsides regis Scotiae.

Adryelle :

perhaps this should be Aurielle, a seigneurie mentioned by Anselme. I cannot find the name in England.

Aimeris :

Adam and Nicholas Haimeri are entered in the Magni Rotuli Scaccariae Normanniae, 1198-1200; and the Seigneurie of Aymeries is more than once mentioned by Anselme. Richard Demeri held of Alured de Hispania at Isle Brewers, Somerset (Domesday); but I have failed in finding any notice of his descendants.

Ailmerus, or Ailmarus, is also twice entered in Domesday as a Christian name. Ailmerus Filius Godwini was the son of the Danish thane, Godwin Haldane, said to have been the only Norfolk landowner left undisturbed by the Conqueror; and Ailmarus was an unknown sub-tenant of William Fitz Corbucion in Warwickshire.

We subsequently meet with Aymery, as a surname, in the pages of Froissart: "The same season, Sir John Aymery, the greatest captain that we had, rode forth, costing the ryver of Loire to come to Charite, and he was encoutred by a busshment of the lorde Rugemot and the lorde of Wodnay" (Vendelay), "and by some of the archprestes men; they were farre stronger than he, and so there he was taken and overthrown, and raunsomed to a xxx thousand frankes, which he payed incontinent. Of his takyng and losse he was sore displeased, and sware that he wolde neuer entre into his owne garyson tyll he had won agayne as moche as he had lost. Than he assembled togyder a great nombre of companyons, and came to Charite on Loyre, and desyred vs all to ryde forthe with hym: we demaunded of hym wheder he wolde ryde? By my faithe, quod he, we wyll passe ye ryuer of Loyre at sainte Thybalde, and lette us scale and assaile the towne and castell of Saxere, for I have sworne and auowed, that I wyll nat entre into no fortresse that I have, tyll I haue sene the chyldren of Saxere; and if we may gette that garyson, and the erles chyldren within, John, Loys, and Robert, then we shall be well revenged, and therby we shall be lordes of the countre; and I thynke we shall lightly come to oure entent, for they take no hede of vs, and this lyeng styll here doth vs no maner of profyte." All agreed to go; but the plan was betrayed to the castellan of Sauxerre by his brother, a monk who had come to Charite to treat for some ransoms; and when they had crossed the Loire, the French lay in wait for them. "We were over by midnight; and, bycause ye daye came on, we ordayned a hundred speares to abyde there to keepe oure horses and boates, and the remyaunt of vs passed forthe foreby the frenche busshment. When we were past a quarter of a myle, then they brake oute of their busshment, and rode to them that we had lefte behind vs at the ryver syde; and anone they had discomfited them and all slayne or taken, and our horses wonne, and the boates arested: and then they mounted on our horses, and came after vs on the spurres, and were as soone in the towne as we; they cryed Our Lady of Saxerre: for the erle was there hymselfe with his men; and his brethren, Sir Loys and Sir Robert, had made the busshement. So thus we were inclosed on all partes; for they a-horsebacke, assoone as they came to vs, they alighted afote, and assayled us fiersly: and the thynge that moste greeved vs was, we coulde nat enlarge ourselfe to fight, we were in suche a narowe waye, closed on both sides with hay, hedges, and vynyardes, and they dyd hurt us sore with castyng of stones, and we coude nat go backe, and moche payne to gette to the towne, it stode so hygh on a mountayne: and Sir John Aymery was hurt, our soveraign capitayn, by the handes of Sir Guyssart Albigon, who toke him prisoner, and had moche ado to save his lyfe; he put hym into a house in the towne, and made hym to be layde on a bedde, and sayd to the owner of the house, Kepe well this prisoner, and se his woundes staunched, for if he lyve, he shall pay me xx thousande frankes; and so Sir Guyssart left his prisoner, and retourned to the batayle, and quytte himselfe lyke a good man of armes." But he lost his poor prisoner "by neglygence; he bledde so sore, that he dyed for defaute of lokyng vnto. Thus ended Johan Amery, by this iourney that was thus done besyde Sauxerre."

Biard :

or Biars; the Norman seigneurie of the Avenels. See Avenele.

Biford :

apparently an English local name, derived from Beeford or Beeforth (Biuuorde in Domesday) in Holderness. Baldwin de Biford, between 1182 and 1189, "gave as much land on each side of their grange on the moor as was equal to the previous grant of Acer de Biford to Beverley Abbey; Nicholas, his son, gave an oxgang and a toft in Beeford; and Stephen, son of Thomas de Biford, the same."—Poulson's Holderness. Unless this stands for the "Buffard" of Holinshed's list (see vol. i., p. 182), this must necessarily be an interpolation.

Biroune :

"from Beuron, near Mantes, Normandy, which seems to have been the appanage of a younger branch of the Tessons."—The Norman People. Erneis de Buron appears in Domesday, as a great landowner in York and Lincoln; Ralph de Biron, at the same time, held a barony in Notts and Derby, and had his castle in the latter county. How they were related to each other is not positively known, but they were probably brothers; and it is from Ralph that the Barons Byron descend. His posterity remained seated at Horestan Castle for three generations, till Robert de Biron married the heiress of Clayton, and they removed into Lancashire. In 1540, Sir John Byron (nephew of another Sir John who had been knighted by Henry VII.'s own hand on the field of Bosworth) had a grant of Newstead Priory, where the family thenceforward took up their abode. In the civil wars of the following century, no less than seven brothers of the name were in arms for King Charles. The elder, Sir John, had already served in the wars of the Low Countries, and when the Royal standard was raised at Nottingham, brought to it a "good body of men with arms and ammunition," and a considerable sum of money. He fought at Powick Bridge, Edgehill, and Roundway Down, where, charging at the head of his regiment, he put to rout Sir Arthur Hesilrigge's far-famed "impenetrable" cuirassiers; and in 1643 was "for his courage and military conduct created Lord Byron of Rochdale in com. Lancaster," with special remainder to all his "six valiant brothers." Soon after, he was appointed Field-Marshal General of all His Majesty's forces in the counties of Worcester, Salop, Chester, and North Wales; and held Chester gallantly during a long and severe siege, "keeping both town and garrison contented with cats and dogs, and those failing, but with one meal in three days" as long as any hope of relief remained. Many attempts were made to come to his aid, but none of them succeeded; and he had at length to surrender the place in 1645, on terms "the most honourable for himself and the whole garrison that were given in England, except those he afterwards gained at Carnarvon." This was in the following year, when he was commanding in Conway, and stood a second but much briefer siege. Charles I. afterwards named him Governor to the Duke of York, and he died at Paris before the Restoration, leaving no children. The title passed to his next brother, Richard, "one of those valiant colonels in the fight of Edgehill"; and though the Byrons, in common with the rest of the Royalist nobility, had "suffered much for their loyalty, and lost all their fortunes, yet it pleased God so to bless the honest endeavours of the said Richard Lord Byron, that he repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his posterity, with a laudable memory for great piety and charity."^[155] Fourth in descent from him was George Gordon Byron, who succeeded as sixth Lord in 1798, and gave a lustre to his ancient name that had never yet belonged to it. It was, however, said of him, with some truth, that "he was prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of 'Childe Harold' and of 'Manfred.'" His father, Captain Byron, had been a wild and reckless prodigal, who first carried off the wife of Lord Carmarthen (see Arcy), and after her death married a Scottish heiress, Miss Gordon of Gight, whose fortune was so completely swallowed up by his debts that she was obliged to sell her whole estate to Lord Haddo only a year after their marriage. He died in 1791, leaving his widow and only son in bitter poverty, till the latter, when about ten years old, succeeded his great-uncle in the title and family property. Unfortunately, this great-uncle (the same Lord Byron who killed his neighbour and relative Mr. Chaworth in a duel: see Chaworth) was a man of wayward and violent temper,^[156] who "being at enmity with his son, resolved out of spite, that the estate should descend to him in as miserable a plight as he could possibly reduce it to, took no care of the mansion, and fell to lopping every tree he could lay his hands on." The hated son died before his father, and the punishment intended for him devolved upon the future poet, who thus found his inheritance injured and despoiled. As he grew to manhood, the young lord's own extravagance further burdened the impoverished estate; by the time he was of age, he already declared himself "ruined;" and a few years later, pressed by his creditors, he was reduced to sell his old family seat of Newstead. Though it was decayed and dilapidated through long neglect, he was both fond and proud of his home, and "it cost me," he writes to Moore, "more than words to part with it."^[157] He endeavoured, as his father had done, to remedy his fortunes by a rich marriage; but it proved so unhappy that, at the end of a year, Lady Byron found herself obliged to return to the shelter of her father's roof; and his pecuniary difficulties were so far from being relieved, that during this short time there had been nine or ten executions in his house. Not many months after, he bade farewell to England for ever, and ended his life abroad, leaving an only child who became Countess of Lovelace. The barony was inherited by a distant cousin, whose grandson now represents the family.

Briansoun :

"De Briancon, from a place so named in Dauphiny. Thomas de Briancon occurs in London and Middlesex 1189 (Rot. Pip.). Giles de Brianzon was returned for Essex and Sussex to the great Council 1324, and had a writ of summons to pass into Guienne 1325, under command of Earl Warrenne, and was Commissioner of Array in Surrey and Sussex."—(Palgrave's Parl. Writs.) The Norman People. The De Briancons were Lords of Varces, and used the name as their cri de guerre. There is a common saying in Dauphiny:

"Arces, Varces, Granges, et Commiers;
Tel les regarde qui ne les ose toucher,
Mais gare la queue des Allemans et des Berengers."

They were seated at West-Thurrock in Essex, "probably received," says Morant, "of the gift of the Crown," as early as the reign of Henry II.; and in the following century were transferred to Avvelers (Alveley) in the same county through the marriage of the heiress with Bartholomew de Brianzon, who held it of the King in capite. His sons William and John succeeded him; and John's son Sir John (apparently also the heir of Giles de Brianzon) was the last of his race. He died in 1337; and his only child, Joan, only survived him two years: "it is not said who was her next heir."—Morant. "Bartholew de Briancun" is entered in the Camden Roll as bearing Gyronny of ten, Argent and Azure.

Robert de Brienton (Briancon?) occurs in the Liber Niger as an under-tenant in Staffordshire. Ralph de Breinzun witnesses a charter of Walter de Clifford to Dore Abbey in Herefordshire (Mon. Angl.).

Benny :

for Beaunay, from the fief so named in Normandy. John de Beaunay is mentioned by Orderic at the battle of Mortemer in 1055; and in 1080 Bernard de Beaunay, with Robert Malet and other Norman lords, witnessed a deed of William de Ros, third Abbot of Fecamp. They bore Barry of six, Or and Azure. The family still existed in the last century, when the Chevalier de Beaunay took his place among the Norman nobles in the Assembly of 1789.

Jordan de Belnai, in 1165, held two fees of Earl Walter Giffard, in Buckinghamshire.—Liber Niger. Hugh de Belne, according to the Testa de Nevill, held Belne, in Worcestershire, of the Baron of Dudley.

Bleyn :

"or De Bloin, from Brittany; variously written Bloy, Bly, Bloyne, Bloe, Blue, Bloyo, Blohin, Blohowe, &c. In 1086 Blohin^[158] (the Christian name
omitted) held five lordships, making seven fees, in Cornwall. Grailan de Bloihon lived t. Stephen; Geoffrey, his son, held seven fees, 1165 (Lib. Niger): Sir Ralph de Bloihon had a writ of military summons, 1350: and Alan Bloihon, 1401, held fees of the Honour of Mortaine, Cornwall (Carew, Cornwall, 39, 43)."—The Norman People. "In this name," says Lysons, "we recognize the ancestors of the ancient family of Bloyhon or Blohowe, which became extinct (at least in its elder branch) in the fourteenth century, when the heiress married Tinten, whose heiress married Carminow. They were seated at Tregewell, and Polrode in St. Tudye, and bore Sable a saltire engrailed Argent. One of the Bloyowes married the heiress of Nansuke."

Breicourt :

or Briencort. "The sires de Crievecoer, Driencourt, and Briencourt, also followed the Duke wherever he went," says the Roman de Rou. "No place of the name of Briencourt is known in Normandy. It may refer to Brucourt, arrondissement of Pont-l'Evesque; and the correct reading of the MS. was perhaps Brieucort. See Robert de Brucourt's confirmation of the grants of Jeffrey de Fervaques to Walsingham. About the same time a Gilbert de Brucort gave lands at Fervaques to the Abbey of Val-Richer. In the Red Book—de ballia de Oximis—'Gilbertus de Breuecourt 2 mil. regi de Pinu cum pertinent. Idem 1 mil. de foedo Mort. in Cerenciis.' We afterwards find,—among those who 'serviunt ad custamentum domini—Gillebertus de Bruecort, senex, 4 partem de Colevill et Angervill.' Gilbert de Bruecourt and Hugh his son appear in a charter to Troarn."—Taylor's Wace. The family long continued in Normandy. Duchesne mentions three of the name; one of whom, Henri de Bruecourt, held a fee of the Feoda de Hiesmes; and a De Bruecourt, belonging to the bailiwick of Evreux, was to be found in the assembly of the nobles in 1789.

The name is given as Briencort in the Liber Niger, where we find Robert de Briencort holding three fees of the Honour of Clare in Suffolk, and Geoffrey de Briencort one fee of Earl Ferrers in Derby. He also held of the Peverells in Kent, Leicester, Notts, and Derby. (Rot. Pip.) Baldwin de Brencurt held lands at Wytham, Lincolnshire, of the heirs of Hugh Wac (Testa de Nevill): and was a benefactor of Spalding Priory; his son John is mentioned in the time of Edward I. (Rotul. Hundred). Blomfield tells us that in Norfolk Robert de Briencort confirmed some lands, held of him, to Castle Acre Priory; and others to Walsingham Priory. One of these charters is witnessed by John de Briencourt.

Beleuile :

from Belleville or Bella Villa, near Dieppe, now called Belleville-sur-Mer. Jean de Belleville took part in the third crusade; and Raoul de Belleville was one of the knights serving in the castle of Arques in 1419. This old Norman house is now represented by the Marquis de Belleville, who is seated at Pont-Tranquart near Dieppe, and bears Azure a saltire between four eaglets Argent.

In England the name is often given Boleville. Robert de Boleville, in 1165, held two knight's fees of the Earl of Gloucester in Gloucestershire (Liber Niger) and Godfrey de Bellavalle is mentioned in Essex 1194-1198 (Rot. Cur. Regis). Ralph de Bellaville, in the time of Richard I., was a benefactor of Vaudrey Abbey, Lincoln (Mon. i. 833), to which he gave some lands in Yorkshire. Nicholas de Bolevill and his wife Avicia held in Devon of the Honour of Gloucester (Testa de Nevill). Nicholas de Bolleville was knight of the shire for Somerset in 1316 (Palgrave's Parl. Writs). Another Nicholas (perhaps father to the last), was among "the faithful nobles" summoned in 1238 by Henry III. "to assemble at London, to consult with him upon the then perturbed state of the nation," which was, according to Banks, a summons to parliament. Dugdale omits it altogether.

Chaward :

see Chaworth.

Chanceux :

from Chanceaux, in Touraine, and settled in Devonshire from the time of the Conquest. "In 1086 Milton, with Lideton, Devon, belonged to Tavistock Abbey. Goisfrid then held them, from whom descended Reginald de Lideton, who 1165 held two fees of Tavistock (Liber Niger). It appears that the Lidetons and Chanceaux, who were Lords of Lideton, were the same. Geoffrey, Giles, and John de Cancellis or Chanceaux are mentioned, of whom the last named surrendered Lideton to Edward I. (Pole's Devon.)."—The Norman People. It was at that period they removed from the county, and we next find them in Sussex, where Emeric de Chanceux or de Cancellis served as Sheriff, 7 & 8 Ed. I.; and in the following century in Northamptonshire, when Robert de Chanceaux acquired Upton in right of his wife Margaret, the widow of Robert Bellew. They continued there for three descents, and their heiress married Richard Knightley.—Baker's Northants. Nicholas de Chanceus in 1316 had been certified Lord of the Hundred of Nobottle-Grove, in that county, in addition to the township of Upton. Giles de Chanceaux, two years before, received a writ of military summons; and John de Chanceux was summoned from the Hundred of Rochford in Essex to serve against the Scots in 1322.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. Giles was the son of John de Chanceux, who in 1289 held the manor of Canewdon of the King in capite of his Honour of Rayleigh. "Sir John Chanceux, the heir of Sir Giles, was possessed of this estate, and of a marsh here called Le Norde, and of lands in Paklesham, Rochford, Wakering, and Hockley. We have no account of the time of his death, or of his issue. But it still continued in the Chanceaux family. For Alianor, daughter of Margery Chanceaux, that died in 1370, held part of this manor, and John de Chanceaux, her uncle, was her heir. Margery, wife of Sir John de Chanceaux at the time of her decease in 1389, held this manor. She had no issue by Chanceaux, unless it was Alianor above-mentioned."—Morant. I have copied this account verbatim, in hopes that some of my readers may find it easier than, I own, I have done, to understand the exact relationship of Alianor and the two Johns.

Guimer de Chancells, in 1212, had the custody of the lands of William de Beauchamp of Elmley, and "paid thirty-two marks for those sixteen knight's fees which this William then held."

Challouns :

a branch of the Counts of Chalons; the great French house mentioned in the old distich:

"Riche de Chalon, noble de Vienne,
Fier de Neufchatel, preux de Vergy;
Et la maison de Beaufremont,
D'ou sont sortis les bons barons."

In the time of Henry II. Harduin de Chalons married the heiress of Leigh in Devonshire, where his successors flourished for not less than three centuries and a half; though the time when they became extinct has never been accurately ascertained. Lyons reckons up twelve descents from the founder of the family, which would bring them down to the reign of Henry VIII., if not later. Their pedigree furnishes a list of great alliances; among them we find co-heiresses of the famous houses of Cantelupe, Mauduit, and Beauchamp. "Challons-Leigh," says Westcote, "takes denomination from the issue of the great Earl of Challons, of whose third son came Sir Harduin de Challons; and after, Sir Peter Challons of Challons-Leigh under King John; Sir Ralph, under Edward I.: divers others in descent, until Catharine, a daughter and heir of the family, weakened the strength of their state by strengthening St. Awbin; yet there remained a branch of the same stock, but planted in another soil." This was in the parish of Tavistock. "Here dwellith, or lately did, the only remainder of the honourable name of Challons. The last in our time was Henry Challons, who, having made three voyages for discovery in the North parts of Virginia and plantation of New England, on the fourth was most unfortunately taken, and most inhumanly treated by the Spaniards."—Pole's Devon. The coat of Challons was Gules, two bars and an orle of martlets Argent.

The family was no means confined to Devonshire, for it is met with in half-a-dozen different counties. Walter de Chaaluns or Chalouns witnesses several of the charters of Walter Gray, Archbishop of York 1215-1255. Peter and Robert de Chalouns of Buckinghamshire, Galfrid de Chalouns of Essex; Ralph de Chalons of Kent and Wiltshire, and John and William Chalons of Oxfordshire, all occur in the Rotuli Hundredorum of the time of Edward I. Sir Robert Chalons was among the forty-six Knights of the Bath made at his coronation by Henry IV.—Holinshed.

Chaleys :

for Challiers (as it is given in Abbot Brompton's list), or Escaliers; according to the French spelling, D'Ecalles or D'Escalles (Dives Roll). The name became Scales in the English tongue, but in allusion to the earlier "Escaliers," the seal of Hugh de Scales, attached to a grant of some churches to Lewes Priory, shows an armed man, putting his right foot on the step of a ladder, and with his hands resting upon it, as in the act of climbing. Its origin is "apparently not Norman, as it is not found in the Duchy till the time of Philip Augustus. It was probably derived from Acquitaine, where the Viscounts of Scales had been of importance since the time of Charles Martel, c. 730, at which epoch they had a grant of the ruined Abbey of Tulle and its estates. These were restored to the church by Aldemar, Viscount of Scales, 930 (Gal. Christ, ii. 262). Gausbert, his brother, was ancestor of the family of Scales, which continued at Limoges, 1201 (lb. vi. 200 Instr.). Harduin de Scallers or de Scallariis (probably one of this family), had extensive grants in Herts and Cambridge 1066, and he and his posterity also held three knight's fees in Yorkshire by gift of Alan; Earl of Richmond."—The Norman People.

Dugdale's pedigree opens with the Hugh I have already mentioned, and never alludes to his descent from Harduin, which, though highly probable, seems never to have been exactly proved. Three generations of Hardouin's successors are spoken of by Burton, but none of them bore the name of Hugh. Soon after 1086, Earl Alan granted Smeaton, part of his demesne near Richmond, to Harduin's son Malger; and in the time of Stephen, Turgis Fitz Malger was a benefactor of Fountains Abbey; his son William de Scalers confirming his gifts (Mon. Ebor. 149, 201).

Hugh de Scalers, the contemporary, and perchance the near kinsman of the latter, founded a baronial family of high estate and ample possessions. "Their castle at Middleton, near Lynn, in Norfolk, was a magnificent building; and though now in ruins, yet they bespeak the dignity and power of the founder, and the difference between ancient and modern nobility."—Banks. Hugh's barony included Whaddon in Cambridgeshire (held by Harduin at the Conquest); with Berkhempstead in Essex, and he transmitted in all fifteen knight's fees to his descendants. The line is regularly traced to his great-grandson Geoffrey, the successor of an elder brother who had died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1220; but from this point Dugdale hesitates in naming the next heir. John de Scalers was Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire for several years under Henry III.; but he believes that it was Robert de Scales who "represented the principal remaining branch of this Family." There is at least no doubt that its splendour dates from the time of his son Robert, first Lord Scales, who was seated at Middleton, and summoned to parliament by Edward I. He subscribed the famous letter sent to the Pope in 1301 by the barons assembled at Lincoln as Robertus de Scales Dominus de Newselles, a Hertfordshire manor that had come to him through his grandmother Alice, the sister and heir of William and Peter de Rossa, or de Roucester. The two next Lords, Robert III. and Robert IV., were both engaged in the French and Scottish wars, and the latter, again, married a rich wife, Catharine, one of the three co-heiresses of William de Ufford, second and last Earl of Suffolk. His son Roger was "among other Eminent Persons, forc'd to march with Jack Straw in the Insurrection of the Commons," and died in 1385, leaving, by the heiress of Sir John de Northwood, Robert, fifth Lord Scales, then a boy of fourteen. He proved sickly and short-lived, being scarcely over thirty at the time of his death, and was followed in due succession by his two sons, Robert and Thomas. Robert, who was never summoned to parliament, is said by Holinshed to have been slain at the siege of Lovers Castle, in Normandy, on the march of Henry V. from Caen towards Rouen. He died unmarried. Thomas was the last, and far the most distinguished of the seven bearers of this title. Very early in life he had been retained to serve the King in France with twenty men-at-arms and sixty archers, and in his recital of his services, two years before his death, he recounts how he was there taken prisoner, and "put to Ransom at thirty-five thousand Saluces, to the great damage of himself and. his Friends: his Lands in England being, in regard of his long absence, likewise much wasted, with great loss of his Goods, besides many Wounds and Bruises in his Body." He assisted at the taking of thirty-six French castles and towns; was present with Lord Talbot at the siege of Orleans, and sent in 1436 to quell a rising in Normandy, during which he put many of the insurgents to the sword, and fired their towns and villages. In 1442, he was one of the Ambassadors employed to treat for peace with France. Five years after this, "being decay'd in Strength," he made a vow to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and obtained leave of absence from the King for that purpose; but it seems he regained his health and changed his mind, for he continued resident in Normandy as Seneschal of the Duchy, and Constable of Vire, and lived at least twelve years longer, a staunch Lancastrian to the last. Stowe asserts that he was murdered in 1460, but Dugdale makes no mention of this, and fixes the date of his death a year earlier. His only son was already dead; and his daughter Elizabeth, then twenty-four years of age, and the wife of Henry Bourchier, second son of the Earl of Essex, inherited the whole of his possessions. She was soon after left a widow; and the great matrimonial prize, thus thrown open to competition, was at once appropriated by the King for his brother-in-law, Anthony Wydville. The upstart "Lords of the Queen's blood," ready to "wrack the Kingdom" for the maintenance of their new-blown honours, had become a by-word for greed and presumption, and when the Bonville and Scales heiresses—the two greatest heiresses in the land—were given in marriage, the one to her son, the other to her brother, a furious storm of indignation was aroused. "Every unmarried Lord," says old Habington, "imagin'd that the bestowing of these two great heires on the Queen's kindred, was an injury to his own hopes." Anthony was summoned to parliament in 1462 as Lord Scales in right of his wife; but she remained childless in her second marriage, as she had been in her first, and died before him.

The barony of Scales, after his execution, fell into abeyance between the representatives of the two daughters of the third Lord Scales and the Ufford heiress, Margaret Lady Howard and Elizabeth Lady Felbrigg; and no less than ten families of co-heirs are furnished by Margaret's descendants alone. Two manors in Norfolk are named Scales How and Scales Hall.

The family survived in the male line some few years more. Whaddon, one of the Cambridgeshire manors held by Harduin in 1086, had been inherited by Sir John de Eschales, Sheriff of Berks and Oxon in 1451. At his death in 1467, he left only three daughters: Alice, married to John Moore; Anne, married to John Harcourt; and Margaret, married to Henry Moyne. Several of their ancestors lie buried in the parish church; but "the brass plates have all been taken away from their gravestones. The old manor house of Whaddon was pulled down a few years ago."—Lysons.

A nephew of the first Hugh, Stephen d'Eschales (as he is called in the Liber Niger) certified to fifteen knight's fees in 1165, and was followed by his son John, obt. 1217, and his grandson Richard, obt. 1230. Richard's successor was a daughter. "Baldwin de Freville paid two hundred marks for the wardship of his heiress, Lucia, and took her to wife."—Dugdale.

Deuerelle :

or D'Evrolles; whence derived I am unable to determine, but of very early date in this country. In 1165 Ralph de Deverell held one knight's fee of old feoffment of the Bishop of Chichester in Sussex; Philip de Evroll two in Norfolk, one of Earl Hugh Bigot, and one of Hulme Abbey; and Walter de Everell one of Helias Giffard in Wilts.—Liber Niger. At about the same period, or a little later, Richard de Everel witnesses a deed of Henry de Pudsey in the county of Durham.—Surtees' Durham.

It was in Wiltshire only that the Deverells permanently took root, and there they lived close upon four hundred and fifty years, and gave their name to a nest of adjacent hamlets, Kingston-Deverill, Longbridge Deverill, Monckton Deverill, Brixton Deverill and Hill Deverill, clustered along the little river Wiley; to Mount-Deverill, and Hussey-Deverill. Yet Sir Richard Hoare, in his county history, would have us believe that Elyas Deverell first assumed it in the time of Edward II. "There is reason to suppose that Elyas de Deverell (temp. Ed. II.) was the same person as Elyas de Hulle, who gave its praefix to Hulle (now Hill) Deverell. The Deverells derive their name from this village, and gave it to Comb-Deverell and Milbourn-Deverell in Dorsetshire. They gave as their arms Per pale Azure and Gules, two stirrups in pale Or; a device very similar to one attributed to some of the family of Giffard, under whom they held, and which the Scudamores of Holme-Lacy have been supposed to derive from them." No doubt Elyas, like many of his contemporaries, was occasionally known by the name of his manor.

It is this Elias, who died in 1331, that is placed by Sir Richard at the head of the pedigree. Nothing whatever is told us of his progenitors, and little enough either of him or those that came after him, for the account we have of the family is meagre in the extreme. Hutchins calls them "men of no mean antiquity. Now," adds he, "both the name and place are subverted, and scarce the ruins can be discovered."—History of Dorset. They held all their land at Milbourn-Deverell of Robert Fitz Pain in chief, "by service of suit at his court of Winterbourne St. Martin," and had their seat in Dorsetshire at Combe-Deverell. Elyas' son John incurred forfeiture—the one recorded incident of their eventless history—for some reason of which we are left in ignorance; and his estates in both counties were granted in 1338 to Thomas de Carey; but he had recovered possession of them within eight years of that time. He was succeeded by his son Henry and his grandson Hugh, whose daughter and heir Alice married Robert Frampton of Moreton. But the name survived the inheritance for two hundred years. In 1603 we find a John Deverel holding Allington in Dorsetshire of the College of Vaux in Salisbury.

Delahay :

from the castle and barony of La Haye-du-Puits, in La Manche. "Hence came the great Eudo Dapifer^[159] who acquired, whether by force or favour, the largest proportions of robbery, called conquest, in the counties of Sussex, Essex, and Suffolk. They expanded throughout England."—Sir Francis Palgrave. The great fief of La Haye-du-Puits, in the arrondissement of Coutances, dates, according to M. de Gerville, from the first partition of Normandy under Rollo, though its regularly continued annals commence only with Turstin Halduc, who held it in the eleventh century, and with his son Eudo founded Lessay Abbey a few years before the Conquest. From the splendour of their donations we may infer the extent of their domain in the Cotentin alone. Eudo, usually styled cum Capello ("du manteau," or "capuchon"), though in a charter of 1074 he subscribes himself Eudo Haldub, married Muriel de Conte-ville, a half-sister of the Conqueror's, who made him his Seneschal. He was one of the principal barons summoned to the council that decided on the invasion of England at Lillebonne, and probably the "Sire de la Haie" mentioned by Wace at Hastings, who "charged on, and neither spared nor pitied any; striking none whom he did not kill, and inflicting wounds such as none could cure." His services were munificently recompensed; and much of his fortune was given to religious foundations, as William de Jumieges cites him "among the most magnificent of the Norman nobles, who signalized themselves by their zeal in building churches." He died in 1098, and was buried in the chapter house of his Abbey of Lessay, where his altar-tomb, with his effigy clad in the "chappe" and "chaperon" from which he was named, remained till, during the evil days of the Revolution of 1789, it was knocked to pieces and used as building material. He left no son; and his only daughter Muriel carried the whole of his possessions to her cousin Robert de la Haye, with whom Dugdale begins the pedigree. This was the son of her father's younger brother Ralph, who had been Seneschal to the Count of Mortaine, and had married Oliva, daughter of William de Albini Pincerna, the first of the name.

Robert, again, was a generous benefactor of the Church. He confirmed all the grants of Eudo al Chapel, with ample additions of his own; greatly enriching the monks of Tewkesbury and Castleacre; but, most of all, the favoured community of Lessay; and sending over for three Benedictine monks from thence, founded a Priory at Boxgrove, in Sussex, as a cell to their Abbey. He had received from Henry I., whose near kinswoman he had married, the gift of the honour of Halnac (now Halnaker) in that county, which eventually devolved on his daughter Cecily. Besides her, he had two sons, Richard and Ralph.

Richard emulated and even surpassed his father and grandfather's zeal for the Church, as he was the founder of Barlings Abbey in Lincolnshire, St Michel-du-Bois and Blanchelande in Normandy, and Cameringham in Norfolk as a cell to the latter. He is said by Taylor to have been captured by pirates, but I can find no mention of it by Dugdale. His wife was a great Norman heiress, Matilda de Vernon, Lady of Varenguebec, who brought him the title of Constable of Normandy, and was buried by his side under a magnificent tomb (only destroyed within the present century) in the Abbey of Blanchelande. They left three daughters. Gillette, the eldest, carried the barony of La Haie-du-Puits and the office of Constable in fee to Richard de Hommet; another (whose name is lost) married William de Rullos; and Nichola was the wife of Gerard de Camville. "Which Nichola, being an eminent Woman in her days, and stoutly adhering to King John," received from him several forfeited estates in Lincolnshire, and was three times Sheriffess of the county.

Ralph, the younger of the two brothers, took Stephen's part against Geoffrey of Anjou, and gallantly fought his battle in Normandy, till, in 1141, the tide of fortune turned against him, and he was forced to fly for refuge to his castle of La Roque, near Montchaton, then deemed altogether impregnable. But the triumphant Count pursued him thither, besieged his fastness, and reduced him to such dire extremity that, according to a form of capitulation that M. de Gerville assures us was then by no means uncommon, he had to give himself up "in the most humiliating posture" (crawling on all fours?) with a saddle on his back. Despite this ignominious experience, in the following reign he was once more in arms with the Earl of Chester and the King's rebellious sons, and once more a. prisoner at Dol in Brittany. I have met with no account of his wife—if he had one—nor of his children; and Halnaker undoubtedly passed to his sister Cecily, the wife of Roger de St. John.

Though the principal line of the Delahays thus early collapsed, others remained to carry on the name in different parts of the kingdom. One, seated at Netherfield Hays, near Battle Abbey, only became extinct about a century ago. Lord John de la Haye, of this house, took part in the Barons' War against Hen. III. But it was the Scottish branch alone that attained eminence and importance.

William de la Haya settled in Lothian in the middle of the twelfth century, and was pincerna domini Regis, or Butler of Scotland, during the reigns of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. He married Juliana de Soulis, daughter of Ranulph, Lord of Liddesdale, and died in 1170, leaving two sons: 1, William, represented by the Earls of Errol (in the female line) and the Earls of Kinnoull; 2, Robert, represented by the Marquesses of Tweeddale.

William was among the hostages given for William the Lion when he was released from captivity by Henry II., and obtained from him a grant of Herrol (now Errol) in Perthshire, "with all the privileges competent to a barony." Gilbert, his grandson, was one of the Regents of the kingdom during the minority of Alexander III. Another Sir Gilbert was appointed Constable of Scotland^[160] by King Robert Bruce—an hereditary dignity that placed him next in rank to the blood Royal, and which yet belongs to his representatives 1 and William, fifth in descent from him, was created Earl of Errol in 1452. Francis, eighth Earl—a zealous Roman Catholic, who had been solemnly "called upon" by the parliament "to renounce papistry, or remove out of the kingdom"—was one of the three Earls that rose in rebellion against James VI., and defeated the Royal army at Strathavon in 1594. For this his punishment was of the slightest—a two years' banishment: and in 1604 we find him employed as one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty of Union. He died in 1631, "a loyal subject to the King, having had great troubles in his time, which he stoutly and honourably carried." It was probably to avoid similar complications that his son and successor was bred up a Protestant. This, the ninth Earl, "lived in a manner so splendid, that he was obliged to dispose of his antient paternal Lordship of Errol," that had come down to him from the time of William the Lion. The male line ended with the twelfth Earl in 1717, and the title passed, first to his sister Lady Mary Falconer, and on her death, to the grandson of the only remaining sister, Margaret, Countess of Linlithgow and Calendar. This, again, was through a female. Lady Linlithgow's daughter, Lady Anne Livingstone, was the wife of the Earl of Kilmarnock; and her son, William Lord Boyd, succeeded in 1758 as thirteenth Earl of Errol, and, with the title, assumed the name and arms of Hay. From him the present and eighteenth Earl is directly derived.

Several junior branches remain in the male line. James Hay, a cadet of one of these (seated at Melginche in Perthshire), a "graceful and affable" young gentleman, who had been bred in France, accompanied James VI. to England, and was one of the profligate favourites whom the King most delighted to honour. He was advanced with startling rapidity, from one title to another: first, he became Lord Hay "without place or voice in parliament": then, in 1615, Lord Hay of Sauley in Yorkshire: Viscount Doncaster in 1618, and Earl of Carlisle in 1622. He received "on a strict computation" above £400,000
from the Crown:—so fabulous a sum, reckoned by the present value of money, that I think it must be an exaggeration; but spent every farthing of it, and "left not a house or acre of land to be remembered by." He led "a very jovial life," and was chiefly noted for his fine clothes and wasteful suppers: Osborne, who calls him, "a monster in excess," speaks of one pie "composed of ambergreese, magisterial of pearl, musk, &c, reckoned to my lord at ten pounds," which was devoured at a single meal by a greedy courtier. He married, first, Honora, heiress of Lord Denny; and then the Lady Lucy Percy, with whose beautiful face Lely has made us familiar. She brought him no children; but by his first wife he had a son, who succeeded as Earl of Carlisle, and with whom the title expired in 1660. Fortunately his mother's estate had been secured to him, and he resided chiefly in the island of Barbadoes, of which it would appear he was the proprietor.

About 1596, Lord Carlisle had introduced at court a young cousin of his own, named George Hay, who, though a man of a very different stamp, also rose high in the good graces of the King, and received from him a peerage in 1598. Charles I. created him Earl of Kinnoull and Viscount of Dupplin in 1633, with grants of the lands and earldoms of Orkney and Zetland, and many other estates in Scotland, and the office of Chancellor. He is praised for the justice, judgment, and eminent sufficiency" that gained him the "applause of all good men": and is styled in his epitaph "the wise Lycurgus of our time." The tenth Earl succeeded his father in the office of Lord Lion King-at-Arms.

Lord Tweeddale's ancestor was Robert, the second son of the first De Haya who settled in Scotland. His descendants were seated at Lockermouth in Mid-Lothian, acquired through a Lindsay heiress; and one of them, Sir Gilbert, who swore fealty to Edward I. in 1296, obtained a great estate in Peebles by marrying Mary, heiress of Simon Fraser, whose arms he thenceforward quartered with his own. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, Sir William Hay, by another fortunate marriage, added to these the arms of Giffard, and their barony in East Lothian, which gave to his grandson, John, his title of Lord Hay of Yester. This was granted by James III. in 1478: and in 1646, another John, who commanded a regiment in the army of the Covenant, was created Earl of Tweeddale. Of his successor, the second Earl, it may be said—with even greater truth than it was, in after days, said of his son—that he belonged to a Squadrone Volante, for he served alternately on either side during the Civil War. He joined the standard of Charles I. when it was first raised at Nottingham in 1642: fought at the head of a Scottish regiment against the Royalists at Marston Moor in 1644: commanded another regiment against the rebels at Preston in 1648: assisted at the coronation of Charles II. at Scone in 1651; and sat in Cromwell's parliament in 1655. He "waited on the King at the Restoration, and held office under him, and then under James II.: "joined cordially in the Revolution," and was created a Marquess by William and Mary in 1694. This title has been successively borne by eight of his descendants. A younger son of the third Marquess, Lord Charles Hay, was the chivalrous captain in the Guards, who, on the bloody day of Fontenoy, when the French and English Guards paused to raise their hats in salute to each other as they met, stepped out of the ranks, and cried to the Comte d'Hauteroche, who commanded the French grenadiers, "Messieurs de la Garde franchise, tirez les premiers!" The Frenchman, as courteously, refused; "the English then gave a running fire: nineteen officers and three hundred and eighty soldiers of the French Guard were wounded, and their colonel, the Due de Grammont, killed."

De la March :

This name is said to have been borne by some of the descendants of Roger de Poitou. (See Peito.) So far as my own experience goes, it is seldom to be met with in records, and even when found, is sometimes given—as in Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs—for de la Mare. Nicholas de la March, then entered in 1316 as Lord of Nunney-de-la-Mare in Somersetshire, can have been no other than Nicholas de la Mare. Similar confusion may exist in other entries where it may more easily escape detection, and I therefore only quote the following with due reserve.

Bartholomew de la March occurs in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194-98: and in the time of Edward I., Alice de la March was of Berkshire, Ralph le March, and his son Engelard, of Shropshire, and Henry, Thomas, and William le March, all three of Kent.—Rotuli Hundredorum. During the same reign, Sir William de la March—perhaps the Kentish William—witnesses a grant to Quarr Abbey.—Worsley's Isle of Wight. John de la March, in 1310, was one of the "Servientes" performing military service due from the Earl of Hereford. Richard de la March was of Charlton in Oxfordshire in 1321, and William de la March, of the same county, is mentioned in 1322.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. Sir William Marche died in 1398, seized of the Manor of Finchley in Middlesex, held by him (and two others) at the annual rent of a pound of pepper.—Blount's Tenures.

De la Marc :

or La Merc. "In 1296 the small manor of Heved was in the family of La Merk, from whom it obtained the name of Merk's. It was held by the serjeanty of keeping the King's falcons, and descended by female heirs to the families of Hastings and Longueville."—Blount's Tenures. (See Merke.)

Delatoun :

William de la Toune occurs in Shropshire during the reign of Edward I. (Rotul Hundred.). John de la Doune was Lord of Doune, in that county, in 1316.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. The names are evidently synonymous. Ralph de la Thun held land in Woodchurch, Kent, of the King in capite, and died before 1260, "without heir of his body."—Archaeologia Cantiana. Thomas de Toune, of Throwley, was one of the constables of the Hundred of Faversham during the great Kentish rebellion of 1380.—Ibid. "Hamone de la Dune" witnesses one of the charters of Cumbwell Priory, in the same county, in 1284. William de la Doune, one of the Lords of Fulbourn in Cambridgeshire, a justice of oyer and terminer for Essex and Herts in 1310, was summoned from the Hundreds of Uttlesford and Freshwell in Essex for service against the Scots in 1322.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Robert de Dun held a knight's fee in Breydeston.—Testa de Nevill. John de la Dune, in 1254, held land at Bradewell, in Essex, "by the serjeancy of carrying one gleyve (gladium) or sword, in the King's army. And, in 1284, Thomas de la Doune, most probably his son, held a tenement in Bradewell by the serjeancy of finding one lance for the King, whenever he should happen to go with an army into Wales."—Morant's Essex. He died in 1306, leaving an heiress Margaret. Morant suggests that he took his name from Dounhall, his residence; but it is at least equally likely that his house was named from him. In Surrey, Gregory de la Doune held of William de Windsor at Compton (Testa). Sir Roger de la Dune, "a knight of Middlesex" is mentioned in Staffordshire temp. Henry III.

De la Valet :

or Lanvallei, a baronial name: in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1199 both spellings are given. This was a Breton family. "Lanvallei is near Dinant. Ivo de Lanvallei was living in 1082, and another Ivo was Seneschal of Dol, in the time of Henry I."—The Norman People. In the beginning of Henry II.'s reign, William de Lanvallai held a barony in Essex, and "was," says Dugdale, "one of the Witnesses to the Recognition made by the King touching the People's Rights and Liberties" in 1163. His signature, as "Willmus de Lanvalet," is also affixed to the King's charter to Nuneaton Priory (Mon. Angl.). He was Warden of the Forest of Essex under Coeur de Lion; but for some offence or other his lands and goods were seized by the Crown, and he was compelled to pay a fine of one hundred marks for their recovery. The year after King John's accession, he disbursed a further sum of two hundred marks to obtain the custody of Colchester Castle, and the Wardenship of the Forest, that he had held in the former reign. He died in 1210. His son William married the daughter of Alan Basset, who paid a handsome price for the alliance, as it appears that in 1212 this Alan "gave to the King C marks, and an excellent palfrey, that the Heir of William de Lanvallei might take his Daughter to Wife." William II. succeeded his father as Constable of Colchester in 1215, but joined the revolted barons the same year. By his energy and action he was soon foremost in their ranks, being one of the Council of twenty-five appointed to govern the realm. He made his peace with Henry III. in 1216, and died the following year, leaving a young daughter named Hawise as his sole heir. Her wardship was granted to Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent; and she was by him given in marriage to his son John, to whom she brought the barony of Lanvallei. It passed to their son John, who had only daughters. The heiress herself died in 1249, and lies buried with her parents in the Chapter-house at Colchester. The Lanvalleis bore Gules a lion passant Or.

But though the baronial line expired in 1217, the name is found nearly one hundred years afterwards. There certainly existed junior branches that are ignored in Dugdale's curt pedigree. John de Lanvallei is mentioned in 1201 (Rot. Cane.); Ralph de La Valeie, or Lanvallei, of Berkshire both then and in 1199 (Rot. Cur. Regis). "William de la Valeye of Widmarpole, in 1284, passed three acres of land there to Nicholas de Widmerpole and Maud his wife."—Thoroton's Notts. "In 1311 John de Bernevill received the wardship of lands at Baryngton belonging to the infant heir of Rowland de la Valeye, deceased."—Woodward's Hampshire.

Eustacy :

"Fitz Eustace et Eustacy";—presumably Eustace. Two great Barons of this name are entered in Domesday; Eustachius Comes, the Count of Boulogne (see Abbeville), and Eustachius Vicecomes, the Sheriff of Huntingdon, whose "evil deeds," according to Freeman, "stand out clearly in the Survey. In the entries of Eustace's own lands, we find English owners, and also the Countess Judith, complaining of his seizures." This Eustace, who founded a small Priory at Huntingdon, is called by Camden Eustace de Lovetoft, though he does not appear in the pedigree given by Hunter of the Hallamshire Lovetots. "Successor to Eustachius was Roger de Luvethot, Baron of Sontho, to whom Turold abbot of Burgh, kinsman to the Conqueror, gave his freehold of Clapton both in demesne and in fee, except one large virgate named Hone ware, which the said Roger and his successor held in paragio of the abbot and his successors. With the barony of Burgh, Roger de Luvethot was seized with one hide of the barony of Sontho; and endowed the priory of Huntingdon with two sheaves of the tithes of his own demesnes * * * * In course of descent, these fees devolved on William de Luvethot, to whom succeeded Richard de Luvethot his son, who was seized of this estate in the reign of Richard I. This Richard de Luvethot had two sons, William and Nigel, a beneficed clergyman, and three daughters, Amicia, Rosia, and Margery. The two brothers dying without issue, this inheritance fell to their sisters, the eldest of whom married Ralph de Mundevill, and had issue by him two sons, Nigel and Elias; the second married Hubert de Bromford, by whom she had one son Richard, who assumed his mother's name of Lovetot: and the youngest sister became the wife of Richard Patrick."—Bridge's Northamptonshire.

Fitz Arviz :

In 1212, Henry Fitz Hervic is mentioned as being with horses and arms in Scotland in the King's army. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland.)

Fitz Nele :

"Tradition says, that the site of the manor of Borstall, in Buckinghamshire, was given by King Edward the Confessor to one Nigel, for his services in slaying a wild boar which infested the forest of Bernwood, to be held by cornage, or the service of a horn; and that the mansion built by him on this land was called Boar-stall, in memory of the slain boar. It appears from an inquisition taken in 1265, that Sir John Fitz Nigel or Fitz Neale then held a hide of arable land, called the Dere-hide, at Borstall, and a wood, called Hull-Wood, by grand serjeantry, as Keeper of the Forest of Bernwood; that their ancestors had possessed these lands, and this office, before the Conquest, and held them by the service of a horn, as the charter of the said forest: that they had been unjustly withheld by the family of Lizures, of whom William Fitz Nigel, father of Sir John, had been obliged to purchase them. It is certain that Borstall passed by marriage from the Fitz Neales to the family of Handlo."—Lysons. Leland says that in the parish church of Tuddington in Bedfordshire, "there lyeth a Noble Man caullid Fitzneele, a Benefactor to the Priory of Dunstable."

Geroun :

a name found in the Norman Exchequer Rolls 1180-1195, and dating from the Conquest in England. "Thurstin, the subfeudatory of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, at Foxcote, in Domesday, is said to have been surnamed De Girund, and to have been the same who held Dunton at the same time."—Lipscomb's Bucks. He also held one yoke of land in Buckland, Kent, under Odo. Walter de Gerun, probably his descendant was a benefactor of Leicester Abbey; his grant is confirmed by Henry II.—Nichols. In 1197 Hamund de Girund enfeoffed Walter de la Haia at Foxcote, and sued him for payment through Philip de la Girunde, his son. Walter accordingly paid him five marks of silver and one black horse "Bausein" (Ped. Fin. i. 160). Philip was in possession the following year, and in 1201 pays 15 marks de oblat. and holds three knights' fees of the Honour of Peverell, London (Rot. Oblat. et Fin. 161). He died before 1222, in which year "Rosamunda quae fuit uxor Philippi de Girundi," pays 20 marks fine to marry whom she pleases. (Excerpt, ex. Rot. Fin. i. 81.) Next comes Nicholas de Girunde, probably the son and certainly the heir of Philip, who in 5 Hen. III. had permission to hold a market at his manor of Ashurst, in Kent (Rot. Lit. Claus. 444 b): and then Sir Hugh de Girunde, son and heir, who did homage in 1268 for one knight's fee that he held of the King in Wrenstede and Ashurst, Kent, and two knights' fees in Foxcote and Doddington, Bucks, and in 1292 was excused from attending the assizes "propter aetatem et infirmitatem." His son and namesake had summons to go with horse and arms to Berwick in 1301, and died about 1307; leaving as his successor the last heir, John, whose daughter and heiress, Matilda, was the wife of Sir Henry de Chalfonte, of Chalfonte, Bucks, High Sheriff of the county in 1341.^[161] Was this John, who died about 1333, the same "John Gerund" spoken of by Blomfield, "as a person of considerable fortune and eminency of that age, as appears by his being a witness to deeds in which he took place of John de Fitton and Jeffrey de Kerville, Lords of Wiggenhall. He is said to have borne Quarterly Gules and Vert, an Escarbuncle over all Or." The manor of Jerounds, or Gerons, now Garards, in the parish of Great Parndon, Essex, took its name from Walter Jeround, who, dying in 1307, left John his son and heir.—Morant. It will be seen that the date of his death exactly corresponds with that of Hugh de Girunde, the last heir's father, and though there is a mistake in the Christian names, I am inclined to believe they were the same person.

Glauncourt :

for Grancourt. "Gautier de Grancourt."—Dives Roll. "Reiner, who held the lordship of East Barsham under Earl Warren at the time of the Survey, was probably Reiner de Grancourt, who gave to the Priory of Castle Acre the patronage of this church; his descendants either took the name of De Barsham, or a family of that name held it soon after."—Blomefield's Norfolk. Elsewhere he tells us that the family of the Grancourts "were early enfeoffed of Fulmodeston. Walter, the son of William de Grancourt, was Lord 11 John, when he gave to the King a good hawk, to be exempted from being put on any assise, except between barons; this Walter was probably descended from that Walter who held it at the Survey; and 14 John was indicted for killing a man." The next was William de Grancourt, Chief Baron of the Exchequer 52 Hen. III.; and towards the end of the following reign Thomas de Grancourt and Agnes his wife conveyed the greater part of the Norfolk property to Walter de Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and received from him the manors of Aspal and Debenham in Suffolk. The first William de Grancourt had, it seems, left two daughters who inherited some of his property; Anselina, married to Hugh de Cundois, and Julian, married to William de Gymingham; and "in 1199 Walter brought an action against Hugh's son in law for making Julian, his wife's sister and co-heir a nun (she being in his custody), so that he might enjoy her inheritance."—Ibid. Grancourt's—now degenerated into Grankers—in the parish of Felsted, Essex, was held by this family in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I.—Morant.

In Northamptonshire, Alured or Alfred, the Domesday tenant of Eustace the Viscount at Polebrook, was Alured de Grauntcort, the friend and companion in arms of Eustace's immediate successor, Roger de Luvetot, who bestowed upon him, in 1088, the Lordship of Clopton, and some other lands. He was followed by Walter de Grauncourt, or de Clopton, who held them temp. Henry II. "Walter had four sons, who were knights; William his successor, who from the difficulty the lower people found in pronouncing his Norman name, was called William de Clopton, Robert, Walter, Richard, and Reginald his younger son, the first Rector of Clopton; with three daughters, Alicia, Dyonisia, and Rohesia. This William was twice married: his first wife was Ivetta de Muscham, sister to Geoffrey de Muscham, Bishop of Chichester, born in the neighbourhood of Newark. After his marriage, returning home with his wife from the place of her birth, on the road beyond Witering, at a distance he saw his mansion house at Clopton in flames; and on his arrival found it, with the preparations and provisions for celebrating the wedding feast, destroyed by fire. This accident, our author says, was a judgment from heaven; as, in the reign of King Stephen, he had converted more than a third part of the churchyard to a profane use, and had cut down a noble grove of ash trees which grew in it, for the purpose of building his said manor house."—Bridge's Northamptonshire. His only daughter and heiress died s. p.

Of his three next brothers, the county history tells us nothing. The youngest, who became a priest, was tonsured by a freak of nature from his very birth. "Reginald, the first Rector of Clopton we meet with upon record, rebuilt the church with stone, which before his time was a timber edifice. It is said that he was born eight weeks before the due time; in consequence of which, he was bald from the hinder part of his head to the forehead.

"Of Dionysia, the second daughter of Walter de Grauntkort, it is recorded, that when a maiden, clad in a tunic, with a hat upon her head, and armed only with a hollow shield, about the seventeenth year of king Stephen, she attacked a certain knight, with one blow of her spear bringing him to the ground, and carried off his horse. She afterwards became the wife of Robert de Hofford."—Ibid.

The eldest sister, Alicia, married Robert de Hotot, whose descendants inherited Clopton: and one of them—Agnes, the heiress of the house, emulated the Amazonian fame of Dionysia. "From a MS. in the possession of the family, written by a monk about the close of the fourteenth century, it appeared that the father of Agnes de Hotot (who, in the year 1395, married an ancestor of the Dudleys), having a quarrel with one Ringsdale concerning the proprietorship of some land, they agreed to meet on the debateable ground, and decide their right by combat. Unfortunately for Hotot, on the day appointed he was seriously ill: "but his daughter Agnes, unwilling that he should lose his claim, or suffer in his honour, armed herself cap-a-pie, and mounting her father's horse, repaired to the place of decision, where, after a stubborn contest, she dismounted Ringsdale; and when he was on the ground, she loosened the stay of her helmet, let down her hair about her shoulders, and disclosing her bosom, discovered to him that he had been conquered by a woman.'"—Lowers Curiosities of Heraldry. In memory of their gallant ancestress, her descendants the Dudleys, who received a baronetcy (now extinct) at the Restoration, bore as their crest, Out of a ducal coronet Or, a woman's bust; her hair dishevelled, bosom bare, a helmet on her head, with the stay or throat-latch down proper.

Hauville :

or, "Hauteville; one of the most historically interesting families of Europe, being a branch of the Norman kings of Naples and Sicily. Hialtt, a Norman Viking, c. 920, was its probable founder, whence the fief of Haultville or Hautville, Latinized Altavilla. Third in descent was Tancred, born c. 980-90, Sire de Hautville, who was in the court of Richard II., whose favour he gained in the hunting field by an exploit narrated by Galfrid de Malaterra. He was leader of ten knights in the Duke's service (Bouquet, xi.). He married, and had eleven sons, Drogo, Umfrid, Galfrid, Serlo, Robert, Malger, Alvered, William, Humbert, Tancred, and Roger, who were the most renowned warriors of the age. Serlo was taken into the Duke's household in reward for a remarkable feat of chivalry, and Galfrid, according to Orderic, obtained the paternal fief, when his father went to spend his last days in Italy.

"The other sons joined the Norman chivalry in Apulia, where William, surnamed Bras de Fer, became leader of the Normans, and Lord of Ascoli: Drogo, Lord of Venosa; and the others Norman chiefs and great barons. In 1043 William was elected by the chiefs their general, and Lord of Apulia. He was succeeded 1046 by his brother Drogo de Hauteville, Count of Venosa, who was succeeded by his brother Robert, surnamed Guiscard (the Adroit), Duke of Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily. Roger, his brother, became Count of Sicily, and from him descended the De Hautevilles, Kings of Naples and Sicily. Bohemund, Prince of Antioch and Tarento, so renowned in the First Crusade, was the son of Robert Guiscard, and from him descended the Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem.

"A branch of this royal house became seated in England. Galfrid de Hauteville, who remained in Normandy, was father of Ralph de Hauteville or Altavilla, who in 1086 held a barony in Wilts (Domesday). His descendants were a renowned race of warriors. Sir John de Hauteville accompanied Ed. I. to Palestine. In 1316 John de Hauteville was Lord of Norton-Hawfield or Hauteville, Somerset; and 1316-24 Sir Geoffrey de Hautville was M.P. for Somerset, Bucks, and Wilts. He bore Sable crusilly Argent, a lion rampant Argent, being nearly the same arms as those borne by the Kings of Italy, as descendants of the Kings of Cyprus."—The Norman People.

Many of the name are found in Somersetshire during the reigns of John, Henry III., and the first two Edwards, and were, we are told, "esteemed mighty warriors;" but no more is heard of them after the beginning of Edward III.'s time. The memory of Sir John Hauteville, the crusader, still lingers in his own neighbourhood, surrounded by legends that might do honour to the hero of some old Norse Saga. He was a mythical giant: taller and stronger than any other man of his time: no task was too heavy for him, and no obstacle ever stood in his way. We are told how he carried three stout men to the top of Norton Tower, one held under each arm, and the third between his teeth (see Mauroward): and how he heaved up a mighty stone of thirty tons weight, and flung it a distance of more than a mile, from his house at May's-Knolle-Hill to Stanton-Drew. Here the stone (once part of a Druidical circle, but now much chipped and dwindled by frequent use in road-mending) is still known as Hauteville's-Coit; and the crest of the hill is shown as the clearings of Hauteville's spade. Little blame to the simple folk who heard and repeated these tales, if his name became fearful and mysterious in their ears: and had he not been signed with the Cross, and gone with Prince Edward to the Holy Land, it seems clear that this great Somersetshire champion would have been handed down to posterity as a necromancer.

In Norfolk the Hautvilles held Rainham by grant of King Stephen, as hereditary falconers to the King; and Henry II. is further "said to have given the town of Dunton, with Doketon and Kettleston, to Ralph de Hauvile, to be held by petit serjeanty, the keeping of the King's hawks or falcons. This Sir Ralph was a knight, and had a son, Sir Robert, who wrote himself sometimes De Hauvile, and sometimes De Dunton, according to the practice and custom of the age, and was the founder of the Priory of Miremounde in Upsall, in the Isle of Ely, 5 King John. His seal was of green wax, party per pale, in chief a label of five points. Of this family were Hugh and Henry de Hauvile; and King John, in his sixth year, ordered the bailiffs of several ports to secure all the hawks and ger-falcons which should be brought beyond sea, till the said Hugh and Henry should choose what they thought fit for the King's use; and no one was allowed to buy any till this was done. About the same time lived Walter de Hauvile, who held 60s. rent in land at Hallingbury in Essex, by serjeanty of keeping the King's falcons."—Blomefield's Norfolk. Raynham continued in their possession up till 1345, when James de Havile, the husband of Anne Wace, was living there. "Soon after, this lordship of Raynham-Havile's came to the Townshends, by the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Thomas de Havile with Lewis de Townshend, as Collins, in his Peerage, observes; but this does not appear from any record on evidence that I have met with."—Ibid. Probably James de Haville, who sold Dunton in 1256, was the last of the line.

There was, however, another of this house, who in 1196 "came and fixed at Erlham, and so became Founder of that Family, which continued Lords and Patrons many Ages. In 1199, this Ralph, being then a Knight, purchased of Humphrey his Brother all his Inheritance in Erlham for 100s. paid to Humphrey for his Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a settlement made on Miryld, Daughter of Humphrey, who escheated her Lands by marrying Jurnet the Jew. In 1235 John, son of Ralph de Erlham, held this Town by Petit Serjeantry, or the Service of the Cross Bow, to defend Norwich Castle."—Ibid. The last mentioned is another John de Erlham, about 1370. He sealed with "a fesse voided in chief three mullets," and thus bore totally different arms from the rest of his family.

In the reign of Henry III. the Hautvilles held land in Lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire, and were "a spreading family." Alan de Hauville, a considerable land-owner in Berkshire in 1316, received a pardon in 1321 as one of the followers of Roger de Clifford, who had been "in pursuit" of the Despencers; as was likewise Nicholas de Hauville, of the same county. This same Nicholas, the following year, paid a fine for having joined the Earl of Lancaster's rebellion, and obtained a pardon "upon condition of serving the King in his wars."—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.

Hayward :

There is nothing Norman in this name. "An interesting relic of primitive precaution against the straying of animals is found in the officership of the 'Hayward,' (or 'Adam le Heyward,' as the Hundred Rolls have it), whose duty it was to guard the cattle that grazed on the village common. He was so styled from the Saxon 'hay,'^[162] or hedge. An old poem has it—

"In tyme of hervest mery it is ynough;
Peres and apples hongeth on bough:
The hayward bloweth mery his home;
In every felde ripe is corne."

In 'Piers Plowman,' too, we have the word—

"I have a home, and be a hayward,
And liggen out a nightes
And kepe my corne and my croft
From pykers and thieves."

It will be seen from these two references that the officership was of a somewhat general character. The cattle might be his chief care, but the common village interests were also under his supervision. The term has left many surnames to maintain its now decayed and primitive character. 'Hayward' and 'Haward' are, however, the most familiar."—Bardsley's English Surnames.

Howard :

That this is but another version of Hayward^[163] is obvious from the inscription round the effigy of the founder of the great house of Howard in Long Melford Church—

"Drape for the good state of William Haward, Chef Justis of ynglonde."

Blomfield further informs us that he was "the son of John, the eldest son of William de Wiggenshall, who took the sir-name of Heyward, Hauuard, or Howard; and was the first of this Family of that Sir-name, which, as I take it, he took from the office of Heyward there."—History of Norfolk.

But if these kindred names are alike in origin, their history has been entirely different. While one of them has remained altogether without illustration, the other has been borne to the front by the noblest of the land. A long series of splendid alliances, each carrying with it the representation of some historic Norman name, has added trophy after trophy to their armorial shield, till "all the blood of all the Howards" has become the proverbial type and boast "of English aristocracy. On the roll of parliament the head of the house, as Premier Duke, stands far in advance of his peers, his title having been conferred sixty-four years before that of the Duke of Somerset, the next in rank; and one of his Earldoms—held by tenure of the castle of Arundel—dates from 1139. His ancestral coat-of-arms rests on the crossed truncheons that denote his hereditary dignity of Earl Marshal of England—one of the two great feudal offices that now alone survive; and on its silver bend

"The ruddy lion ramps in gold "

in memory of Lord Surrey's victory at Flodden. Twenty-two Howards have been installed Knights of the Garter: they have received in all eleven Earldoms; and one of them had the perilous honour of sharing the throne of Henry VIII.

Both these names must have been added by the monks.

La Muile :

This evidently stands for Laumale; given as Lameil in the Liber Niger.

Lungvilers :

Roger de Lonviller (Nonvillari) and Ralph de Lonvilers are found in Normandy in the Exchequer Rolls of 1189-92; and Robert de Lonvilers was of Yorkshire in the time of Henry I.—Rotulus Magnus Pipae. Heodo of Leguilliers, in 1166, held one knight's fee of the Honour of Pontefract. This family "came from a place so called in the canton of Villers-Bocage, which is situated in the wooded district called Le Bocage Calvados, in the arrondissement of Caen. Villers must not be confounded with ville, nor Longueville with Longvillers; and the Rev. Isaac Taylor (Words and Places, p. 166) is convinced that, as occurring only in Normandy, it must be the Teutonic weiler, an abode or single house, which is so common in the Rheingau, and in many parts of Germany."—A. S. Ellis ('Notes and Queries,' sixth s. vi.).

According to Hunter's South Yorkshire, Eudo de Longvilers—probably the above-mentioned Heodo—and his brother William married sisters, the two coheiresses of "a great local magnate of English descent," Swein de Reineville, or Swein Ailricson. William's wife Agnes left only a daughter, Hugolina de Quartremains, but Eva, who had married the elder brother, brought him a son of the same name. This second Eudo obtained the castle and honour of Hornby, near the entrance of the Vale of Lonsdale, in Lancashire, with Briarley in Yorkshire, through his marriage with Clementia, daughter and heir of John Malerbe. They were inherited by his son John, but transferred through John's daughter (or granddaughter) Margaret to Geoffrey de Nevill in the time of Edward I. In the North Riding, "the fee of Hutton-Longvillers took its name from this family, whose principal seat was Hornby Castle in Lancashire."—Gale's Richmondshire.

Margaret had, it appears, two uncles: Eudo, who left no posterity; and William, Lord of Gargrave, who married Bertha de Marcham, or Markham, one of the three daughters that divided between them Robert de Markham's^[164] great Nottinghamshire manor of Tuxford. It had been the barony of her father's uncle, Robert Lexington, and had come to him on the partition of the Lexington lands in 1258. This heiress was the mother of two sons: John, who died childless, and was succeeded in 1296 by his brother Thomas, then nineteen, who in after years, as Sir Thomas de Longvilers, constantly figures in the Parliamentary Writs. He was an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster's, pardoned in 1318, and subsequently often employed in the King's service. In 1322 he is "commanded to assemble as many men-at-arms as he can, over and above his usual train, and to be ready to proceed against the Scots in case of invasion," then "to march to York at the head of his train": and in the following year "empowered to raise fifteen hundred foot-soldiers in Notts and Derby." He was summoned to the great Council held at Westminster in 1324; and later in life we find him included (though under protest) in Banks' Baronia Anglica. "Thomas de Longvilers had summons to attend a great council at Westminster, the sixteenth Ed. III.; but never after, though he lived very many years: this solitary summons cannot be considered a call to parliament." His wife was his first cousin Joan, the eldest of the three co-heiresses of his mother's youngest sister, Agnes de Santa Croce, by whom he had Sir John, his successor, and Elizabeth, married to Stephen Maulovel. With Sir John's son, another Sir Thomas, the line was extinguished, for neither he nor his sister, Agnes de Everingham, left children; and at her death in 1398, the inheritance passed to Sir Richard Stanhope of Rampton. He was the great-grandson of the Elizabeth de Longvilers who had been the wife of Stephen Maulovel; and on receiving this great accession to his estate, exchanged his own coat-of-arms for that of Longvilers, Sable, a bend between six cross-crosslets Argent. This was borne by five successive generations of Stanhopes, till, towards the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, Saunchia, the heiress of another Richard Stanhope, carried away the whole of the Maulovel and Longvilers estates to the Babingtons. They then resumed their original bearing, ever since that time used by the family, Quarterly, Ermine and Gules.

Lisours :

"The Barons of Lisores, Normandy, were a branch of the Bassetts. Hugh de Lisures granted lands to Thorney Abbey, t. Hen. I. (Mon. i. 247), and 1128 witnessed a charter of Jocelyn Crespin in Normandy (La Roque, ii. 1816). In 1165 Warner de Lisures held a barony in Wilts, and was Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset in 1154, 1156, 1158,1160, and 1161, Robert in Hunts, and R. was forester in fee, Northants (Lib. Nig.)."—The Norman People. They are
first to be met with in South Yorkshire. "Fulk de Lisours," says Hunter, "is supposed to have been a relation of Roger de Busli's. Fulk does not appear as a tenant-in-chief in Domesday, but he is several times incidentally mentioned in that record. He it was who held Sprotborough and its members, and he held also much in the county of Notts. In the time of the sons of the Conqueror appear two brothers, Fulk and Torard, both known by the addition De Lusoriis or De Lizours. Whether they were the sons of the former Fulk, or that this Fulk is the same person, does not appear on the face of any record. Torard was the ancestor of the Lisours of Nottinghamshire, where they continued for some centuries, while Fulk had the land of Sprotborough with a portion of the Nottinghamshire lands. Fulk had a son named Robert, who made an illustrious marriage with the widow of Henry de Laci, Lord of Pontefract, and had one daughter only, who was thus half sister ex parte matrix to the last of the Lacis, and who lived to be his heir, as well as the heir of the paternal line. Her name was Albreda. The birth of this great lady may be referred to about the year 1130." She was twice married: first to Richard Fitz Eustace, Constable of Chester, and feudal Baron of Halton, by whom she had a son, John, who took the name of De Laci, and was the ancestor of the Earls of Lincoln; and secondly, to William Fitz Godric, by whom she had another son, William Fitz William, from whom derive the Earls Fitzwilliam. "Her great inheritance was thus divided. The Laci lands went to the issue of her first husband, the Lisours lands to the issue of. her second. Glover notices a tradition that Albreda designed to bestow the whole upon William, the issue of her second marriage, upon a displeasure conceived against Roger de Laci her grandson, who acquired, we know not how, the. opprobrious cognomen of 'Roger de Hell,' and that 'he was fayne to compound with his uncle'; but this," concludes Hunter, "is not likely."

The first Fulk, who was an under-tenant of his kinsman (some say his brother-in-law) Roger de Busli, "probably had his name from Lisors in the canton of Lyons en Foret (Eure), for it is likely he was no distant neighbour of Roger before they left Normandy.

"This place may have been so called because it was on the lisiere or verge of the Foret de Lyons, a favourite hunting ground of the Dukes, or it may be the name is the same as our leasowes or 'lissouris' (qu. the higher leys), those lawns and grassy spots where the denizens would browse.

"Fulk had other sons, besides daughters, but their names are not recorded."
—A. S. Ellis.

Thorold de Lisours, the progenitor of the Nottinghamshire house, was the earliest subinfeudatory of Hodsoke, in that county, part of the Honour of Tickhill. He and his brother Fulk both witness Roger de Busli's foundation charter of Blyth in 1088, "and this is," says Thoroton, "his last appearance, as far as I am aware, in any public record." The Cressys succeeded him at Hodsoke, but he had other estates in the county, and his descendants continued there till late in the fourteenth century. Nigel de Lisours, sometimes called, from his manor, Nigel de Fleburg (Fledburgh) held three knights' fees of the Bishop of Lincoln t. Hen. II. (Lib. Rubr.); a second Nigel was in possession in the following century (Testa di Nevill), and John de Lisours, his son, was knight of the shire for Nottingham in 1312 and 1316. He was also one of the Commissioners for raising foot soldiers in the latter year. Peter de Lisours, and Joan his wife, occur in 1330; and a second John, Lord of Fledburgh, in 1360, whose son James was married in 1364. From the marriage settlements of the bride it is evident that the line terminated in him; for Fledburgh, and several other manors, then entailed on "the right heirs male of Sir John de Lisours for ever," with remainder to the Bassets of Normanton, had, soon after, passed to the last-named family.

Another branch is found in Northamptonshire. "William de Lusor" is mentioned there in the Pipe Roll of 1130; and his son Fulk, in 1158, had the custody of the forests of Rockingham, Selveston, and Huntingdon. In 1165, Richard de Lisures was Forester of Fee to the King in Northants, and "was by his Office obliged to attend him in his Army, well fitted with Horse and Arms, his Horn hanging about his Neck."—Dugdale. He held his land in right of his grandfather, Richard de Engaine. Dugdale makes no allusion to his posterity; but tells us that Fulk had, by his wife, Alice de Auberville, two sons that successively inherited. William, the eldest, on the accession of Coeur de Lion, gave 200 marks for the Forestership of Northamptonshire, and must have died soon after, as his brother Geoffrey was in possession the following year. There was also a Hugh de Lizures, "by reason of whose Debts to the Exchequer King John, in the fourteenth year of his Reign, granted the Castle of Benifield (in Com. Northampt.) and all his Lands, with the Stock thereon, unto John de Bassingburne, for satisfaction of them."—Ibid.

Liof :

"Liofus" held a barony in Somersetshire in 1086 (Domesday), which he had held under Edward the Confessor. This Lyulph was clearly a Saxon, and I cannot understand how his name should have found its way into the Battle Abbey Roll. The conjunction of "Liof et Limers" rather points to a mis-spelling of Lion or Lyons, which immediately precedes Limers in Holinshed's copy.

Liffard :

"Liffard et Osevile." This name greatly puzzled me, till I bethought myself of looking it out in Holinshed in connection with Osevile. There I found the latter succeeding Olifant—the modernized form of Olifard: and I think we may therefore reasonably conclude that the first letter has been accidentally left out, and that the name should stand "Olifard."

Mountriuel :

or Montreuil; a name that still flourished in Normandy at the close of the last century; for three De Montreuils sat in the Assembly of the Nobles then convoked for the election of the States General. One of them was the Marquis de Montreuil, belonging to the bailifry of Orbec. The earliest entry I have met with relating to this family carries them back to a very distant date. Emma de Montriveau was the first wife of Ralph de Beaumont, Viscount of Le Mans, who married for the second time in 1055.

The De Montreuils were in all probability brought over to England and enfeoffed by Count Eustace de Boulogne. In a survey of the Honour of Boulogne in the Liber Niger Scaccarii in the reign of King John, the fee of William de Mustruillo (Montreuil) is entered as six milites, and included the manor of Clarette, in the parish of Yeldham, hundred of Hinckford, co. Essex; which "has the name of Clare in Domesday, and was parcel of the honour of Earl Eustace of Boulogne."—T. Stapleton. Alexander, Petronilla, and Hamo de Mastroill occur in Staffordshire in 1199 (Assize Roll, 1 John): and Alexander, in 1203, held in the hundred of Cutulkestan (Cuddleston). Staffordshire Historical Collections. The next account I can find of them is in the Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland. In 1286, John Mazun, "lately detained in the King of Scotland's prison, was released on the mainprise of William de Mont Revel." Geoffrey de Munrevel, "vallet de la Chaumbre nostre Seigneur le Roi," received in 1307 ten gallons of wine at Dumfries, "from the hands of Sire James de Daliley's valet:" and in 1365 gave a receipt at Berwick-on-Tweed for "24 marks worth of the King's victuals." To this is appended his seal; "a shield charged with six fleurs de lis and a ribbon dexter." The arms of "Montrevill," as given by Robson, are Argent a bend dancette Gules betwixt three fleurs de lis.

Malebuche :

evil tongue; in contradistinction to Bellebouche, smooth and flattering tongue (Walter Belebuche is found in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194): a name of warning portent; only second to its contemporary Malegreffe, or Malegriffe. The arms of "Malbouck," Argent, four bars wavy Gules, over all a saltire Or, as preserved by Robson, exactly correspond with one of the coats of the Malbancs. It is possible that Malbanc is the name here intended: for I have nowhere met with Malebouche.

Mountburgh :

from Montebourg, in the Cotentin, which, at the time of the Conquest, was held by Duke William himself. M. de Gerville has failed to find any trace of a castle of that date, and thinks it probable that none existed. The place was certainly fortified in 1346, when it was taken and burnt by the English. "Puys vindrent devers Montebourg, sy la prindrent et robberent, puys l'ardirent."—Froissart.

In the Register of Rufford Abbey, I find that "William, son of Thomas de Monteburgh, of Egram, released and quit-claimed to that monastery all his right of common pasture, in the essarts made in the territory of Egram, on both sides the Redegate, until the justices came to Nottingham in 20 Hen. HI., and likewise in Kelum shrubs, where the wood stood."—Thoroton's Notts. Egram is the old name for Aversham in Nottinghamshire.

Mounfey :

for Maufe, already given.

Maleberge :

Alured de Merleberge, a great baron in 1086, had been a landowner in England previous to the Conquest. "In the reign of Edward the Confessor, and while Earl Godwin and his son Harold were in exile, there was one Osbern, probably a Norman, holding the two Herefordshire manors of Burghill and Hope of the King. This Osbern was uncle (avunculus) of Alured de Merleberge, which Alured was also lord of a large manor in Herefordshire during the Confessor's reign. On the ascendancy of the Normans being established in Herefordshire, Alured was greatly enfeoffed by Earl William Fitz Osbern, who gave him a number of estates that had been Earl Harold's. On the forfeiture of the Earls of Hereford, King William allowed all William Fitz Osbern's grants to Alured de Merleberge. From this and other favours Alured figures in Domesday as one of the greater tenants in capite of Herefordshire and Wiltshire, and also as holding manors in Surrey, Hampshire, and Somersetshire. His tenant for some land in Ewyas, for the manors of Stratford in Herefordshire, and part of Chenete in Wiltshire, was Turstin de Wigmore, and Domesday gives us further particulars of the relations of lord and vassal. Thurstin had married Agnes, the daughter of Alured, which Agnes is said herself to be holding Cuure (Cowarne Magna) and a large manor, unnamed, in Tornelaus Hundred, at the time of Domesday, under her father."—Eyton's Shropshire.

Agnes de Merleberge was the ancestress of a well known Herefordshire family, who took their name of Lingen from their principal manor. Of one of them, Constantia, daughter of Sir John Lingen, a touching story is told. "She married in 1253 Grimbald, son and heir of Sir Richard Pauncefort, and had for her dower six hundred and thirty marks, twelve beeves, and one hundred sheep, besides the manor of Great Cowarne. The story of her devotion to her husband is better known than attested. Grimbald joined in the crusade against the Mahommedans of Tunis and was taken prisoner by them. His captors demanded a joint of his wife—whose beauty perhaps had been the subject of boast—as the price of his ransom, and tradition adds that the terms were accepted, and the lady's left hand procured him his release. Silas Taylor gives the following account of the monument erected to the memory of the devoted pair in Cowarne Church. 'I diligently viewed the accord which might have been between the two figures; the female, laid next the wall of the south aisle on her right side, by which means his left side might be contiguous to her right, the better to answer the figure: also, the stump of the woman's arm is somewhat elevated, as if to attract notice; and the hand and wrist, cut off, are carved close to his left side, with the right hand on his armour, as if for note.' Whether the mutilated effigy and the lady's name, Constantia, are the sole foundations on which this story of heroic love rests, we will not presume to say."—Castles of Herefordshire and their Lords, by C. J. Robinson.

Marleberge is the ancient name of Marlborough; of which Alured was lord in 1086. His Christian name, Alfred, and the fact that he was a land-owner before the coming of the Normans, would seem to indicate that he was of Saxon parentage. But Sir Richard Hoare, in his county history, stoutly upholds the contrary opinion. "Who Alured was I am not able to make out, but he was a Norman and a follower of Duke William." He held Upton—since Upton Scudamore—in Wiltshire; and "I hazard a conjecture that these Scudamores succeeded to the inheritance of these estates as the heirs-at-law of this Alured de Merlebergh."—Ibid.

There is no mention of his having left a son; yet the name was carried on in Somersetshire and Dorsetshire. Thomas de Merleberge was sheriff of the two counties in 1291, 1311, 1318, 1319, 1320, 1321, 1322, 1323, 1324, and 1325. "In the reign of Edward III. Melbury Bubb (vulgarly Bubtown) came to the Maleberges and Wakes, the former of whom seem to have been lords paramount. 2 Ed. III. the King granted license to Thomas de Merleberghe to give lands in Buckland St. Mary and Ilebruer, co. Somerset, to maintain two chaplains to celebrate in the church of All Saints in Ilebruer, for his soul, &c. when it appeared there remained to him besides this donation the manors of Melbury Bubb and Ilebruer. 20 Ed. III. John de Wake and William de Marleburgh held half a fee formerly held by Johanna Plucknet; John, son of William Marleborough, held here 29 Ed. III.; and 33 Ed. III. this manor, later belonging to William de Marleberghe, a bastard, was granted to Edward Arundel."—Hutchins' Dorset. Richard Marlebergh witnesses one of John de Maltravers' charters of feoffment in 1380.

Maingun :

for Mangon, a Norman family seated at Val de Saire, near Valognes, and ennobled in 1576. The manor of Drayton, in Bucks, since called Drayton Beauchamp, "was anciently in the Maignons, from whom it passed to the Beauchamps and Cobhams."—Lysons. Ralph de Nungun (Maingon?) in 1165 held of William de Abrincis in Kent, and Nicolas de Nugun of the Honour of Warrenne.—Liber Niger. Perhaps Alexander Mangant, who held a knight's fee of the Barony of Mowbray, and another of Gilbert Peche in Cambridge, and Rinward Mangant, a subtenant of Robert de Tresgoz in Herefordshire (Testa de Nevil), may be included in this family. William Mangant was a tenant of the Chapter of St. Paul's at Drayton in Middlesex in 1222.—Domesday of St. Pauls.

Merkingfel :

or Markenfield; "a noble name still sounding like trumpet music in the antiquary's ear." Their house, built by John de Markenfield, who obtained license to castellate in 1309, stands about two miles from Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. It retains all the main features of the original work; geometrical windows, moat, hall, kitchen, solar, chapel, and offices, and is one of the best preserved specimens of the picturesque architecture of the time. It was forfeited to the Crown in the reign of Elizabeth, by Thomas Markenfield, who took a principal part in the Rising of the North. His father
is mentioned by Leland: "Markenfilde dwellith at Markenfelde, and his Maner Place berithe his Name." I might further speak of Sir Ninian, who commanded a force at Flodden, or Sir Thomas, who lies buried under a stately tomb in Ripon Minster, if I did not doubt whether so English-sounding a name should have a place here. It may be derived from a Norman source, as Greenfield is from Greenville, or Streatfield from Estreeville, but I can find no mention or trace of such an origin, except it be the "Sieur de Marcouville" mentioned in the Nobiliaire de Normandie.

Maunys :

This name is clearly interpolated. The castle of Mauny at Hambye, (the parish adjoining St. Denis-de-Gaste) in Normandy, was only built in the fourteenth century by Herve de Mauny, the cousin-german and companion-at-arms of the renowned Constable Du Guesclin. Charles V. of France made him his seneschal, and one of the Captains General of Normandy, where he first established the family. Nor is there reason to suppose that he was in any way related to his contemporary of the same name in England. Sir Walter Manny, the celebrated captain under whose banner Edward III. and the Black Prince both served at the siege of Calais—the highest honour ever paid to a subject—was a native of Hainault.

Malebys :

evidently a nickname; and, as its Latinized form is Malabestia, not a complimentary one. Gaufrid Malabestia witnesses the foundation charter of Revesby Abbey, Lincolnshire, in 1142, Masura Malebeste is mentioned in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the end of the twelfth century.

Richard Malbysse, or "Ricardus vero agnomine Mala Bestia, homo audacissimus," as William de Newburgh calls him, bears the blame of having, with Robert de Turnham and Robert de Gant, instigated the massacre of the Jews of York in 1189. When Coeur de Lion had taken his departure for the Holy Land, some of his followers bethought themselves that they should be doing God service by fleshing their swords on the unbelievers at home, before they set out to join him. Moreover, it was an easy and summary mode of disposing of their creditors. Many of them were reduced to poverty by the heavy debts they had incurred to the Jews, who were the principal bankers and money-lenders of the time, and according to the chronicler "the haughty tyrants of the unfortunate Christians, whom they oppressed with their usurious practices." They were very rich; and the two leading members of the fraternity, Benedict and Joses of York, had built sumptuous houses, and lived in such state and "more than regal splendour" as to excite the cupidity of their neighbours. One tempestuous night—whether by accident or otherwise—a fire broke out in the city; and in the confusion that ensued Benedict's house was sacked and burnt, and the inmates put to the sword. The Jews, in dire consternation, begged for an asylum in York Castle; and were admitted by the Governor with their families and valuables; but some that remained in their houses were pitilessly plundered, and offered the alternative of either instant death or baptism. Nor were those that had escaped in much better plight, for the Sheriff, who had entered the city with a large body of soldiers, declared that it would be injurious to the King's service if they were permitted to hold possession of their place of refuge, and summoned the citizens to take the castle by storm. The wretched Jews could only defend themselves by throwing down the projecting stones of the battlements, and one of these killed a Preemonstratensian Canon, or "Eremite," who, after celebrating early mass, daily appeared among the foremost of the besiegers, exhorting them to "trample upon the enemies of Christ." Provisions began to run short in the castle; the final assault was at hand; and at length, driven to despair, one of the Jewish elders, a man "learned in the law, who had come from beyond the sea to be a teacher," called his brethren together to bid them die. "Behold," he said, "death is at our doors. God, to whom we must not say, Why hast Thou done thus? commands us now to lay down our lives for His law. To save them by an infamous apostacy would be worse than death. Let us by our own act freely and devoutly render them back to Him who gave them, for we value them not as dearly as we love the law of our fathers." Many were found ready to embrace his counsel; but first, in order to leave no spoil behind for their enemies, they cast their costly robes into the fire, and "cunningly defaced their choice vessels," and other treasures which the flames would not consume. Then they applied the torch to the buildings that were to be their funeral pile, and cut each other's throats: Joses himself setting the example by immolating his wife and children. The remainder, who had clung to the poor hope of life, narrowly escaped from the conflagration thus kindled; and when, at daybreak on the following morning, the men of York advanced to the assault, these miserable survivors appeared on the ramparts, and with their cries and tears recounted the horrors of the past night. To attest the truth of their words, they flung down the charred corpses of their slaughtered brethren, and earnestly prayed for baptism in the Christian faith. But the mercy it inculcates found no place in the hearts of the savage fanatics into whose hands they fell. By "crafty words of favourable promise," they were lured out of the castle gate, and one and all cut down as they crossed the threshold. Five hundred altogether are said to have perished. "Verily in the time of Our Lord's Passion, on the day before Palm Sunday, these things happened at York."

Robert de Turnham hastened away to the King in Palestine, and suffered no penalty for his participation in this evil deed; but the estates of Robert de Gant and Richard Malebisse were confiscated by order of the Justiciary Longchamp. De Gant died soon after, but Malebisse survived to enjoy his own again in a few years' time.

This Richard Mala Bestia was the head of a family of old standing and high position in Yorkshire, founded by a sub-infeudatory of Roger de Mowbray and Robert de Brus, the two great barons of the North Riding. "The manor of Ayton, in Cleveland, was, soon after Domesday, granted to the ancient family of Malebisse, and was held of the King in capite et de honore. There was anciently a chapel here, built by Sir William Malebisse about the year 1215."—Grave's Cleveland. Richard Malebisse in 1131 held one fee of the Honour of Eye (Rotul. Pip.); and his brother Hugh (Richard II.'s father) made his will in 1138. They had large estates in various parts of the county, and others in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, where they held Kyneton of the Honour of Richmond.—Gale's Richmondshire. Acaster Malbis, near York, which alone keeps the name in remembrance, is believed to have been one of their residences; and the second Richard had a house close to the city, at Clementhorpe on the Ouse. In 1191 he and his brother Hugh were excommunicated by the Pope as adherents and abettors of Prince John; but he contrived to make his peace with the authorities, and in 1198 founded a Praemonstratensian Abbey at Newbo in Lincolnshire, endowing it with all his lands in the village of Newbo, the churches of Acaster, Kyneton, &c. The accession of the new King in the ensuing year brought him into favour at Court; he was employed on several important missions; appointed Justiciarius ad Assicias for Lincoln in 1203, and received license to crenellate at Wheldrake, a few miles from York. "But the citizens of York, having had experience of the turbulent disposition of Richard the malabestia, and fearing that his having a castle so near to them might be to their detriment and disgrace, prevailed upon the Sheriff of the county, William de Stuteville, to forbid its completion on the King's behalf."—Yorkshire Archaeological Collections. His estate at Wheldrake was bestowed upon Fountains Abbey some time before his death, between 1211-18. His brother Hugh had married a Cambridgeshire heiress, Beatrix, Lady of Wyke, and with her founded Spinney Priory for three Augustinian canons in the beginning of Henry III.'s reign. In 1277 "Gilbert de Gant and Richard Malebisse are declared" (by an Inquest taken in that year) "to have a right to take a whale whenever caught in their port of Filey, the head and tail only being reserved for the King." John Malebisse was Joint-Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1314. "The family ended in females in the same century, and the two Yorkshire families of Fairfax and Beckwith claim to represent the co-heiresses of the ancient house of Malbys."—Ibid. In token of this descent, all the chief branches of the latter family bore Argent, a chevron between three hinds' heads ("testes de bis") Gules.

Musteys :

or Moutiers. Robert "de Mosters" was a tenant of Earl Alan's in Yorkshire 1086, and also held Truswell in Notts, part of the great Richmond Fee. "There are three places called 'Les Moutiers,' 'Monasteria,' in the department of Calvados in Normandy; but if he were a Breton, as seems probable, Moutiers near La Guerche may be the more likely place for him to have come from. Robert, however, was no doubt a near relation of 'Lisois de Monasteriis,' a brave knight in the Conqueror's army in the Northern campaign of 1069, who, when the river Aire had stopped their progress for three weeks, sought for a ford both above and below, and at last with great difficulty discovered one, by which he crossed over at the head of sixty bold men-at-arms, and though assailed by the enemy with great force stoutly held his ground. Next day Lisois returned and announced his discovery, and the army passed over without further delay (Ordericus IV. 5). Nothing more is recorded of Lisois, and if he had been surviving or had left sons living at the time of the 'Survey' we should have expected to find that he had been amply rewarded for his signal exploit, which was probably only one of his martial achievements. Robert, therefore, was rather a brother, as Gale thought, than a son of Lisois; but he left a son named after him, Lisois, who died without issue, though he succeeded his father, and owed, in 1131, £24, a mark of silver and saddle-horse, for his relief (Pipe Roll). Robert, however, left another son, Galfrid, father of Robert de Monasteriis, to whom Earl Alan confirmed by charter the lands held by Galfrid his father, Liserus his uncle (patruus), and Robert his grandfather (Gale's Honor of Richmond, p. 101). Descendants in the male line remain to this day in Notts; and the Manor of Kirklington (held in Domesday) belongs to one of the family of the Earl" (Marquess?) "of Ormonde, who himself represents Robert de Musters through the Wandesfords."—A. S. Ellis.

According to Thoroton, Truswell or Tireswell was held by seven generations of Robert's descendants. Lisiardus de Monasterio, and Gundra his sister, occur in the county 1194-99 (Rotuli Curiae Regis): and Robert, in 1279, held two fees "pro Warda Castri de Richmond."—Gale's Richmondshire. The last heir, Robert's great-grandson, Sir Henry, "by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Brian Thornton, had an only daughter and heir named Elizabeth, who was first married to Alexander de Moubray, and after his death to John de Wandesford of Westwick in Yorkshire, by whom she had a son and heir called John de Wandesford of Kirtlington in that county, born about 45 Ed. III.: of whom there is a family still remaining, but by her husband Moubray she had a daughter and heir Elizabeth, the first wife of Sir William Gascoyne the chief judge."—Thoroton's Notts.

Yet the old name was not lost, and still lives in the county. Colwick, the present seat of the family, was acquired by a Sir John Musters who died in 1689: won, it is said, at cards from one of the Byrons. Thoroton, however, gives a different account. "Sir John Byron," he tells us, "sold the manor to Sir James Stonehouse, being of a very great yearly value, but never got much above half the money, by reason of the breaking out of the war, wherein it was stop'd by the rebells, but since the return of the king, Richard, the present Lord Byron, hath accepted of some small part, and confirmed the title of Sir John, the present owner." Mundy Musters, third in descent from Sir John, was High Sheriff of Notts in 1753, as was his son John in 1777. John's son married Mary Anne Chaworth, the "bright morning star of Annesley," who had been Lord Byron's early love.

Merlay :

Barons of Morpeth in Northumberland, where the ruins of their castle still overlook the town. The domain was very large, including many adjacent villages, and "by the rolls of Henry V. is called the barony of Merlay, which shows that Merlay and Morpeth were places originally distinct from each other, the one denoting the hill and the other the valley: at length the distinctions subsided in the general appellation of Morpeth. King Henry I. gave Julian the daughter of Gospatrick Earl of Dunbar in marriage, with a rich dowry, to Roger de Merley, Baron of Morpeth. This Roger founded Newminster, and was interred therein, with his wife and Osbert their son."—Hutchinson's Northumberland. The name was taken from the fief of Merlai, in Normandy. The records of these barons mainly consist of benefactions to their town. One Roger de Merlay obtained of King John in 1199 a market for his borough, and an annual fair on Magdalen-day: another ornamented Morpeth, and in addition to other works of charity, founded Catchburn Hospital; and a third—the last of his race—granted to his burgesses, with other liberties and immunities, a freedom from all taxes, subsidies, or contributions, except those to the King for public safety, the marriage honours of the Lord's heir or eldest daughter, or the Lord's redemption from captivity. He left two co-heiresses, Mary and Johanna. Mary married William Lord Greystock, to whose posterity the whole barony of Morpeth descended, for her sister Johanna, the wife of Robert de Somerville, had five sons who all died s. p. The Merlais bore Barry of six Argent and Gules, a border Azure charged with martlets Or.

Mouncy :

"from Monchy, near Arras. Drogo de Money came to England 1066, and was in Palestine 1096 (Ord. Vitalis, 723). Drogo de Money, his son, had a pardon in Sussex 1130 (Rot. Pip.). In 1299 Walter de Money was summoned to Parliament as a baron."—The Norman People. Temp. Henry III., "Serlone de Munsay" witnesses a grant to Merevale Abbey. The Moneys held Thornton of the Percy fee in Yorkshire. "Walter de Muncy, 28 Ed. I. had a charter for free-warren in his demesne lands at Thornton juxta Skipton, Everby, and Kelbroke in the co. of York. From the frequency of his name in the writs of summons of his time, he must have been a person of great eminence. In 29 Ed. I. he was one of those barons who, in the parliament at Lincoln, subscribed that memorable letter which was addressed to the Pope, asserting the King's supremacy over the realm of Scotland; on which occasion he was denominated Dominus de Thornton.

"Moreover, he had summons to parliament from the 26th to 35th Ed. I., both inclusive; which, if a writ of summons be creative of a personal and descendable honour, may, by the repetition of the writ upon so many occasions, be considered to have rendered this person a peer of the realm, with a right of succession to the barony, vested in his posterity.

"This Walter was at the famous siege of Carlaverock, in the time of Ed I., where he is mentioned in the roll of those who were then marshalled, as having his banner chequered, Gules and Argent. His heir was probably a female, married to Goushall, who had two daughters, who were his co-heirs; whereof Margaret married first——Despenser, and had a son, Philip Despenser; and secondly, John de Roos, a younger son of William Lord Roos, or Ros, of Hamlake, who died without issue by her, 12 Ed. III., leaving her, the said Margaret surviving, who deceased about 22 Ed. III. Isabel, sister of Margaret, appears afterwards to have been found her heir, and wife of Durand Bard."—Banks.

Mauches :

Matthew de Maus held half a knight's fee of old feoffment of the Honour of Brockeino (Brockenhow?) in Herefordshire.—Testa de Nevill. But other entries in the same record give the name as Mauns. More probably Maches is here intended. Henry Mache occurs in the Rotuli Hundredorum, about 1272. Richard de Haured, in 1270, held some land in Pittesford of William Mause of Sussex.

Mascy :

"a well known Norman family. Macey, whence the name is derived, was near Coutances and Avranches. In 1086 Hugh de Maci held lands in Hunts (Domesd.), and Hamo or Hamund de Maci held nine lordships in barony from Hugh Lupus in Cheshire, and 1193 subscribed the foundation charter of Chester Abbey, and granted lands to it (Mon. i. 985)."—The Norman People. The present town of Dunham-Massey, "the home of the Masseys on the downs," takes its name from this Hamon, one of the Palatinate barons, who there built his castle, and made it the head of his honour. His descendants held it for more than two hundred and seventy years, five generations in succession bearing his name. Hamo III. founded Birkenhead Abbey for Benedictine monks in the time of Henry II. Hamo VI., the last Baron of Dunham, was three times married, though he left no posterity. His first wife, Isabel de Beauchamp, died on her wedding night; the second was her sister Alice, from whom he was divorced; and the third, Joan Clinton, was a sister of the Earl of Huntingdon. "By the counsel of this Joan," says Sir Peter Leycester, "he sold the reversion of the whole manor of Doneham, after the death of himself and his wife, to Oliver de Ingham, then Justice of Chester; for which reversion Oliver gave him 1000 marks, and 44 marks annual for his life, in 1316." It is stated that some time previously he had given this demesne "without license to Hamon his bastard son," but that the said bastard died during his lifetime in Gascony, leaving no issue. "There can be little doubt that Hamon the bastard was the son of Alice, who—perhaps on the ground of consanguinity—was divorced; and that, though base by law, he was the acknowledged son and heir by grant of Sir Hamon."—Ormerod.

Sir Hamon died about 1341, leaving four sisters who should have been his co-heiresses. Cecily, the eldest of these disappointed relatives, had married John Fitton of Bollin, who stoutly contested Ingham's right; and even took advantage of his absence in Gascony on the King's service to enter into possession of Dunham. But he was expelled by the King's command in the name of Oliver; and in spite of "great suits" and much exertion, the Fittons never recovered their inheritance till after Oliver's death. From them it passed by the Venables to the Booths, Earls of Warrington, whose heiress brought it, in the early part of the last century, to the Earls of Stamford, its present owners. No vestige remains of the old castle of the Massys; but their glorious chace still boasts of its "famous oaks, and magnificent breadths of bracken."

Though the family was thus deprived of its head and bereft of its barony, at least it ran no chance of wanting an heir-male. The ramifications of the parent stock of Dunham were, according to Ormerod, represented by seventeen families—some of them retaining the original spelling of Mascy—in Cheshire alone. Yet, in the course of the five hundred years following, nearly all of them had passed away.

The Massies of Sale, who gave their name to Saughall Massie, and had branched off as early as the time of King John, ended in 1685 with Richard Massy and his seven daughters. Of this line were the Massies of Backford and Timperley, whose last heir died in the time of Henry V.: the Massies of Edgeley, still flourishing under James I.: the Mascys of Godley, and probably those of Hough and Kelshall. The Masseys that were seated at Crossley till 1600, likewise bore their arms. The Masseys of Tatton expired about 1475 with a Sir Geoffrey, whose heiress Joan married William Stanley. There were in all ten Lords of Tatton of this name; and one of them, Sir Richard, had followed the banner of his Earl, the Black Prince, throughout the French wars; had led the archers on his last expedition, and received a grant in recognition of his services in Gascony and at Poitiers. The Masseys of Dunfield descended from a bastard of this house. Then there were the Masseys of Grafton, Withenshaw, &c, and the Masseys of Puddington,^[165] whose ancestor Richard, the contemporary and probably the younger brother of the fifth Baron of Dunham, was Sheriff of Cheshire in 1277, and Judge of Chester in 1291, 1296, and 1299. Sir John Mascy of Puddington was a soldier of considerable reputation in the French wars of the fourteenth century, and is mentioned by Holinshed among "those slain at Shrewsbury fight 4 Hen. IV. on the part of King Henry." William Massey, the last representative of this family, "was a zealous Catholic, and warmly attached to the cause of the Pretender to the English crown; and is traditionally said to have fled home after the battle of Preston, and to have effected his escape to Wirrall, by a desperate attempt at swimming his horse over the Mersey below Hooton. This brave horse is said to have dropped down dead as it reached the stable door. He was seized at Puddington Hall, and imprisoned in Chester Castle, and shortly afterwards died, having bequeathed his estates to his godson, Thomas Stanley, who assumed the name of Massey in succeeding to them."—Ormerod. They are now vested in his last descendant, Sir John Massey Stanley Errington.

The Massies of Coddington (of whom came the families of Rosthorne, Poole, &c.) are said to be a younger branch of the house of Puddington, and derive from Hugh de Masci, who married the heiress of Coddington in the time of Richard II. They had "a very fine and large demesne, with a house answerable unto it"; this is now pulled down, but "the manor has descended uninterruptedly to the present proprietor."—Ibid. The Massies of Poole are also still represented. Thus the brave old Cheshire name is carried on when well nigh all its compeers have perished; and its bearers are now "perhaps the only remnant in the direct male line of the posterity of any of the Palatinate Barons."—E. P. Shirley.

Edward Massie, the fifth son of John Massie of Coddington and Anne Grosvenor his wife, was an officer of great ability and considerable note in the Civil War. He began life fighting under the Royal banner; but "finding," says Clarendon, "that there would be little gotten but in the comfort of a good conscience, he went to London, where there was more money and fewer officers;" and taking service under the Earl of Stamford, was at once made a Lieutenant-Colonel and appointed Governor of the City of Gloucester. Clarendon further tells us how he inveigled the King to besiege him there by the hopes of a speedy surrender; and then, answering his summons by an insolent defiance, held the place till the garrison was reduced to its last barrel of powder, and he was relieved by Lord Essex. This long and obstinate defence, for which he received the thanks of both Houses, was of the greatest service to the Parliament; and he achieved another success at Ledbury, where he had a hand-to-hand encounter with Prince Rupert. "The Prince," he says, "sent me word by my trumpeter that I sent, that in the fight he sought me out, but knew me not till after, no more than I knew him. But it seems we charged each other, and he shot my horse under me, and I did as much for him."

In 1647 he was a Major-General, with a seat in the House of Commons, where he obtained great influence, and was thrown into prison for taking part against Cromwell. He managed, however, to make his escape to Holland, and had the effrontery to present himself to the Prince as a sufferer for the King his father. The sincerity of the repentant rebel was never questioned, as his interest and abilities were of the highest value; he was received with open arms, permitted to retain his rank, and entrusted with the command of a regiment of horse under the Duke of Buckingham. He was severely wounded at the outset of his new career; and after the fatal battle of Worcester rode six miles with the King "but not being able to keep pace with him any longer, the King took his leave with tears trickling down his cheeks, saying, 'Farewell my dear and faithful friend, the Lord bless and preserve us both!' and so they parted. The Major-General wheeled off by way of Bromsgrove, but being unable from the anguish of his wounds and excessive weariness to travel further, he threw himself on the mercy of the Countess of Stamford, and was received as a prisoner at Bradgate."—Ormerod.

His wounds were believed to be mortal, but he survived to make a last unsuccessful attempt to seize Gloucester for the King. The stormy and tempestuous night, which was in a great measure the cause of his failure, helped to save his own life. "He had been seized by a troop of horse, and was conveyed by them towards his prison, being bound on his horse before a trooper. In the darkest part of the night, in a wooded and hilly defile, he contrived to throw the soldier from his horse, and disentangling himself from his hold, by means of his strength and agility secured his retreat into the woods."—Ibid. He was yet living in 1670—apparently in Ireland, as he was buried at Abbey Leix.

Contemporary with him, but whether or no related I am unable to determine, was another General Massy, who settled in Ireland, where he held a military command in 1641. His two great-grandsons each received an Irish peerage. The elder, Hugh, was created Lord Massy of Duntry-League, county Limerick, in 1776; and his brother, Eyre, who had done good service at Culloden and elsewhere, and been Marshal of the army in Ireland, was created Lord Clarina in 1800. Both of them have representatives.

Mauncel :

This name is frequently found in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the twelfth century, and certainly remained in Normandy for upwards of six hundred years. The Du Moncels bore Gules, three lozenges Or. Robert du Moncel in 1571 was Sire de St. Christophe; Henri Jacques du Moncel, Marquis de Torcy, is mentioned in 1740; and five gentlemen of the name (one of them the Comte du Moncel) sat in the assembly of the Ordre de la Noblesse of Normandy in 1789. The first who came to England was Philip Mansel, said to have been in the Conqueror's army, who received from Philip Harley (called in the pedigree his grandfather) the manor of Oxmuth or Ormuch in Glamorgan, which long remained the dwelling place of his family. From him descended the celebrated ecclesiastic John Mancel, who in the time of Henry III. ranked among the first men in the land. He was reputed to be the richest clerk in the world, and as a proof of "the enormities of the principles of plurality and non-residence which prevailed in those days," it is computed that he held seven hundred livings at one and the same time! "In addition to his church preferment, he was provost of Beverley, treasurer of York, Chief Justice of England, one of the privy council, chaplain to the King, his ambassador to Spain; a worthy soldier, in armis strenuus anima, imperatorius; with his own hands, in a battle betwixt the French and English near to Tailborge in France, he took prisoner one Peter Orige, a gentleman of eminent place and quality. He was crossed, to go to Jerusalem. He feasted at his house at Tote Hill fields two kings and two queens, with their dependencies: seven hundred messes of meat scarce serving for the first dinner. About 31 Hen. III., at the instance of the said King, he was made Keeper of the Great Seal as vice chancellor. For, saith Paris, custodiam sigilli accepit cancellarii vices acturus et officium: and afterwards Lord Keeper in plenary office and authority; yet for all this glorious pomp and great promotions, his end was poor, wretched, and miserable, beyond seas; the place of his burial unknown."—Barn's Lancashire. Not the least remarkable feature of Sir John's career is the undoubted fact that this privileged pluralist, in addition to his seven hundred ecclesiastical benefices, had a wife; and one who, as her father's only child, must have brought him a considerable inheritance. He married Joan de Beauchamp, daughter of Simon Baron of Bedford; and left a son, Sir Thomas, who was a Banneret, and lost his life at Northampton in the Barons' War, 48 Hen. III. Other successors widened their patrimony by marrying various Glamorganshire heiresses; one of them was killed in the wars of York and Lancaster; another lost his head at Chepstowe "upon some of the various Turns in those disputes." Sir Edmund Mansel, "a Man of Eminence in Queen Elizabeth's Reign, and Chamberlain (or Chancellor) of the Co. Palatine of Chester," was the father of two sons who were both created Baronets; Thomas, the eldest, in 1611; and Francis, the second, who held Muddlescombe in right of his wife, in 1621.

Sir Thomas of Margam, the elder son and senior baronet, was ancestor, in the fourth degree, of another Sir Thomas, who was created Lord Mansell by Queen Anne in 1711. He had been the Comptroller of her Household, a Commissioner of the Treasury, and a teller—as it was then termed—of the Exchequer. He survived his eldest son, who had married a daughter of the celebrated Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the grandson who succeeded him dying unmarried, his next two sons, Christopher and Bussy, became the third and fourth Lords Mansell. The title expired with Bussy in 1750. His only child, Louisa Lady Vernon, had but one surviving daughter, who was never married, and thus the inheritance reverted to the descendants of the last Lord's youngest sister, Mary. She was the wife of John Talbot of Lacock in Wiltshire, and is now represented by Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot of Margam.

The second son, Sir Francis of Muddlescombe, was the progenitor of the existing family. He lost his heir in the Civil War, and two grandsons were his successors, one of whom, Sir Richard, third Baronet, had inherited from his mother Iscoed in Carmarthenshire, which became the family seat. Another of Sir Francis' descendants, Edward Mansel, who married the heiress of Trimsaran in the same county, received in 1696 a baronetcy which ended with his great-grandson in 1798.

Neuers :

John de Nivers was made Governor of St. Briavel's and Warden of Dean Forest 18 Ed. II.—Atkyn's Gloucestershire. Gilbert de Noviers witnesses the foundation of St. Wandragisele, in the diocese of Rochester (Mon. Angl). But in both these instances, as in the case of the Milo de Nivers, Noers, Nuers, Or Nuiers, mentioned in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194-99, we may assume that Noers is the name intended.

Nereuile :

Nerval, or Nervallis, is mentioned in the Norman Exchequer Rolls; but I have not met with the name in any English record, with one single exception. Theobald de Neurile witnesses a deed at Stamford in 1303.

Onatule :

I think this must stand for Orlatele, a name written in Domesday. Jeffrey Orlatele held Baunton in Gloucestershire (see Atkyns); but I can find no account of his posterity. Mr. Ellis, however, suggests that it "is probably the same surname as Orescuilz, which occurs at a later date." I confess myself unable to trace any resemblance between the two names: and, according to Eyton (Domesday Studies, Somerset), the De Orescuilzs were descendants of Humphrey the Chamberlain. His estate, "Sanforda," is now Sandford-Orcas (a corruption of Sandford-Orescuilz).

Paiteny :

William de Pateney, in the time of Ed. I., obtained from Agnes de Sparkeford, under a promise of marriage, her land in Uphulle and Crucheston. Somerset, to farm for two years. "And the said William quietly continued possession of the land for eleven years, during which time the said Agnes frequently demanded and entreated him to make her his wife, to which request he would not and could not consent, as he was married elsewhere; and therefore the said Agnes being reduced to the greatest poverty came to the Queen at Clarendon, and gave her to understand how she had parted with her land, and how by the falsehood of the said William she was disinherited. Whereupon the Queen being moved by pity came and showed the King this deed and falsehood," and the land was restored to Agnes, who gave it to her benefactress, receiving in return a yearly pension. After the Queen's death, William de Pateney's son had the effrontery to claim the land from her executors, but there is little doubt that he was put out of court. (Archaeological Journal, vol. 10, p. 104.) This is evidently the same name that occurs in Dorsetshire as Petteny, Petyieum, and Petimy. Helias de Petyieum was capital lord of Thorncumb in that county; and one of the heiresses of John Aleyn, of Candel-Purse, who died 24 Ed. III., married Thomas Petimy. Hutchins believes it to be a corruption of Peytevin. In this case we must dismiss it as a duplicate.

Querru :

for Quercu (oak). Robert de Quercu occurs in the Rotulus Magnus Pipae of 31 Henry I.: and Nicolas, Galfrid, Oliver, and Ralph de Quercu in the Magni Rotuli Scaccariae Normanniae of 1189-93. Nicholas was seated in Lincolnshire, where he is mentioned at the same date (Rot. Pip.). Perhaps Thomas de Quercy, whose name appears in a deed of Galfrid de Lisle's, temp. Henry II., belonged to the same family. John de Quercu was of Somersetshire in 1264.—Inq. p.m. 48 Hen. III.

Rugetius :

In the collection of ancient seals attached to deeds and charters in the muniment room of Stowe Bardolph, Norfolk, I find one, used 3 Hen. VI., thus inscribed:

"S. Walt' d'ni fitz Waut' et de wodeham haydepuys et rochetiss."

Sir Walter Fitz Walter was then Lord of Woodham, and of the latter places named, which "were probably in Normandy." La Haye-du-Puys, at least, is well known. "Rochetiss" may perhaps be identified with Rochetts in Essex.

S. Cloyis :

This name, here bracketed with St. Clair, corresponds with the enigmatical "Seucheus" Of Holinshed's list, which I must admit to be quite beyond the reach of my comprehension. I have fancied it might be another spelling of S. Clo, or St. Lo: in which case it would be a duplicate. Or it may stand for St. Clavo, or St. Savo: but the termination does not tally in either instance. St. Clavo is, as far as I know, uncommon. "Robertus de Sancto Savo" was of Norfolk, c. 1198 (Rot. Cur. Regis): William de San Savo, and Robert de San Clavo of Suffolk, c. 1272 (Rot. Hundred). Philip de San Clavo held in Kent 8 Ed. I. (Ibid.): as well as a knight's fee in Malkeston, Westwyck and Hoketon, Cambridgeshire, of the Honour of Richmond (Gale).

S. Jory :

or Saint Jores, "one of the parishes under the jurisdiction of the Barons of La-Haie-du-Puits."—M. de Gerville. In the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1198-1203, S. Joire is given as an abbreviation of S. Georgius. There was also Saint Jorry, which, "with other estates, was sold to the King of France in 1285 by the Vicomte de Lautrec."—Anselme. The name is here made to rhyme with Somery. I have only found it mentioned twice in England, and on each occasion shorn of its saintly prefix. In 1304, Roger Jory and Alice his wife granted to Elstow Abbey some land at Moulsoe in Oxfordshire. "Three years later the transaction was concluded by an agreement entered at Westminster, the Abbess dementia paying them £20: so that, after all, that which might have been supposed to be an act of beneficence assumed a very ordinary, if not mercantile character."—Chronicle of Elstow Abbey. John Jory was one of the contumacious tenants in the Isle of Thanet during the Wat Tyler insurrection of 1381.—Archaeologia Cantiana.

Souereng :

Charles de Saveuse was Seigneur of Souverain-Moulin in the fifteenth century. Anselme. I have been even less successful in my endeavours to trace this name, for I have come across it only once, and only in the fifteenth century, when William Sovereign was Vicar of Little Marlow, Bucks. He died in 1454. It is probably identical with Soverne, but of this family, again, I have no account to give. I only know that their coat of arms was Argent, on a fess Gules, three cinquefoils Or. Saveignes or Soveignes, another somewhat similar name, bore Quarterly Sable and Or: sometimes with the addition of three griffins' heads counterchanged.

Soucheuile :

for Suchville; one of the forms of Sacheville, Sageville, Seccheville, or de Secca Villa. See Sageville.

Saunz pour :

or fearless. This was the appellation given to Richard I. of Normandy,

"Ki le diable ateint et tint,
E le veinquit e le lia."^[166]

Other feats of strength and prowess were similarly recorded and retained as proper names; as Longespe, Longue Lanche, Lancelevee, Butte de Leu, Collum Bovis, Machefer, Quatrehommes, Trenchefer, Cornedeboef, Taillefer, Taillepied, Piedefer, Grauntvalour, Brasdefer, Passavant, Corsdeboef, Briselaunce (the original form of Breakspere), Gratteloup, and many more.
Here, to my great regret, I have failed altogether, much as I should have liked to identify the gallant knight known as Sans Peur.

Sageuile :

"This family came from Sageville, Isle of France, and was seated in Devon. Richard de Sacheville occurs in Essex 1086."—The Norman People. The first mentioned in the west is Henry de Siccavilla, who in 1165 held of William de Braose's barony of Barnstaple.—Liber Niger. In the following century Ralph de Sacheville or Seccheville was a baron in Devon, and held land in Leicestershire of William de Bruere. Robert de Siccavilla was his tenant at Scoteswyk.—Testa de Nevill. The latter received from King John, "after the revolting of Normandy," the manor of Rewe, which had belonged to Gilbert de Vilers, and that of Braunton, "except the land of Odo de Carru." Several manors in the county retain their name. They held Heanton-Sachville from the time of Richard Coeur de Lion to that of Henry III.: it then passed to the Killigrews, and through them to the Yeos, in the first years of Edward III.'s reign. Culme-Reigny, afterwards called Colm-Sachville, belonged successively to the Reignys and Sachvilles, and then to the Courtenays.—v. Tysons. Their principal seat, Clist-Sachville, was lost to them through the "cunning device" of one of the Bishops of Exeter. "Clist-Sachvill contynewed in the name of Sachvill untill about the beginninge of the raigne of Kinge Edward I. Sr Ralph Sachvill knt borrowed moneys of Walter Brounscomb, Bisshop of Exceter, to furnish himself for his journey into Fraunce in the Kinge's service; and theruppon having mortgaged this land for the Bisshop's assurance, uppon the redemption, to be repayde with all the charge and coste the Bishop should disburse. But the Bisshop bestowed soe much coste in buylding and other ways, that the poore knight returning home and bringing the money, borrow'd the Bisshop's accompts, grewe unto soe high a pporcion of expences bestowed on it, that it amounted to a greater valewe then the lands were worth: and by this meanes this became one of the scites and dwelling houses of the Bisshop's of Excestre." Sir William Pole. This unlucky Sir Ralph, having been mulcted of his inheritance in the west, removed into Leicestershire, where he served as knight of the shire in 1312, 1315, 1321, and 1324. In the latter year he died. He had been an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster, pardoned in 1313: and subsequently received a writ of military summons to pass into Guyenne in the train of Earl Warrenne.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. His grandson John left only daughters.

Tally :

probably for Tilly, as Leland makes it rhyme with Pavely or Pavilly. This family—one of the most illustrious in Normandy—took their name from the castle and barony of Tilly, near Caen, of which they were Castellans (La Roque, Maison d'Harcourt, ii., 1662. 1994, 1999). Henry de Tilly held the castle in 1165 (Feod. Norm.). Ralph de Tilly held lands in Devon (Exon. Domesday); and his descendants continued there till the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, when they were seated at Woonford. In the beginning of the same reign Henry de Tilly, of West-Harptree-Tilly, in Somersetshire, paid £14 15s. as scutage for the King's ransom. His descendants had several other possessions in the county: the last of them mentioned by Collinson is Lionel Tilly, Lord of Salthay, 13 Henry VI. In the time of Stephen the greater part of the confiscated barony of Geoffrey de Mandeville had been granted to De Tilly. Mersewood in Dorset was its caput baroniae. But, after a suit pursued by three successive generations, Robert de Mandeville recovered it from Henry de Tilly in the beginning of King John's reign.

In South Yorkshire we find "the family bearing the hereditary name of Tilly enjoying great interests in the dark days before the reign of Henry III."—Hunter. Otho de Tilly was the Seneschal or Steward of Coningsburgh Castle under Hameline Earl Warren during the reigns of Stephen and Henry II.; and erected a cross on the market place at Doncaster, of which the remains (now removed to Hobcross Hill, a little south of the town), are still preserved, with the inscription:

"tcest est la cruice Ote D Cilla
A ki alme Deu en face merci. Amen."

This Otho is a witness of the foundation charter of Kirkstall, 17 Stephen. He had a grant of Thorpe in Balne from William Vavasour, which was confirmed by William de Laci. By his wife, Mabel, he had an only daughter, Dionysia, married to Henry de Newmarch, or, according to the Pipe Roll of 31 Hen, II., to Henry de Puisac. Perhaps the latter was her second husband.

Otho de Tilly had a brother named Ralph, who apparently married a daughter of William Fitz Godric's by his first wife, for this first wife's only child, Sybil, was "the mother of Ralph and Roger de Tilly. The beautiful bearing of Fitz William, Lozengee Argent and Gules, which appears upon the most ancient seal now known to the family, and is still glowing in the windows of some of the churches of this deanery (Doncaster), was also used by the Tillis, differenced only by a canton."—Ibid. "Robert was the first conqueror or purchaser of Rotherham: from him issued John Tilly, and from him Ralph Tilly, who forfeited and lost his lands of Rotherham; and King Henry, father of King Edward, entered on the same, and held them as his escheat."—Dodsworth. John Tilly, in 1316, was Lord of Gomersall and Heckmonwick, and a Commissioner of Array in Morley Wapentake in 1322.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. Henry Tilley, at the same date, was one of the Lords of Abbotsley, Huntingdonshire, and Floore and Glasthorpe in Northamptonshire. He served as knight of the shire for the former county in 1314; as Conservator of the Peace in 1324; and Commissioner of Array in 1325. He was summoned to serve against the Scots 1322, and three years later served in Guienne under the Earl of Warrenne.—Ibid.

This house is still represented in Normandy by one of its junior branches, that of Tilly-Blaru. Their coat-of-arms bears Or a fleur-de-lis Gules.

Tibol :

As this name is made to rhyme with Filiol, it seems obvious that it must stand for Tilliol; taken from Tilliol, near Rouen. "Honfroi du Tilleul" is on the Dives Roll, and was the first Castellan of the new fortress at Hastings, which was, as Ordericus tells us, placed under his charge "from the very day when it began to arise." It has been conjectured that he was a brother of Thurstan Goz, and therefore the great-uncle of Hugh Earl of Chester: be that as it may, the name was of long continuance in Normandy, for it is found in the Assembly of the Nobles of 1789. Humphrey married Adeliza, the sister of Hugh de Grentemesnil, and like him, returned to Normandy in 1669, "leaving their King and comrades to their fate, and their English lands and honours to the King's mercy." It is said that they were recalled by their wives, who, "fearful of the dangers of the sea, fearful of the dangers of a land which seemed wholly to be given up to wars and tumults, refused to trust themselves in England. But the long absence of their husbands soon became more than they could bear; they sent, so the story runs, messengers saying that, if their lords did not speedily come back, they would be driven to seek out other consorts for themselves. Orderic tells the tale at length, not without some touches of humour."—Freeman. Perhaps it was for the above reason that Humphrey's name is not in Domesday; but his son, Robert de Roelent or Rhuddlan (so named from a castle in Wales), is one of the potentates entered in that record. "He had been one of the Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor, and had held what one would think must have been the sinecure office of armour-bearer to the Saint. He held of the King a district bearing the vague but sounding title of North Wales, the boundaries of which it was perhaps discreet not to define more exactly. The Earl of Chester, who had to wage a constant war with the Welsh, found an able helper in Robert, who bears the title of Marquess in its primitive sense, as one of the first Lord Marchers of the Welsh border. On the site of King Gruffydd's palace of Rhuddlan, the palace which was burned by Harold as the earnest of his great Welsh campaign, a castle and town arose, from which the Marquess Robert carried on for fifteen years a constant warfare with his British neighbours."—Ibid.

The title of Marquess, conferred on Robert de Roelent by Mr. Freeman, is not given him by the county historians, to whose humbler intellects he was only one of Hugh Lupus' eight Cheshire barons, "who, at the period of the Survey, had divided possession with his cousin the Earl of half the castle and burgh of Roelent." Sir Peter Leycester thus describes him (quoting Ordericus): "He was a valiant and an active soldier, eloquent, facundus et formidabilis, but of a stern countenance, liberal and commendable vertues. * * * * William the Conqueror gave him Rothelent Castle and town, that he might make it a defence to England, by curbing the excursions of the Welsh. And this stout champion, seated on their borders, had many skirmishes with the Welsh, slew many of them, and enlarged his territories; and on the Mount Daganauth, close by the sea, he built a strong castle, and for fifteen years sore afflicted the Britons and Welshmen. But at last Griffith, King of Wales, in July 1088, landed with three ships under the hill called Hormaheva, and when he had pillaged the country, returned back to his ships. But as soon as Robert had notice, he calls his soldiers together, and with a few soldiers coming to the top of the hill, he saw them shipping the men and cattle which the Welsh had taken; and being incensed thereat, himself runs violently down the steep hill, attended only by one soldier, called Osberne de Orgiers, towards the enemy; but they perceiving him so slenderly guarded, returned back upon him, and with their darts or arrows mortally wounded him; yet whilst he stood and had his buckler, none durst approach so near as to encounter him with a sword; but as soon as he fell, the enemy rushed upon him and cut off his head, which they hanged upon the mast of the ship in triumph. Afterwards with great lamentation both of the English and Normans, his soldiers brought his body to Chester, and it was interred in the monastery of St. Werburge in that city." His epitaph was written by Ordericus.

The barony expired with him, as he left no children to inherit it, although he had illegitimate descendants who bore his name. Among those who perished in 1119 in the wreck of the Blanch Nef, Ordericus includes, with the "two brave sons of Ivo de Grentemaisnill, William de Rothelent their cousin, who by the King's command were coming to receive their father's inheritance in England." (Note that this was twenty-one years after Robert's death.) Matthew de Ruelent gave the church of Turstanton to St. Werburgh's Abbey, where his brother Simon became a monk. Goisfrid de Ruelent witnesses Henry I.'s charter to Colne Abbey; and Richard de Ruelent another of Ada de Montbegon to Monk Bretton (Mon. Angli.).

The Tilliols of Cumberland must have belonged to this family; but I have no means of elucidating the question of their descent. It is possible that their ancestor, "Richard the Rider, whose surname was Tilliol," was the same person as Richard de Roelent, mentioned above. In any case, he received from Henry I. the manor of Scaleby, to be held of the crown by cornage; he also held Solport of the barony of Lyddal; and Richardby, in the barony of Linstock, near Carlisle, of the Bishop of Carlisle. "At this Richardby Richard the Rider seated himself, whereupon it was so called after his name; and the gate, port, and street in Carlisle leading thither, is from thence called Richardgate, or Richardby Gate: in old evidences, vicus Richardi. At that time the Scots did tyrannize over the country next adjoining them, which enforced the gentlemen to dwell in Carlisle, and therefore every man provided himself to be served with corn, soyle, and hay, as nigh the city as they might."—Hutchinson's Cumberland. Richard the Rider also "first planted habitations" at Scaleby; and there erected a castle, which was pulled down and rebuilt in Queen Elizabeth's time. His son or grandson, Piers de Tilliol, was the ward of Geoffrey de Lucy in the latter part of Henry II.'s reign, and married his daughter, by whom he had two sons. The younger, Adam, "had Rickerby for term of life, and was therefore called Adam de Rickerby; and of that family are descended all the Rickerbies."—Ibid. The elder brother carried on the line, which flourished till the time of Edward IV. In addition to their large Cumberland estate, the Tilliols held lands in West Hatfield, Holderness, "thro' a long series of descents;" but in 1346 the Fee of Tilliol had been transferred to the Hiltons. They often appear as Sheriffs of Cumberland: Sir Piers and Sir Robert de Tilliol each served three times under Edward III.: the former on his accession in 1327 and the two following years; and another Sir Piers filled the same office even oftener—twice under Richard II., and twice under Henry IV. The last heir male, "Robert the Fool," was a lunatic; and at his death the inheritance passed through his elder sister Isabel to the Colvilles of the Dale. Her second son, Robert, afterwards claimed the property, alleging a will made in his favour by his grandfather, on condition of his taking the name of Tilliol. "But Robert had not this will to produce, and so was forced to sit without the estate: nevertheless, to keep on foot his pretensions, he assumed the name of Tilliol." There is some evidence to show that this will really existed, and was fraudulently destroyed.

The Tilliols bore Gules a lion rampant Argent

Tregos :

from the castle of Tregoz, in the arrondissement of St. Lo: a place of some strength, built on a narrow neck of land washed by the Vire and one of its lesser tributaries. King John visited it in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Scarcely any traces of it now remain; and the name has long since degenerated into Troisgots. A priory once stood on the river bank hard by, founded by Robert de Tregoz in 1197. The Seigneurie was confiscated by Philip Augustus; but the family long remained in Normandy. Pierre de Tregoz was among the knights of the Cotentin summoned for the service of Mont St. Michel in 1271; and another Tregoz is mentioned in 1418 under Henry V.

"Cil ki dune tenet Tregoz,"

came to England in the Conqueror's army, and is praised by Wace for his intrepidity at the battle of Hastings. "He killed two Englishmen, smiting the one through with his lance, and braining the other with his sword; and then galloped his horse back, so that no Englishman touched him." We hear no more of this knight, either in Domesday or elsewhere; and though, according to the Testa de Nevill, the family was settled in Herefordshire from the time of the Conquest, the first mention of a Tregoz in public records is in the time of King Stephen. William de Tregoz, in 1139, farmed the lands of William Peverel of London (Rot. Pip.), and had two sons, John, who held in Sussex under the Earl of Arundel in 1167, and Geoffrey, who died in 1155, a landowner in Essex. Geoffrey's grandson, Robert de Tregoz, first raised the house into importance by his marriage; for his wife Sybil, the heiress of Robert Lord Ewyas, brought him the castle and honour of Harold-Ewyas in Herefordshire, and Lydiard—since named from him Lydiard-Tregoze—in Wiltshire; nineteen knights' fees in all. He took part against Henry II. with his rebellious sons; was Sheriff of Wilts under Coeur-de-Lion; and greatly trusted and often employed both in Normandy and England by King John. The eldest of his three sons died s.p.; and another Robert (whose father was the second son Geoffrey) succeeded, and had writs of military summons to serve against the Welsh in 1256 and 1257; but ended his days in arms against the King, fighting in the Barons' ranks at the battle of Evesham. John, his son and heir, doing homage three years afterwards, "found such Favour with the King, notwithstanding his Father's Demerits, that he was acquitted of fifty marks of the 0,1 then due for his Relief." He followed Edward I. to Wales in 1281, to Gascony in 1293, when "he had leave for his Wife and Family to reside in the Castle of Devizes, and to have Fuel for their Fires there," and to Scotland in 1296, receiving many marks of his sovereign's regard. He had license to hold a fair for three days every year at Eton-Tregoz, in Herefordshire, with free warren in all his demesne land, and was summoned to parliament in 1296. But his barony expired with him in 1300; for he left only two daughters, Clarice, married to Roger La Warre, and Sybil, the wife of William de Grandison, who between them divided twenty-four and a-half knight's fees. Clarice, as the first-born, had for her share the Herefordshire honour of Harold Ewyas.

Lydiard-Tregoze, however, appears to have belonged to his younger brother Henry, who had received summons as a baron of the realm two years before him; and being married to the heiress of the Lord of Garringes (Goring) had settled on her estate in Sussex. He, too, had served in the Gascon war of 1293; and in 1310 went with Edward II. to Scotland. The summons to parliament was never repeated to his descendants, though they continued in the county during five more generations. The last two childless brothers of the name left a sister called Joan, who conveyed Lydiard-Tregoze to Edward St. John, ancestor of the Viscounts Bolingbroke. The Sussex lands passed through another heiress to the Doyleys and Lewkenors.

M. de Gerville observes that the coat of the English house of Tregoz, Gules, two bars gemels and in a chief a lion passant guardant Or, is that of the De Meurdracs, Barons of St. Denis-le-Gast in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Treylly :

from the castle of Trely, in La Manche. "Two barons of this name appear in England, sub-tenants of the great Honour of Verdun."—Sir Francis Palgrave. The Trelys or Traillys are said to have been a branch of the noble family of St. Denis-le-Gast, of whose barony their Norman fief formed part. Lysons mentions them among "the earliest extinct families" that held property in Bedfordshire. "The Traillys were not summoned to parliament after the reign of King John, but the family was not extinct till about the year 1350. Their chief seat was at Yielden, anciently called Giveldune. The traces of their castle there are extensive. The principal works form a square of about eighty paces: in the centre is a large mount called the Castle-hill; with a vallum on the West side of it, including a space ninety paces long, and forty-five wide; round these works was a moat, in some parts of which the water still remains; and beyond the moat appear traces of walls for a considerable space." Northill, in the same county, was part of the barony of Traylly. "The parish church is supposed to have been built in the beginning of Henry IV.'s reign; at which time it was made collegiate by Sir Gerard Braybrooke, one of Sir John Traylly's executors. In the roof of the porch, which is of stone, are the arms of Traylly, a cross flory between four martlets."—Ibid. Geoffrey de Trailli (entered in the Buckinghamshire Pipe Roll 1155-58) married Albreda, one of the sisters and co-heiresses of Walter Espec, the famous Lord of Helmsley, and with his four sons, witnesses his brother-in-law's foundation charters of Kirkham Priory and Rievaulx Abbey. The names of the sons are there given as Geoffrey, William, Nicholas, and Gilbert. Sir Nicholas de Trailli, in 1218-19, witnesses two of the charters of Elstow Abbey, Oxon, of which his father had been a benefactor. Geoffrey II. was succeeded by Walter, his son, who, according to Banks, had a brother who was a monk, and two sisters, of whom one married, and the other became a nun. The wooden effigies of this Sir Walter de Trailli, who died in 1290, and of his wife Dame Alianora, who survived till 1316, remain in Woodford Church, Northants. Beatrix de Trayley married Thomas FitzArnold. Another of the name, Joanna de Trayley, was elected Abbess of Elstow in 1409.

Geoffrey de Trailli had been a tenant of the Bishop of Coutances, and his descendants held two knight's fees of the Honour of Warden in Bedfordshire, and Brill, with other lands in Buckinghamshire. Trayle's Manor is mentioned in Cambridgeshire. Henry de Trailly was knight of the shire for Northants in 1324.

Thorny :

for Tornai, from Tornai in Normandy. Walter de Torni held it 1165, by Castle Guard (Feod. Norm.). "Upon the redistribution of the conquered province of Mercia, when Earl Roger de Montgomery entered Shropshire to possess and rule, Gerard de Tornai, one of his followers, received as the meed of service, eighteen valuable Saxon manors, of which the largest was Sutton.

"Gerard was one of those western magnates who, upon the accession of Rufus, rebelled against him. At any rate, De Tornai's career in Shropshire terminated, about 1088, in a total and absolute forfeiture. The disinherited baron had a daughter, Sibil, wife of Hamo Peverel, who by special favour acquired a succession to the forfeited estate, under a title from the first ambiguous."—History and Antiquities of Shropshire. She died s. p. Goisfrid de Tornai held a fief in Lincoln 1086 (Domesday): and William de Tornai was Viscount of Lincoln before 1130 (Rot. Pip.). In Somersetshire John Tornay was among the gentlemen of the county certified as qualified to be Knights of the Bath temp. Henry VII. The name reappears in Bucks, where in 1664, they purchased the manor of Cublington, which passed through an heiress to the Sheppards. "The family had been long settled in Bucks, and held large possessions there from the time of Henry III.; their name occurring among the proprietors of land in Soulbury, Slapton, Great and Little Brickhill, Stoke-Hamond, Cheddington, and other parishes. Bernard Tournay, who died in 1681, the last heir male of this ancient family, acquired a degree of reputation that was highly honourable; he filled the office of a magistrate with great integrity, and was esteemed by a large circle of acquaintance, who daily witnessed his benevolence and shared in his hospitality."—Lipscomb's Bucks. John de Thorney, Lord of Figheldean in Wiltshire, was summoned in 1324 to attend the great Council at Westminster: Simon Thorney, in 1316, was Lord of Holcombe in Somersetshire; and William de Thorney one of the "Servientes" performing military service due from the Bishop of Worcester in 1310.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. The Lincolnshire branch still continued in that century; for Sir William Tourney, son of Sir Edward Tourney of Lincolnshire, acquired Shapwick-Champagne, in Dorsetshire by his wife Mary, heiress of Thomas Champagne, in the time of Edward III. Their son Edward settled on his mother's inheritance, but left only a daughter, through whom it passed to the Husseys. These Tournays bore Barry of six, Or and Vert. In Devonshire, Hugh de Tournay, in 1212, bestowed part of his manor of Molland on St. Nicholas' Priory, Exeter (v. Cartulary). In 1264, Roger de Tournay, being in attendance on Henry III. during his visit at Hurstmonceux Castle in Sussex, was accidentally killed by a bowshot while he was hunting in the park. William de Tornei witnesses Henry I.'s charter to Thetford Priory.—Mon. Angli.

Turley :

for Torlai: The Torleys bore Per pale Argent and Sable; and the Thorleys of Essex, Sable fretty Ermine. Thomas de Thorley was of Lincolnshire c. 1272 (Rot. Hundred.), and John Thorley was one of the burgesses for Lincoln in the parliament of 1397.—Allen's Lincolnshire. "Ernald de Torley, about the reign of Henry III., held half a fee in West Winch of Simon Fitz Richard, and he of the Earl of Clare."—Blomfield's Norfolk. William de Torleia witnesses a grant of Matilda de Say to Waltham Abbey.—Mon. Angli.

Tolimer :

There was a family named Du Tollemer in the neighbourhood of Pont Audemer in Normandy; they were Sires of Allicourt, Montagne du Chastel, &c, and bore Azure three trefoils Or. M. de Magny. Osbert Toulemer is mentioned as early as 1180-95 in the Exchequer Rolls of the province. Bartholomew Tillemer, of Yorkshire, in the Rotuli Cancellarii of 1203. Walter Tolymer of Essex, and William Tolymer, of Cambridge, both appear in Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs of 1322. The latter was summoned from the Liberty of the Bishop of Ely for military service against the Scots. William de Tholimer, who in 1299 held of the Abbey of St. Alban's in Oxfordshire (Palgrave's Affairs and History of Scotland), may have been the same person. The charter of liberties granted to the town of Beverley c. 1154 by Archbishop William, commonly called St. William of York, is witnessed by Reginald Theoloner.—Oliver's Beverley.

Treuille :

I first met with this name in Cornwall. Edward I. granted lands at Helston "by the tenure of grand sergeantry to William de Treville, on condition of his bringing a fish hook or iron crook and a boat and net, at his own proper costs and charges, for the King's fishing in the lake of Helston (Loo Pool),^[167] whenever the King should come to Helston, and as long as he should tarry there. From this I conclude that this William de Treville either had been or was Keeper of the royalty of this lake or pool by inheritance and held one Cornish acre of land, that is to say, one hundred and eighty English acres, in Eglesderry by the tenure of Serjeancy for that purpose."—Gilbert's Cornwall. The Trevilles were seated at Ethy or Tethe in the parish of St. Winnow. They continued for about four hundred years longer, and bore Or, a cross engrailed Sable; in the first quarter a mullet Gules. The last was John de Treville, Sheriff of Cornwall 18 Charles II., who left three daughters, his co-heiresses, married into the families of Burthog, Savery, and Arscott.—Lysons.

Richard de Trevill occurs in Bucks 1194-98 (Rotul. Curiae Regis). Saier de Trivilla witnesses Robert de Stuteville's grant to Wendling Abbey, Norfolk (Mon. Angl.). "The family of Treville possessed Rosemaund, Herefordshire.

Of these, Alexander Treville (younger brother and heir of Baldwin, heir of Richard, heir of Baldwin), is stated to have had 'fayre lands in the counties of Hereford and Norfolk' temp. Edward I. This Alexander was summoned to parliament 1 Edward III., and died soon after. Baldwin, his son and heir, also died 17 Ed. III.; and his son Baldwin, then twenty-six years of age, doing his homage, had livery of his lands in this and seven other counties. He died 11 Richard II., leaving issue Baldwin, who dying 2 Henry IV., also left issue Baldwin, who died in his minority, 6 Henry IV., leaving three sisters his co-heirs, of whom Margaret married Sir Hugh Willoughby."—Duncomb's Hereford.

Treville St., Plymouth (mentioned in the Corporation books of 1494-5 as "Trevyllys-strete"), commemorates an old merchant family long resident there, of whom the nearest surviving representative is believed to be Sir John Trelawny. Their coat-of-arms, a cross engrailed, over all a bendlet, proves that they belonged to the Cornish family.

Tourys :

The castle and barony of Turry, and Henry and Richard de Tury, Turi, or Turri, occur in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-1195. Odo de Turri was a benefactor of Kenilworth Abbey in the time of Henry I.: and from this Odo, a man of large possessions in Warwickshire, Thoresby, in a detailed pedigree to be found in his History of Leeds, derives, in direct male descent, the existing family of Torre of Snydale (anciently Syndall) that bear Sable a tower Or within a bordure Vaire. They continued at Westwood in the county of Warwick till the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century; we then find them in Lincolnshire; and finally, James Torre, living 1649-99, described as an eminent antiquarian, sold his property there, and acquired the manor of Syndale, still the seat of his posterity.

Other notices of the name are to be met with. In the Pipe Roll of 1189-90, I find Jordan de Turri, London and Middlesex; and Simon de Turri, in Notts and Derby. In 1261 Richard de Tur held lands in Aston-Clinton.—(Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire): and John de Tours or de Toury, in 1353, is mentioned in the same county, where their seat was Towersey. A family "that gave as their arms a tower, were seated at Berwick in Dorsetshire, which their heir-general brought to the Russells."—Hutchins' Dorset. John de Tours, who held of the Honour of Leicester, was a benefactor of Leicester Abbey; and 1232, Stephen de la Tour was a subtenant of the Lord of Belvoir. Isabella de Turs, probably his heiress, held in Thedingworth in 1296.—Nichols' Leicestershire. It is not certain that these De la Tours, or those of Berwick, can be identified with the De Turris. But we may certainly include in the family Me de Turri, who in 1165 held a knight's fee of the Bishop in Worcestershire (Liber Niger), and Stephen de Turs, a tenant of the Honour of Clare in Suffolk (Ibid.).

Tingez :

Can this be intended for Tyngrie? Sybilla de Tyngrie, the daughter of Pharamus de Bologne, was Lady of Clapham in Surrey, and a benefactress of Bec Abbey, in Normandy (Mon. Angl.). Nicholas and Adam de Tingrie witness a grant of Matilda de Say to Waltham Abbey.—Ibid. One of the titles belonging to the Montmorencys is Prince de Tingry. Thomas de Tyngry, 1316, was joint-Lord of Tingrith and Prestol in Bedfordshire (Palgrave's Parl. Writs). Tingry is in the Bolonais; and in the time of Edward II. was held by John de Fiennes. His son Robert left only a daughter, Joan, Countess of St. Pol.

Tinel :

"Turstinus Tinel et uxor ejus," appear in Domesday as undertenants in Kent: and another Turstin Tinel is found in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1198-1203. Ralph de Tinill, according to the Testa de Nevill, held two knight's fees in Huntwood, Bodenham, and Gouthorp, Norfolk. This entry enables us to identify the name with Tivile, the form into which it has drifted by the usual process of mistaking an n for a u. "The antient Family of the Tiviles," says Blomfield, "were very early settled at Intwood, in Norfolk. Ralf de Tivile held two fees temp. John and Henry III. They continued till Edward II.'s reign." A Ralph de Tivile occurs in Bedfordshire 1194-98.—Rotuli Curiae Regis.

Trauille :

William Travail witnesses a charter of Robert de Albini to Wallingford Priory; and "Radulphus Travel" gave four bovates and a toft at Wintrington, in Lindesey, to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. (Mon. Angl.) In the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the end of the twelfth century, I find a Walter Travail; perhaps the same Walter Travel whose heirs held land at Marshton, in Herefordshire, of the Honour of Weobley, temp. Henry III. This Walter de Travaille or de Travele occurs in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194-1198; where I also find mentioned William de Trauuel, of Shropshire. In the subsequent notices it is often difficult to distinguish this name from Treville. In Gloucestershire the Travells "entered their pedigree in the Visitation of 1618, and bore for their arms Per pale, Azure and Gules, on a bend Or between two eagles displayed Argent, three mullets Sable: on a chief of the fourth three garbs Vert. They were seated at Weston."—Sir Richard Atkyns. Sir Thomas Travell, knight, held Venn, in Somersetshire, in 1772: "it is not probable that he resided here, as we do not find his name in the list of Sheriffs."—Phelps' Somerset.

Anselme tells us that, about the middle of the fifteenth century, the seigneurie of Traville-le-Roquefort passed to the Estoutevilles through Marie de Ste. Beuve, Dame de Cuverville.

Tarteray :

joined to Cherecourt, and evidently intended for Carteray.

Takel :

or Tachel. Sanson Tachel, in 1165, held a knight's fee of the old feoffment of Roger de Moubray in Yorkshire (Liber Niger): and four and a half of his Lincolnshire fief (Testa de Nevill). John Takel held at Traneby, in the East Riding (Kirkby's Inquest). Beatrix, daughter of Gilbert Thakel, was the wife of William de Wentworth of Wentworth-Woodhouse (acquired by his father through an heiress in the time of Henry III.), and the mother of two sons: 1. William, ancestor of the Earls of Strafford; and 2. Richard, Bishop of London and Chancellor of England in 1338. About 1272, Magister Galfrid Takel, Simon Thakel, and Ralph Thakel all occur in the same county: and Alan, Benedict, Matthew, and Robert Takel in Oxfordshire.—Rotuli Hundredorum. The latter was Marshal of Woodstock in 1280: and more than a hundred years after that, a Robert Takel was Prior of Rosedale in Yorkshire. A third Robert, Rector of Marsh-Gibbon in Cambridgeshire, died in 1479.

Another branch of the family apparently existed in the far West. "Sir William Pole speaks of a manor in the parish of Gittisham (three miles from Honiton), belonging, in his time, to the Malets by inheritance from the family of Tacle."—Lysons' Devon. Honiton Church contains the monument of Joan Takell, widow, a.d. 1529.

The name was given to their seat in Essex. William de Takele, Hunts, of Takele in Essex, and his father Elias, occur in 1194-98 (Rotuli Curiae Regis). William de Takele (no doubt the same man) is mentioned in Lincolnshire in 1202. (Rotuli Cancellarii.) Robson gives the arms of Tackle as Or, three magpies proper.

Vipount :

De Vieux-pont, a great baronial name, taken from Vieuxpont-en-Auge, near Caen. "Dam William de Vexpont" is mentioned in Wace's account of the battle of Hastings. When William Malet's shield was pierced, and his horse killed under him, "he would have been slain himself, had not the Sire de Montfort, and Dam (Dominus) William de Vez-pont come up with their strong force and bravely rescued him, though with the loss of many of their people, and mounted him on a fresh horse." It was not, however, William, according to his commentator, but "Robert, lord of Vieux-pont, who appears to have been at Hastings. In 1073 he. was sent to the rescue of Jean de la Fleche. The name, afterwards written Vipont, is known in English history." He also held the seigneurie of Courville-en-Chatrain in Normandy. His English possessions are not recorded, as he was slain the year before the compilation of Domesday, "fighting courageously against Hubert the Viscount, and those of Maine, then in Rebellion." His second son and eventual successor, William, who held Hardingstone in Northamptonshire, had a contest in 1135 "for certain Lands in Devonshire to be determined by Battle:" and in 1154 Robert de Vipont held eight knight's fees in that county of the Honour of Totness. This Robert attained a great age; for he lived for sixty-two years after the above entry in the Liber Ruber, and proved "one of the most stirring spirits of those troublesome times." Matthew Paris ranks him among King John's evil counsellors; and the grants and honours lavished upon him indubitably prove that he "was very high in favour; as was," adds Dugdale, "Ivo his brother. In 4 John he was with the King in France, and probably in that memorable Battle at Mirabell, in which the French and Poictevins received so great an overthrow; where also many prisoners were taken, divers of which he had in his custody, until he received the King's command to deliver them unto Hugh de Gournay (amongst whom was Arthur Earl of Brittany, the King's Nephew, afterwards barbarously murthered): For which service (without doubt) it was, That the same year he had a Grant of the Castles of Appleby and Burgh, with the whole Bailiwick of Westmorland, to hold during pleasure." Dr. Hunter, the historian of South Yorkshire, explains that De Vipont, having seized his father-in-law's castle of Tickhill, received the barony and shrievalty in fee of Westmoreland as a recompense for surrendering it to the King, and "for the expense he had incurred in the said castle." Yet, however important the possession of this fortress may have been to the King, it could not for a moment compare in value with the truly Royal gift he received in return. The great barony of which he obtained the hereditary jurisdiction included no less than fifteen castles, two forests or chaces, and forty-five manors, comprising, with the sole exception of the free borough of Appleby, the entire county of Westmoreland. He had also the custody of Windsor Castle, was for several years Sheriff of Notts and Derby, and from 1210 to 1215 Sheriff of Devon. He even attempted to extend his authority into Wales. "Mathravel" (Montgomeryshire) "lies five miles to the west of Severn; and though it be now but a bare name, was once the Royal Seat of the Princes of Powys; and after these Princes left it, Robert Vipont an Englishman built a castle there."—Camden. Llewellyn besieged it in 1212.

During the following year De Vipont succeeded to the castle and honour of Tickhill, the splendid inheritance of his wife Idonea, on the death of her father John de Busli; and in 1215 acquired two other vast estates—the forfeited lands of the Barons of Egremont and De Vaux—as a reward for taking part with the King against the confederate barons. Nor did his fortunes wane in the ensuing reign. Henry III., on his accession, constituted him Sheriff of Cumberland and Constable of Carlisle, with half the lands of Eustace de Vesci, and all those of his brother Ivo (then in rebellion against the King), including their ancestral manor of Hardingstone. Nevertheless he hungered and thirsted for more. "Having," says Dugdale, "been so much practised in Rapine whilst the Civil Wars endured, now that all was quiet, he could not refrain him from the like, though the King straitly commanded otherwise, for he was one of those who detained some of the Castles and Lands of Bishops and other Great Men." Yet in 1226 this lawless marauder was one of the King's Justices Itinerant in Yorkshire, and the next year—the year of his death—a Judge of the Common Pleas.

He was succeeded by his son John, who died in 1254, leaving his heir a minor; and John Fitz Piers Fitz Geoffrey, Baron of Berkhampstead and Chief Justice of England and Ireland, paid two hundred marks for the custody and marriage of young Robert de Vipont, who duly became his son in law. In process of time Isabella Fitz Piers was found to be one of the four co-heiresses of her brother Richard, who died s. p. in the French wars. But her husband had long before forfeited all his possessions by espousing the fortunes of Simon de Montfort, and lost his life at Evesham, leaving two disinherited daughters, Isabella and Idonea. After the lapse of two years the barony was restored to them by the King, and the great heritage of Westmoreland passed to the Cliffords through Isabella, as Idonea, though she had two husbands, Roger de Leyburne and John de Cromwell, left issue by neither.

A branch of the Viponts is found in Scotland at a very early date, and the seal of one of them, bearing arms altogether differing from those used by the English house, is in the collection of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Instead of the annulets of the Barons of Westmorland, the escutcheon is charged with three lions rampant, and between them, on the honour point, a star, with two similar stars on the escutcheon. "The first of the family that held lands beyond the Tweed was a William de Veteriponte, who in the time of David King of Scotland (1124-1153) had a dispute with the monks of Coldingham about some land, which in the next reign he gave up to them by a deed. Among the benefactors of Kelso we find another William (probably his son) that married first Emma de St. Hilary, and secondly Matildis de St. Andrew; by the former of whom he had three sons, and by the latter one, if no more; and strange as it may seem, of his sons three were named William, and were distinguished as 'primogenitus,' 'medius,' and 'junior,' while the eldest of them had a son also called William junior."—Archaeological Society, vol. 13, p. 69. The last of the family there mentioned are the widows of two, if not three, other William de Viponts, who were living in 1296.

This great name, like many others presumed to be extinct, has most likely simply merged into obscurity. In 1880 I saw "Vipond" inscribed over the door of a grocer's shop in Middleton in Teesdale, within a dozen miles of the county in which the De Viponts once ruled supreme.

Vinoun :

Hugh and John de Vinon occur in the Rotuli Hundredorum, c. 1272; but there, as here, the name intended is Vivonne; a family that, according to Hutchins, came into Dorsetshire at the Conquest. It is probable they were cadets of the great French house of Vivonne, and derived their surname from a seigneurie of Fors, in Poitou. Hugh de Vivonne, styled de Fortibus, was Constable of Corfe Castle in 1240, Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset for the nine ensuing years, and Steward of Poitou, Acquitaine and Gascony, under Henry III. He married Mabel, the elder co-heir of William Malet, Baron of Eye, and had, besides a daughter, two sons, William and Hugh. "William, the eldest son, in 32 Henry III. had leave to go over to Poitou to recover such lands and tenements as ought to descend to him by inheritance from the death of Americ de Vivonia, his uncle. He married Maud de Kyme, sixth daughter and co-heir of Sybyl de Ferrers, by whom he had four daughters, his co-heirs."^[168]—Archaeological Journal, vol. 18. The eldest of these, Joan, married Reginald Fitz Peter; the second, Cecily, John Beauchamp of Hacche; the third, Sibil, Guy de Roche Chinard (De Rupe Canardi): and the fourth, Maud, Fulk de l'Orty (Ibid.).

"Hugh de Vivonia, second son of Hugh by Mabel Malet, held the manor of Sellinge, in Kent, which he obtained (as I conjecture) with his wife Petronilla, daughter of William de Putot: he was slain in Wales, and left issue by his said wife a son, named John de Vivonia, who died 8 Ed. II., seized of the manor of Sellinge aforesaid, which he held of the King in chief by the service of one knight's fee and the payment of 10s. annually for castle-ward of Dover; and Peter Fitz-Reginald, son and heir of Joan de Vivonia, one of the daughters and heirs of William de Fortibus, uncle of the said John, and Cecilia de Bellocampo, another daughter and heir of the said William, were found to be his cousins and next heirs, Peter being thirty years of age, and Cecilia upwards of forty. Peter became ancestor of the Gwillims and Herberts, and a score of other Welsh families: from Cecilia descended the Lord Protector Somerset, whose heir is now her representative."—Townsend's Additions to Dugdale's Baronage. John de Vivonia served as knight of the shire for Gloucester in 1309, and for Wilts in 1313.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.

Vuasteneys :

or Gastineys. "If we may judge from the earliest spelling of the name, the family must have come from the district called the 'Gastinois,' lying to the south of Paris and east of Orleans; thus much is certain, that the first of the English line was a follower of Robert de Stafford, and enfeoffed by that baron both in his Lincolnshire and Staffordshire estates. The generally received tradition would recognise this ancestor as 'Ardulph,' Lord of the Manor of Osgarthorp under De Ferrers, but it rests on no sufficient authority."—Staffordshire Historical Collections. The connection is proved to have been only through the female line, for it was Hardulph's great-granddaughter, Amphelis, who brought Osgarthorp in Leicestershire to Sir Philip de Wasteneys, in the latter part of the twelfth century.

"The true founder of the family was Goisfridus, described in the Lincolnshire Domesday as 'homo Roberti de Stafford,' and who held lands in Brune, Carleby, Braseburg, and possibly in Dentune, besides the Staffordshire fees at Colton, Tixall, &c. being all portions of the great De Stafford barony, which were handed down for some centuries in the De Wastineys line."—Ibid. Sir William and Sir Geoffrey de Wasteneys—presumed to have been his grandsons—possessed these lands in 1165.—Liber Niger. Second in descent from the elder brother, Sir William, was the Sir Philip who married the Leicestershire heiress. He was in arms against King John; and being captured at Mount Sorrel in 1216, was carried prisoner to Nottingham, and forced to surrender part of his Colton estate to John le Mareschal, "as the ransom which should open his prison door." Stephen, his grandson, "was admitted a.d. 1267 into the King's peace on giving security for good behaviour, and gave further proof subsequently of his turbulent character, when sent by his brother William in 1271 to Emma Bagot's house in Hacunby. It appears from the Hundred Rolls that the band under his command, not satisfied with robbing her of property valued at 100s., carried off Simon Bagot her brother and two Hoyland men prisoners. The latter they beheaded summarily in the Park at Brune, whilst Simon was kept in captivity for six years, until Emma Bagot paid Sir William 20 marcs for his release—a strange picture of the lawlessness of those days. Sir William de Wasteneys was himself Sheriff of Lincolnshire at the time."—Ibid. From this tyrannical Sheriff descended another Sir William, fifth of the name, an active, enterprising man, "who inherited a greater estate, and influence in five different counties," followed Edward I. to the Scottish wars, and tilted at the great Stepney tournament of 1309 on the side of the Earl of Lancaster. "In 1333 he was ordered to raise two thousand men in the county of Lincoln; and in 1325 he was sent by Lord Wake in command of a body of troops across the seas; but the climate of Gascony brought on a disease, that proved rapidly fatal, not long after his return to England."—Ibid. His son, Sir Thomas, whom he left a minor, became in his turn a noted soldier, served both in France and Scotland, fought at Cressy, and the year following received a pardon "for all offences that he may have committed, on the ground of his good service against the French. The writ, which is dated at Calais, Septr. 4th, 20 Ed. III., implies that he shared likewise in the memorable siege." All his three sons died s. p., and the estate passed to their sister, Thomasine, the wife of Nicholas de Gresley.^[169] The Gresleys in consequence quarter the coat of Wasteneys, Sable a lion rampant Argent, collared Gules.

Though the main line of this ancient house had died out, there remained a Nottinghamshire branch, derived from Sir Nicholas de Wasteneys, believed to have been a younger son of the Lincolnshire Sheriff of 1271. His descendants are mentioned as holding two knights' fees in Notts during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., and were seated at Heandon for ten successive generations. Sir Hardolph Wasteneys received a baronetcy from James I. in 1622, and was Sheriff of the county in 1636. One of his younger sons was an ardent Cavalier, "memorable," says Wotton, "for slaying five Persons at the Devizes, co. Wilts, on the behalf of the King, in whose Service he lost his Life." The last and fourth Baronet was another Sir Hardolph, who died childless in 1742. There was no male heir; and the estates eventually centred in the Eyres of Grove, representing his only sister Catherine. The baronetcy was unsuccessfully claimed by a collateral in 1887.

Veroun :

The earliest mention I can find of this name is in 1199, when Warin de Virune of Northamptonshire occurs in the Rotuli Curiae Regis. Ralph Werune, in 1279, witnesses an acceptance of one virgate of land from the Knights Templars by Roger de Oseney. Richard de Werun held of the Honour of Ferrers 24 Ed. I.—Nichols' Leicestershire.

Warroys :

Of this family I am only able to quote Henry Werreys, Mayor of Sandwich in 1270.

Wacelay :

Here, again, I can furnish but a single individual, in the same county—William de Wacelay, of Kent, c. 1272.—Rotuli Hundredorum.

Walangay :

This name, in each case following Werlay or Verlai, corresponds with Valanger on Duchesne's list, and may possibly be intended for the same. Or it may stand for Valancey. I find a "Willielmus de Walanceio" in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1189-93. Valancey was a fief held of the Honour of Gavray by Helias de Amondeville in 1195. He owed service ad custodiam castri de Gavreio. In England, "Raimerus de Valencianus" held in Middlesex in 1130.—Rot. Pip. John de Valencene acquired Tonehouse, in the parish of Harewood, Yorkshire, about 1309.—Dodsworth's MSS. But I do not feel clear that either of these can be identified with Valencay.

Wemerlay :

I have only met with this name in the Monasticon. Henry de Wermelai witnesses Humphrey de Bohun's charter to Farley Priory, Wilts; and Helias de Winelai the foundation charter of Kirkley Priory in Yorkshire. The Wimarleys bore Azure, on a fesse Or between three martlets Argent, as many estoiles pierced Gules.—Robson's British Herald. But it is more than doubtful whether they can claim a place here, as their name appears to have been taken from a Hertfordshire manor, held of Waltham Abbey by a Saxon named Alwine at the date of Domesday, and previously under Edward the Confessor.

Wameruile :

for Wanrevil or Wannervill, seated at Hemsworth in Yorkshire, and holding of the Lacis. "The earliest distinct mention of the Wanreviles as tenants of the Honour of Pontefract is in the Liber Niger, where Adam de Wanrevil appears holding one of the sixty knight's fees which comprised the honour. This was between 1162 and 1165."—Hunter's South Yorkshire. There were, according to Dodsworth, two Williams and four Adams of the name. "One of these Adams (t. Ed. II.) was the coroner before whom a remarkable inquest was held. It was on the body of a man unknown, who was found dead in the dungeons of the castle of Almonbury, partly devoured by worms, birds, and dogs. The verdict was that the body was slain elsewhere, and brought when dead to the castle, the jury knew not by whom."—Ibid. The family ended in two heiresses in or about 1363. One of these Sir Nicholas Wortley took to wife. She was the elder sister, and brought him half the manor and advowson of Hemsworth, with other lands. The younger, Isabel, married Simon de Marton. In Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs the name is spelt Wauuervill or Wauderville; and two of the family, Sir Adam, and Sir Edmund, are entered as having been in arms against the King in 1322, and taken prisoners at the battle of Boroughbridge.

Waloys :

This name, variously spelt Le Walleys, Wallais, Walays, Waleis, le Waloys, and Latinized Wallensis and Vallensis, means simply the Welshman, and was first taken by one of the Churchills, through whom it was transmitted to the illustrious Sir William Wallace. "The family of Corcelle took part with Robert of Normandy, and lost their estates. Richard Pincerna (or de Corcelle) and his sons took refuge in Wales. After some time the heir of Roger de Corcelle was granted the hundred of Frome in Somerset; and Richard Walensis (or de Corcelle) returning from Wales, obtained from the Fitz Alans the fief of Tassley, Shropshire, which had belonged to his father. He in 1120-26 witnessed a charter of Ranulph Earl of Chester (Mon. i. 260). William Walensis, his brother, founded the Scottish family."—The Norman People. Their earliest recorded ancestor, was, however, Richard Wallensis, who is believed to have accompanied Walter Fitz Alan, the first Stewart or "Dapifer Regis Scotiae," to Scotland, and is found as witness to one of his charters to the Abbey of Paisley, between the years 1165 and 1173.

The name—which became Walsh^[170]—was borne by Richard Waleys, a baron by writ in 1321, and is retained by Sheldesly-Waleys, Burgh-Waleys, Newton Waleys, &c. But it has no claim to a place on the Battle Abbey Roll.