Michael Linton's Bayeux Tapestry: 1066 - A Medieval Mosaic and Puzzles

Aincourt :

from Aincourt, a fief in the Norman Vezin, in the deaconry of Magny. Walter d'Aincourt holds nearly sixty manors in Domesday, chiefly in Lincolnshire, where Blankney was the head of his barony, and "the Deyncourts flourished in a continual succession, from the coming-in of the Normans to the time of Henry VI."—Camden. All we know of Walter's lineage is derived from a leaden tablet inscribed to the memory of his son, William, which was found in 1670 in Lincoln Cathedral. This son, who had been brought up at the court of William Rufus, died young, and was taken from Westminster to Lincoln for his burial, sewn up in leather for the long journey^[16]—tedious and toilsome enough in those days. The inscription states that his father was "cousin to Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, who built this church," and that he himself was of royal lineage. "This must have been through his mother; but who she was has not been discovered; probably a relation of the King's, which would account for his Christian name of William. In the seal of Edmund, Baron d'Eyncourt, attached to the Baron's letter to the Pope (1301) a lion passant will be found in the four corners outside the shield, as if a memorial of this descent."—A. S. Ellis.

Walter was succeeded by another son, Ralph, who founded Thurgarton Priory in Nottinghamshire, and was the progenitor of a line of powerful barons, whose names are connected with all the principal events of the time. One fought for Stephen at Lincoln, where his son was taken prisoner; another (the husband of a great Lincolnshire heiress, Nichola de Haia) forfeited his barony under King John, by whom it was granted to Philip Mark, "then an eminent man in Nottinghamshire," but recovered it by the usual means of a fine; and a third served the two first Edwards in their French and Scottish wars. This was Edmund, Baron d'Eyncourt, first summoned to Parliament in 1293; who, seven years afterwards, as Edmundus de Eyncourt, Dominus de Thurgarton, subscribed the famous letter, asserting the supremacy of England over the realm of Scotland, that was sent to Pope Boniface VIII. by the barons assembled in Parliament at Lincoln. He was one of the nobles summoned to attend the coronation of Edward II. His two sons, John and William, both died before him. The date of John's death is not given; but he was, with his brother, at the siege of Carlaverock in 1300, and "mult bien fist son devoir." William was killed before Stirling Castle fourteen years later, on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn:

"Back to the host the Douglas rode,
And soon glad tidings are abroad,
That D'Eyncourt, by stout Randolph slain,
His followers fled with loosen'd rein."—Lord of the Isles.

John had left three sons; Edmund, who again died in his grandfather's lifetime, William, and John. Edmund's only child, Isabel, then became heir-general, and as such, entitled to the succession of the barony; but her great-grandfather, unwilling that it should be transferred by her marriage to another family, petitioned Edward II. for license to dispose of it as he might see fit. "This Edmund, considering that his name and arms, after his death, descending to her, would be utterly extinguished; and being cordially desirous that both his name and arms should remain to posterity; did, in consideration of his own laudable services performed to King Edward I. and Edward II., obtain a special license from King Edward II. for power to enfeoff what person soever he pleased, in all his Lordships and Lands, Knights' Fees, with Advowsons of Churches and Abbies; to have and to hold, to such person and his heirs for ever, of the said King, and his Heirs, by the services antiently due and of right accustomed."—Dugdale. He thereupon settled the whole of his possessions on his eldest surviving grandson, William; and died, then a very old man, in 1327.

To our minds, accustomed to the present rule of succession, there is something fantastic in the declaration of a man, who had two living grandsons, that his name must go down with him to the grave.

William, Lord d'Eyncourt (by a new creation in 1335), who was called upon to represent it, worthily maintained its old martial renown. He was a stout and tried soldier, whose sword, like his master's, was but seldom in its sheath; for he followed Edward III. in his French and Scottish campaigns, fought in the great victory of Nevill's Cross, and was present at the taking of Calais. When a French invasion was threatened in 1352, he was appointed to defend the Lincolnshire coast; and with Lord Grey of Codnor, a Commissioner of array for the counties of Derby and Notts. Seven years later, he was among those commissioned to remove the captive King of France from Hertford Castle to Somerton Castle in Somersetshire. He died about 1382, and his successor was again a grandson, William, the father of Ralph and John, who each inherited the barony. Both died early; Ralph, while still under age, in 1401, and John four years afterwards. Yet, young as he was, he left a widow and three children, the eldest of them, three years old. He had married Joan, the daughter and heir of Lord Grey of Rotherfield, and their only son William bore his title in addition to his own. This William, the last of the D'Eyncourts, proved as short-lived as his predecessors. In 1421, he "was retained by indenture to serve King Henry V. in his Warrs beyond sea, with ten men at armes, himself accounted; and thirty archers, all on horseback," but died the year following, "at that time not full twenty-one years of age." His wife, Elizabeth, sister of John Viscount Beaumont, had remained childless; and his two young sisters, Alice and Margaret, became his heirs. Alice, in whom were vested the two baronies of D'Eyncourt and Grey of Rotherfield, married, first, Ralph Boteler of Sudeley, who died s. p.; and secondly Lord Lovel of Tichmarsh. Margaret married Ralph Cromwell, but had no children. The whole inheritance thence fell to the share of Alice's descendants by her second marriage; but her grandson Francis, Viscount Beaumont, forfeited her baronies with his other honours by attainder in 1487.

Thus, within little more than one hundred years from the settlement made by the first Baron, the highly-prized name he had been so earnest to preserve and perpetuate, had altogether died out. "He was," writes Camden, "very solicitous to have it survive and be remembered. Yet this surname, for aught I can find, is now quite extinct, and would have been forgotten for ever, if the memory of it had not been preserved in books." It is, however, still borne by Wooburn-Deincourt, one of the Buckinghamshire manors held by Walter de Aincourt in 1086; and at least two attempts have been made to resuscitate it. Sir Francis Leke of Sutton, in Derbyshire, without any reason assigned (at least by Burke), chose as his title the ancient barony of Deincourt, and was subsequently created Earl of Scarsdale. Both titles expired with the fourth Earl in 1736. More recently in 1835, a Lincolnshire gentleman of the name of Tennyson added the name and arms of D'Eyncourt to his own, in compliance with a condition attached to the enjoyment of certain manors and estates, by a codicil to his father's will, "in order to commemorate his descent from the ancient and noble family of D'Eyncourt, Barons d'Eyncourt of Blankney, and his representation in blood, as co-heir of the Earls of Scarsdale, Barons d'Eyncourt of Sutton." His descent, through several different families, from Lady Anne Leke, daughter of the first Earl, is sufficiently clear; but for the more tortuous and involved pedigree, that derived him from Alice, the heiress of the D'Eyncourts, I must refer my readers to Sir Bernard Burke, as I avow myself unable to comprehend it.